WP3

Younger Audience - https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2oUmTlK8DdYdWEwMmstTEkyR0k

Older Audience - https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2oUmTlK8DdYMEFOZ0tCMVpGRzg

Punctuating The Transformation of Genres

The teaching of punctuation can be transformed into certain genres with modifying perceptions, which can effectively educate their specifically targeted audience. According to Losh and Alexander, they explain that for a writer to adapt their language to their targeted audiences requires the consideration of multiple identities (moves) according to the expectations of different social contexts (Losh and Alexander). For my Writing Project 3, I have chosen the scholarly article “Teaching Punctuation as a Rhetorical Tool,” written by John Dawkins, who deeply examines the system of the functional punctuation rules and patterns towards his audience of students to improve their writing with use of rhetoric tools. I have converted this scholarly piece into genres that consist of an English classroom worksheet activity, targeting children aged eleven to thirteen-year-olds in middle school, as well as a ‘5 Ways To…’ advice article consisted of tips on how to improve cover letters, directed towards thirty-year-old adults who forgot the basic principles of punctuation learnt in school. The transformation from a scholarly article into the two different genres is created with use of the respected genre conventions, as well as the incorporation of moves that manipulate the exigence, style of format, and certain material to efficiently modify the perspective to the targeted audience.

During the process of transforming my scholarly articles, I created my two genre pieces based on rhetoric conventions. Initially, scholarly articles like Dawkins’ present typical conventions consisting of formal structure and language, sub-headings, citations, hypotheses, data, introduction, results, and analysis, especially due to his educated audience mostly comprising of college students and professors. As a classroom of middle school children, these conventions obviously differ for ‘fill-in-the-gap’ activities as it consists of informal language, instructions, one-line sentences, bullet or numbered points, and a word bank. These conventions help these middle school children to use their knowledge, typically aimed for them to carefully choose a word (in this case types of punctuations) best suitable in a sentence and understand why it is appropriate.

Furthermore, the scholarly article also visibly differs conventions to the online TheMuse (an online career resource that offers background information for job opportunities) ‘5 Ways To…’ articles as they tend to contain conventions that have an informal structure, and include a topic title, author’s name, visual images, numbering of the five main points, and a short description of the main points. These conventions of this article allow easy, understandable reading for older adults. In addition to the conventions shown in my two genres, rhetoric moves have been made to specifically boost engagement from each of my targeted audience.

The change in the exigence– circumstance that pursuits a response (Carroll)– between the genres was vital as the information provided must be beneficially appropriate for each targeted audience. Dawkins’ exigence in his article is to educate his targeted audience of college students and professors, the five most effective punctuations as rhetoric tools for writing­; Sentences and Independent Clauses, Raising and Lowering, Multiple Independent Clauses, Punctuation with Coordinator, and Pedagogy. For the younger audience, the Fill-In-The-Gap Punctuation worksheet will be to educate the incorporation of basic punctuation in the initial learning stages of writing. On the other hand, the “5 Way To…” article’s exigence will be to provide support to older adults who either did not attend high school/college or forgot the basic punctuation functions, for rewriting their cover letters for a new job position.

Throughout my transformation process of my two genres targeting a different audience, I made moves (author’s conscious decision to purposefully guide reader) to focus on the style of format to effectively engage the readers. For my younger audience, I included bolded, colored, and funky various fonts, as well as a written included challenge to capture and engage these students to completely participate in the activity. Ages around eleven to thirteen years are stereotyped to go through “too cool for school” stage (state children go through to act cool to gain their peers attention and admiration). I personally chose to include the written challenge “first three to complete all correct answers wins a chocolate,” because these children need a motivation to complete work, intentionally causing them to try harder.

On the other hand, for the older audience I kept the website article one page, with the easily-read font 'Times New Roman'. Adults are shown to increase eventful and tiring aspects in their lifestyles, from working all day/night, attending social events, to raising a family. Therefore, I thought it was necessary to make this article short yet informative to quickly teach the necessities included in a cover letter. I also made the move of increasing the font of the five main tips to further catch the readers’ eyes. These moves benefits most adults, as they tend to get bored of lengthy pages worth of information and usually search for straight-to-the-point material, especially on a topic for enhancing writing cover letters.

In continuation, according to Scott McCloud, choice of image is part of five focuses that contribute to clarity, persuasion, and intensity of information for an audience (McCloud). I included visual images in both genres for its purposes– incorporated Cartoonized characters of punctuation marks around the worksheet to brighten the worksheet activity engagement for the children, as well as a man typing in a typewriter in the advice article, to add humor as older adults are stereotyped to be “outdated” in education and technology. Colorful and humorous visuals are used to bring the writer’s message to life and support their claim with convincing evidence.

