For my WP3, I have decided to use the scholarly article “Reading
and Writing Without Authority” by Penrose and Geisler. Throughout the article, the authors examine
two articles written by two different writers – one of the articles is a
written by a first-year college student named Janet, while the second is
written by a doctoral student who goes by the name of Roger. The main argument in this article is that to
write with more authority you need to gain the proper knowledge on the topic
you are writing about and by doing so you will be known as a reliable source,
respected, and therefore credible. It
analyzes the way each writer goes about supporting a claim and inputting “their
own voice” into each article. The
authors say “Roger knew how to write as an authority inside the conversation of
ethics; Janet was an outsider looking in.”
It explains how Roger’s article was more competent because of his
ability to be an insider and incorporate his own voice while Janet’s article wasn’t as thorough because of the inability
to incorporate her own voice into the article.
Younger Audience
Idea:
Genre: A children’s poem or a song used in class to learn
about writing and/or life in general.
-An
inspirational song that the kids can sing (I am writing the lyrics to the song, not a complete song with a melody).
Audience: About 4-6th graders.
This song would be passed out to the students and the
teacher would first talk about what it means and what the kids think it
means. My ten-year-old sister actually
learns about things through songs in school.
My mom tells me how she brings home songs from school that the teacher
wants the kids to really understand which will hopefully better themselves in
the understanding of what they are learning.
I am assuming that most of the kids will be excited to learn about it because:
-The song
will have lyrics that contain and say something that motivates the kids to
always share their opinions on a subject and to always have a voice when you
write or tell someone something or just when they want to achieve
something. For example, a lyric could be
like “Always say what you want and let the whole world know that your voice
matters!” I am still not exactly sure
what the lyrics will be but I really want it to capture the class of children
and let them know that they need to always incorporate their ideas into
whatever they want to accomplish but do so (using the right words that young
students would know the definition of) in a way that young kids would
understand.
Older Audience Idea:
Genre: An obituary/eulogy spoken at the funeral of the
speakers best/close friend.
Audience: The family, parents, children, and friends of the
person that has passed away.
This eulogy would be spoken to
everyone in attendance of this man’s best friend. I am thinking of having the speaker basically
pay tribute to his best friend and say that he had great ideas in life and did
good things (like Janet did in her article) but how he could’ve done so much
more if he were able to attain more knowledge on the things he did and input
his own voice into those things in order to create better opportunities and a happier/better
life in general. So, I will have to make
a short speech that this friend will be saying that highlights the key points
the scholarly article was all about.
Such as how having more knowledge on a subject is crucial in order to “Help [ing] students see themselves as
insiders [which] enables them to engage in types of thinking that are denied
them under the information-transfer model. Only when a student such as Janet
sees herself and others as authors negotiating meaning will she think to acknowledge
and build upon the inconsistencies she notices, to use her store of examples generatively,
to examine and value her own responses to the claims of others.” Ultimately, the best friend will need to convey
a message that tells the audience although this person did good things in life,
he would have been able to do so much more if he were to integrate his own
ideas and voice to create happier opportunities in his life.
For both of these, I really don’t know what or how I am going to write
the song or the eulogy yet, but I believe I laid out a decent ‘outline’ of the
message I want to transfer from the scholarly article into this new genre. Basically, I am attempting to capture two
different extremes from my original genre: one that is inspirational and motivational
(the younger audience) and one that is very dark and concerning after the death
of a close friend (older audience). I
really look forward to hearing back from you Zack because your input will
really help and guide me in the right direction!
