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.
Yamada,
ReplyDeleteDawkins! Nice pick here.
An initial question I have is: who needs to learn this “rhetorical punctuation” stuff? A lot of folks, probably, but… TODDLERS? 3 year olds?! (Even 8 yr-old kids seems like a stretch….) While I do like the idea of making a nursery rhyme for learning purposes, I don’t know if the age is appropriate in this case. Again, ask yourself: who would benefit from learning this, and why?
Alright, for your older transformation, I’m a little unclear on whether you (the writer/creator of the genre) are the writing teacher or the employer on the receiving end (which could range from a Human Resources consultant to a principal to the department head for the English/Writing Department).
That said, do you think a job APPLICATION is the best way to demonstrate someone’s knowledge of and appreciation for rhetorical punctuation? If so, why? (Where in a job application could you see this?)
Could you run with this rhetorical situation you’ve identified—a writing teacher is searching for a job— idea and, instead, create a different genre that captures some of these ideas more appropriately? I like how you’re thinking outside-the-box, but I think you might be able to come up with some more ideas that capture the essence of the piece. Remember, you’ve got to have really good REASONS for doing what you’re doing.
Think about the big, great, wide world of genres that are out there, floating around—what 2 embody what you want to bring out of this scholarly piece?
Z
Hey Steph! I love your nursery rhyme idea. Songs and rhymes are often used to communicate important (and sometimes boring) ideas to children in order to make the information stick in their minds. However, it seems like the concepts that the article focuses on – independent clauses, pedagogy, etc. – might be a little too complex for the age range that you described. Is there a way to, for lack of a better phrase, “dumb down” the punctuation rules in the article to a 4th or 5th grade level? If not, perhaps you could consider changing your audience to 9th or 10th graders, since that’s who would likely be learning these concepts anyway. I still love the idea of a rhyme/song, so if you do decide to change the age range of your audience, I’d suggest doing a rap that a high school student would find entertaining and informative. As for the job application, I’m a little confused as to how you’d communicate the main ideas of the article in that format. Are you focusing more on the rhetorical effects explained in the article as opposed to the punctuation rules? I’m having trouble putting the pieces together in my mind, but I think it’s a really creative idea that has a lot of potential. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteI think your rhyme idea makes sense as a good way to teach kids about the information in your article (I know I still remember songs I learned as a kid), but maybe think about if toddlers are the right age group to be learning about this? I'm not sure how important it would be to teach such young kids about these complex punctuation rules so you might want to reconsider your audience's age, like Alex said. For the job application, I think that's a really interesting approach to getting your information across and I understand that it's a common genre for most adults. It's just not quite clear to me how you'll be presenting the ideas from the article within the application itself. Would you be filling it out with answers explaining some of the punctuation rules since it's an application for a position that requires a lot of knowledge on this topic? Or are you thinking of incorporating the rules into another part of the application?
ReplyDelete