Relationship between Social Media on Bitcoin Value

College Writing II

Audience Rewrite Assignment

Purpose:  To translate a scholarly article for a public audience.

In this assignment, you will conduct a rhetorical analysis of a scholarly article, and then rewrite the article for a public (general) audience.

In submitting the final assignment, you will submit two things:

• The translation of your scholarly article
• A written analysis of the choices you made as you wrote your translation

In preparing to begin this assignment, you should first read through the scholarly articles I’ve posted to Blackboard. You will need to choose one article to work with; once you’ve made your choice, I would strongly encourage you to print the article and begin making annotations. 

Step 1: Identify your new audience and genre.

To get started, you’ll need to identify a new audience and rhetorical situation for the information in your selected article. The goal here is to shift the audience from an academic one to a public one. You may, for instance, choose to report the findings of the article in a magazine targeted toward a general audience of people who are interested in science or you may choose to write a newspaper article that announces the research findings. You might also choose to write a script for a news show that reports research findings to a general television audience. Notice that once you change audiences, then the form in which you report will need to shift as well. The genre you produce will be contingent on the audience you’re targeting and the rhetorical situation: magazine article, newspaper article, blog post, news show script, press release, etc. Ask yourself: Who would be interested in this topic? Where would they read about this kind of thing?

Step 2: Analyze your target audience and genre expectations.

Closely analyze a couple example of the kind of genre you’re attempting to create, and consider how those genre examples fulfill the expectations of the target audience. Your project will be assessed according to its ability to reproduce those genre expectations, so you will need to explain, in detail, the rhetorical changes and other choices you had to make in the construction of your piece. Consider all four elements of the rhetorical context: author, audience, topic purpose.

Step 3: Construct the genre.

At this point, you’re ready to begin constructing or translating the article into the new genre. The genre you’re producing could take any number of forms. As such, the form, structure, and development of your ideas are contingent on the genre of public reporting you’re attempting to construct. If you’re constructing a magazine article, for example, then the article you produce should really look like one that would appear in a magazine. Try to mirror how the genre would appear in a real situation.

Step 4: Write the analysis.

Once your translation is complete, compose a 1-page reflective analysis. As part of your analysis, consider the rhetorical choices you made as you constructed your translation. Offer a rationale for each of your decisions that connects the features of your translation to your larger rhetorical context. For example, if you had to translate the title of the scholarly article for a public audience, explain why your new title is the most appropriate one for your public audience.

Project Format & Length Requirements: The format and length of your assignment will depend completely on the genre you choose to translate the scholarly article into! What information you choose to include (or not include) from the original article will be dependent on your new format, including how you format any citations/references. However, you will want to be sure to develop a purposeful, complete translation.

In addition to your audience rewrite, you will also need to submit your 1-pg. reflective analysis.

See Blackboard for additional assignment resources, the grading rubric, and due dates. As always, drafts must be submitted to Turnitin.