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Major Assignment 1: Discipline Project

Translating a Scholarly Article in Your Field of Study
for a Public Audience
(Adapted from An Insider’s Guide to Academic Writing, by Miller-Cochran, Stamper, and
Cochran. Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2016)
ASSIGNMENT (15% of final grade)
OVERVIEW
The goal of this assignment is to translate a scholarly article written for your field of
study for a public audience.
There are three parts to this assignment:
• Locate, read, and analyze a recently published scholarly article in your academic
discipline that addresses a topic of interest to you and the general public
• “Translate” (rewrite) and format the article in a new genre appropriate to a public
audience
• Write a reflective analysis about the choices you made as you wrote your
translation
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After completing this assignment, you should be able to
• Analyze the rhetorical features of scholarly writing in your discipline and public
writing
• Identify the conventions of various genres of scholarly, professional, and public
writing
• Write with an awareness of how the rhetorical situation and rhetorical context
influence the structure, language, and reference conventions (SLRs) writers use to
achieve their purpose in writing to specific audiences.
ALLEN/FALL 2019 2
STEP ONE: IDENTIFY YOUR NEW AUDIENCE AND GENRE
After you choose your article, read it carefully so that you understand what it conveys.
Next, identify a new audience and genre for your translation of the article. The objective
is to shift the audience from an academic one to a public one.
You may choose to write a magazine article or a newspaper article aimed at a general
audience of people interested in your field.
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 context (magazine article or newspaper article for a given
publication).
STEP TWO: ANALYZING YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE AND GENRE
EXPECTATIONS
Closely analyze an example or two 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. Be sure that you’re able to explain the
rhetorical choices you make in writing your translation. Consider all four elements of the
rhetorical context: author, audience, topic, and purpose.
STEP THREE: CONSTRUCTING 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 and the publication you visualize it appearing in. 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 the actual publication.
STEP FOUR: WRITING THE REFLECTIVE ANALYSIS
Once your translation is complete, compose a reflective analysis. As part of your
analysis, consider your rhetorical approach to this assignment and answer the following:
1) How much of the content of the scholarly article did you include in the magazine
or newspaper article? What kinds of things did you have to change or omit?
Why?
ALLEN/FALL 2019 3
2) What did you have to change in the scholarly article to make it conform to the
genre expectations of the magazine or newspaper article? For example, if you
had to explain certain terms or translate the title of the scholarly article for a
public audience, explain why your new title is better suited to a magazine or
newspaper article.
Failure to include a good faith response in the reflective analysis results in an
automatic 10-point deduction in grade. What is a “good faith” response? It means
that you make a sincere and substantial effort (more than a sentence or two) to reflect
on your process in accomplishing this assignment and answer the questions above as
completely as you can. A good rule of thumb for a reflective analysis is at least 150
words.
EVIDENCE
The Discipline Project does not require you to incorporate secondary sources, but if you
feel it is appropriate to your reader and the genre you chose, then you may include one
or two. Just make sure to include a references page at the end of the essay.
It is more important to think about how you will incorporate evidence from the scholarly
article you are translating. Public audiences appreciate a quotation or two, but you will
find that you need to rely more heavily on summary and paraphrase in translating the
article for a general reader. Summary and paraphrase require citations.
FORMAT AND DOCUMENTATION
CITE all information that does not originate with you.
● Use the format for the genre you chose that is appropriate for your public
audience
● Use the documentation style and manuscript format for your academic discipline
(APA or MLA).
# # #
This adapted assignment, developed by the George Mason Composition Program, is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.)

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