Addtionally, I made moves modifying the information to transform the scholarly article into helpful and appropriate information for the certain age groups. Supported by authors Losh, Alexander, and McCloud, it portrays the importance for authors’ choice of flow and word, to help readers navigate their conveyed and valuable ideas (Losh & Alexander, McCloud). For these young children, I degraded the five main punctuations into “simpler” versions because at this age, they start their initial learning of writing. Eleven to thirteen-year-olds must learn the basic functions of punctuations; therefore I have used only the basic punctuation marks (comma, period, dash, question mark, exclamation mark, and colon) used in the Dawkin’s scholarly article. I personally added quotation marks, as I thought it was necessary and appropriate to teach, as children this age also begin creative story writing. This genre of a fill-in-the-gap classroom activity is a great way to reinforce vocabulary in a variety of contexts, necessary for learning in an English class. I bullet-pointed each sentence on various topics in order for the students to wholly understand the suitable punctuation marks.

As for the older audience, I manipulated the scholarly article into a more pop-culture article style. The ‘5 Ways to Revamp Your Cover Letter’ is more broadly searched so I incorporated that correct punctuation was detrimental as it implies high-level education intelligence as one aspect to improving a cover letter. I included the information on “Multiple Independent Clauses” (Dawkins), teaching them the effective emphasis, and the importance of organization and separating sentences instead of majorly clustered words. I made sure to keep the language broad and applicable for them. As Dawkin’s articles focuses on a research about Punctuation, I had to eliminate the analytical rules and patters, as these targeted adults would find this information irrelevant. However, I aimed to refresh the information to adults as they may have forgotten the essential aspects in writing a cover letter.

Transforming John Dawkins’ scholarly article, ‘Teaching Punctuation as a Rhetoric Tool’ into an English classroom worksheet activity towards a younger audience, in addition to a “5 Way to Revamp Your Cover Letters” for my older audience, was done by operating information from the scholarly article into the fitting genre conventions, as well as conducting specific moves to manipulate the author’s exigence, the style of formatting, and selecting appropriate information to especially engage the targeted age group. In process of WP3, not only did I deepen my understanding of genre conventions, but I also expanded my knowledge of the general concept of why an author makes a move– to identify my decisions and reasoning between my created genres, to specifically engage the targeted younger and older audience. These created genres must be adapted to the readers and be contained with suitable information for their complete understanding of the context.

Works Cited

Carroll, Laura Bolin. “Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps Toward Rhetorical Analysis.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 1, 2010.

Dawkins, John. "Teaching Punctuation As A Rhetorical Tool." College Composition and Communication 46.4 (1995): 533-48. Print.

Losh, Elizabeth M., and Jonathan Alexander. "Spaces For Writing.” Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to Writing. Bedford/St. Martin's, 2013. 1-22. Print.

McCloud, Scott. “Writing With Pictures.” Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York. HarperPerrenial, 1994.

Thlog Eight

In Week 8 of Writing 2, I learnt the true differences between the concepts of translation and transformation. Initially, I defined translation as a word in one language being spoken in another language, and transformation as something evolving into another form. However there were many types of definitions from my peers, for example, student ID #7 wrote that translation means interpreting anything in a new form, for example, translating the word from mum to mama, keeping the meaning, whereas transform means changing its form, thus the entire meaning changes. I thought this was an extremely interesting answer. It was also so intriguing learning about the sub-genres contained in magazines towards an older audience. I never knew that even conventions like current affair news, how-to guides, horoscopes, television reviews, political profiles, print advertisements of medications, cars, perfumes, etc. could categorize a magazine towards a specific audience, thought it was pretty cool!

On Wednesday, the journal question about summarization really taught me why summaries are important and what should be written in a summary. I firstly could not think of a logistic answer but to write about the author’s exigence, however, when Zack started listing examples, I gradually caught on. I suggested that summaries are important because it can catch and draw an audience’s interest for example, on a back of the book, or summaries about a movie. I believe Student ID #19 had a very good answer, as they said that summaries state the main idea, and its point is to paint the bigger picture of what is meant to be understood. They also said that it usually includes 2-3 sentences and captures important information of the reading. I liked their answer because they were very specific. In continuation, I also learnt from McCloud’s reading that there are five main focuses that contribute to clarity, persuasion, and intensity when writing with images. These focuses include choice of moment, frame, word, flow, and image. Their use can alter or add meaning to a piece in one way or another. For my PB3A, I chose an article about punctuation and how it can be transformed into a nursery rhyme for a younger audience, and a job application for an older audience. However, I am quite sure this will change, as I want to come up with something more creative.

PB3A

Scholarly Article

I have currently chosen the scholarly article “Teaching Punctuation as a Rhetorical Tool” written by John Dawkins. It examines and teaches the different rules and patterns of functional punctuation marks towards an expected audience of students. Dawkins believes that manuals of style and college handbooks have it wrong in terms of teaching punctuation, therefore he conducts an article of his own to deeply explain a system that can enable his readers to improve their own writing with the use of rhetoric effects. The article mainly emphases on Sentences and Independent Clauses, Raising and Lowering, Multiple Independent Clauses, Punctuation with Coordinator, and Pedagogy.

