After much deliberation, I think I have established a plan for what I am going to do for my WP-3. I reviewed the options, and I eventually decided that the one I found most interesting was option #1, which is the prompt about translating a scholarly article into a genre fit for a younger/older audience.
For this project, I feel like I worked backwards in a sense, because I started out with deciding what younger and older genres I wanted to write in before I had selected what scholarly article I was going to be translating into those said genres. For my writing assignments, I always write better/more quality work when I have chosen a topic that interests me. I am a psychology major, so I have a tendency to be steered towards topics that are psychology or mental health related. I wanted to keep on that same vein but go a slightly different route when picking my scholarly article, and I eventually happened upon one titled: “Bullying of Children with Special Needs in Mainstream Schools.” I think this article is perfect because it allows me to adequately translate it into my older and younger genre. For my younger genre, I was thinking of doing a children’s book, that tells a story about a kid who meets a special needs child in his second grade class, and how he tries to understand and accept the differences between them. My audience would be young grade school children from the ages of 6 to 9. The purpose of the book will be to address exactly what it means to be ‘special needs’ and to teach children not mock or ignore the differences that exist, but to accept and celebrate them. I love drawing and being artistic, so I think I am going to have fun doing the illustrations for this project.
For my genre geared towards an older audience, I really wanted to do something unique, so I decided upon a legal brief of a court case. The point of a brief is to condense a case down to its most important elements: the facts of the case, the statement of rule, the holding, etc., and the age range for my audience would be from 25 year olds (ie. law students) to maybe 65 year olds adults. I chose a legal brief because I felt that I could sufficiently translate an academic work into this genre, seeing as they share several similarities in terms of tone, structure, organization, and format. I was thinking of translating the arguments found in the scholarly article into an argument that is part of a court case. Perhaps I could make up an imaginary case, and take the evidence, analysis, etc. from the scholarly article and incorporate it in such a way so that it comes together to sound like an actual legal case.
I think I have picked unusual genres that give me room to have fun and be creative with this writing project-- I’m excited to get started!
Carina, your title was such a great hook to this. Like many people in the class, I think the skills in our blogging have increased because of the conventions we have analyzed and read. We're starting to read like writers and fitting in to the blogging world, and I think you really showed that in your title and even your overall post. Now, while reading your PB3A, I was really interested in the genre that you selected for older people because a legal brief case seems very hard to translate too, and I'm glad that you're going to challenge yourself in that case. (Clever, huh?) I love that you broke down the elements of a brief too, since it is very important to analyze the moves and conventions before starting the project. As for the children's book, I can't wait to see your final product because I know that children's books may be humorous and funny, but the fact that your topic is very heavy, I think you might have a heartwarming and precious children's book for it. I can't wait to see the conventions that you will select for this (since we went over various ones in class) because there are so many that you might not need, and so many that will be clever for your genre. I can't wait to see your results, and considering how passionate you are about the topic, I know it's going to be a good one.
ReplyDeleteBest title omg haha. But wow, this is such a great proposal and I definitely think it has potential to be a home run! I love that your children's book is targeted towards a really young audience, as that age range is definitely a good time to expose the kids to certain topics like this. They absorb a lot of information at that age. How do you plan on choosing the illustrations for the story? Which illustrations would be more important and how would it make the children remember the moral of the story better?
ReplyDeleteFor the older audience, I want to commend you on picking such a unique topic! I am honestly looking forward to this the most. I definitely think making up an imaginary case would be phenomenal. What would you use as reference to coming up with the case? Do you already know some of the conventions from TV shows? I do agree that a brief can be quite similar to a scholarly article, so what is the key factor that differentiates the two? I'm really looking forward to what you produce. I'm positive it'll be amazing :)
Carina,
ReplyDeleteThis is a heavy topic, and it’s tailor-made for being transformed into educational/school-related genres. One q I have is: would the audience for the children’s story be for other kids to NOT bully the special-needs students? Or it would it be for special-needs kids themselves? Or both? And why?
Think about the literary devices you probably studied to death through high school—symbolism, metaphor, setting, tone, characterization, etc.—they can all be ways for you to think about how to add literary elements to this… literary genre. Also, think about situating the story in a time/place. Is it modern America? OK, if so, where? An urban setting? Rural? In between? These rhetorical considerations might impact the other aspects of the piece.
A court case is a fanTASTIC IDEA! Whoa! Ding, ding, ding—we’ve got a new one, folks. For sure, rock it out!
Like everybody, focus on what you want to pull out from the original scholarly piece and why. Think: “what should I bring to life, and how can I do that in this new genre?”
Z
Hey Carina! I think you have some good ideas here. A legal brief...wow. First off, I think that the children's book and your topic are pretty cool choices. However, it seems to me that an article like you have chosen seems to me that it could be hard to convey a message like that in just pictures and simple sentences. But, you might have a way to do it, so go for it. Another thing, I think that your legal brief idea is great, but an idea like that could be hard to create. Legal briefs are long and tedious works, you have to create arguments, evidence, and opening and closing statements. So although I do think that it is a good idea you would have to put in a lot of work to make it. So I would just keep that in mind. But good luck Carina! I hope you have fun working on this project!
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