GUIDELINES on ESSAY3—the Genre Translation

Purpose

Demonstrate your skills in audience awareness, genre analysis, and adaptation.

Develop and include enough details and examples when describing the process of creation.
Explain choices made in genre adaptation clearly and persuasively.
Create an organization for the essay that connects description, analysis, and explanation.
Practice quoting, summarizing and paraphrasing with correct citations.
Demonstrate your skills in rhetorical analysis.

Area of Inquiry
Select a reading that we have discussed and studied in class. If you are to communicate the same ideas from the reading
in two different genres, what genres would you choose? You can think about your “translation” purpose by first
choosing 2 new audiences that would benefit from learning about the ideas of the original text. Then, choose 2 genres
that can be used to reach out to these new audiences.
For example, let's say you want to convey Annie Murphy Paul's message that more people should consider working for
non-profit companies. You might want to convey this message to a targeted audience of advisors at a community
college. Which genres would be a good fit for this audience? If you want to convey Paul's message to the public at large,
which genre would be a good match for this second audience?
After you create your two genre-adaptations, write an essay that makes a case for how your adaptations effectively
reach their target your audiences.
In the essay, you should discuss how you addressed the following rhetorical choices in your translation:
§ Why you chose the new genres; who are the target audiences and how they would learn from your adaptations
§ What opportunities did this genre provide you with? How did you capitalize on these?
§ Content: what specific content from the original text you adapted; what you didn’t include and why.
§ Rhetorical appeals: how you used logos, pathos, and ethos in the adaptation
§ Vocabulary, tone: how your use of these is effective for the new genres and audiences
§ Visual elements: how they are effective for the new genres and audiences

Schedule : The draft of the essay (and your 2 adaptations) are due by midnight of Sunday, May 27th on Canvas. The
revised versions of the adaptations and essay (after getting feedback from peers) are due by midnight of Sunday, June
3rd on Canvas.
Scope : 750 words minimum. 900 words maximum.
Format: Double-spaced; Times New Roman font size 12 or Calibri size 11; 1” margin (Vista default) or 1.25” inch (Office
2003 default) margins, MLA-style citation*.

*Note: Please cite the source you have selected for your adaptation at the end of the essay, under the heading "Works
Cited." Here below is the format for a generic MLA-style citation:
AuthorLastName, AuthorFirstName. "Title." Publication/Organization. Date. Genre.
Example: Rowe, Mike. "Learning from Dirty Jobs." TED. December 2008. Lecture.

When you are summarizing, quoting or paraphrasing material from the source in the body of your essay, you need to
use a parenthetical citation at the end of the quote/summary/paraphrase. Use the author's last name-- not the title of
the text-- in parentheses.
Example: The experiments showed that a money-based approach to understanding motivation to work is "an incredibly
simplistic view" (Ariely).