Younger Audience

For the genre transformation towards a younger audience, I am going to write a nursery rhyme for toddlers aged three to eight years old, and incorporate the scholarly article’s valuable lesson of the uses of different punctuations. Nursery rhymes contain a special effect in a learning process. This targeted audience of little children needs a more creative way of learning for their understanding than reading boring books. Early childhood –approximately up to six years old– is a crucial stage of life in terms of learning their development intellectually. Toddlers develop a memory for songs with positivity, easy to follow rhymes, and simple language. The fundamental conventions of nursery rhymes include the rhythm and the typical phrase melody of a specific language, the repetition of rhymes of sounds and consonants, and the alternation of syllables. The non-serious context of nursery rhymes with incorporated academic words is another beneficial and important aspect of the specific role in learning and in teaching therapy. I have chosen to write nursery rhymes for my younger audience because nursery rhymes such as the alphabet song, the vowel song, etc. have personally stuck within my head for over 15 years, so I believe this genre can be a very effective way of learning.

Older Audience

For genre transformation towards an older audience, I have decided to write job application for becoming a writing teacher. Job applications are especially needed for adult living to have an income and support their needs. Contrasting to the genre transformation of informal nursery rhymes, job applications must contain more formality and neatness, as well as include sophisticated language. The rhetoric conventions I must include in my job application are information about my profile, my desired employment, my past education, and my skills and expertise. The job application must be short but academically efficient towards my reader, and in this case, for the highly schooling academic boss. With the inclusion of my biography and my past experiences, I will highlight my skills and my enriched knowledge to easily teach punctuations to my future students. I will stress my aim and importance for my future students to develop individuality and gain confidence with their use of rhetoric tools in their writing. Furthermore, I chose job applications for my older audience, because most adults always require writing a job application, therefore I thought it’d be an effective way of incorporating the importance of punctuations, and transforming it into a job application for becoming a writing teacher.

Thlog Seven

On the seventh week of Writing 2, I learnt that the class had similar struggles, strengths, and improvements as me from Writing the Writing Project 2. My struggles, as well as student ID 3 was not knowing whether I covered everything in class in my writing. My strengths similarly to student ID 6, were the structure and organization of the paper. Zack has taught me the vitality of structuring and outlining each paragraph to talking about one topic. The tip of brainstorming/mind mapping was extremely beneficial for this due to the different topics that needed to be talked about in WP2. Another extremely beneficial thing I learnt for my writing is breaking up my paragraphs and sentences into a poem, as I sometimes ramble on in writing and can completely confuse my readers. This advice supported my organization in my WP2, and connecting each sentence to the next. Peer reviews are honestly the most beneficial help to me, as it helps me figure out their strengths and weaknesses, as well as my peer noticing my strengths and weaknesses. This way points out how I can improve and enhance their understanding of my writing.

Unfortunately due to travelling to NCAA’s, and with poor reception during the trip, I couldn’t attend the online lesson meeting. However, looking through the lesson plan for Wednesday, I assumingly learnt the initial start of writing project #3. I never realized the effect of genre and how it can be transformed into other genres, for example, for a younger audience, transforming a scholarly article into a certain game at the back of a cereal box. I found this extremely interesting. I am very excited to plan and write my WP3.

Thlog Six

In week 6 of Writing 2, I enhanced my understanding of Writing Project 2. I have realized the importance of using different verbs in relation to the word “says”. These use of verbs such as ponders, argues, contradicts, questions, challenges, etc. can enhance a writers’ statement. Then we continued to learn about non-hedged claims and hedged claims, which I found extremely vital especially for my WP2. I have learnt not to make specific claims and “over-generalize,” statements in my papers as not everyone is the same. When we read the Style Chapter in the course reader, I really learnt the difference between connotation and denotation. As Zack said, “DEnotation for DEFINITION, and Connotation for the other.” Lastly, I realized what non-academic sources were which is needed for WP2. These sources consist of Cosmopolitan, Yahoo, Nexus, etc.

            On Wednesday, the journal question was “are there differences between conventions and moves.” I stated that conventions are popular aspects that are used between a specific genre, where as moves are an aspect that an author chooses to use, aimed more towards the audience to make them understand better. However, student ID#11 thought conventions and moves, for the most part, were the same as they are both strategies used by writers for specific reasons. This answer is questionable, and should be further analyzed. On another note, parallelism was extremely interesting to learn and will definitely use this in my writing 2.  I have realized that sometimes I do write sentences with a lot of commas that makes no sense. Therefore, using parallelism can definitely help Zack understand my writing more. Lastly when we looked at the two sample WP2’s; it was extremely beneficial for me as I got to understand the importance of structure. I especially liked Chief’s Freshmen 15 essay.