Johnny Martinez

06/11/2023

Writ 2 Lopatko

My Writing 2 Course Experience Translating Academic Articles Using My Learned Knowledge

of Genres

My experience of taking this writing 2 course includes challenges, followed with

resolution and improvement, and new encounters with virtually new concepts followed with the

developed greater understanding of these concepts over the span of the course. I use the word

virtually to describe these new concepts because one of these new, but not new, concepts is the

concept of genre. A lot of people are surely already familiar with the concept of genre, just how I

was before taking this class, but know genre a different way than is understood in this class.

They, including a prior self, probably associate genre with movie genres and genres of books, but

from this writing 2 class, I have learned that genres mean much more. Due to taking this class, I

have come to understand that there is an infinite amount of genres, and that I should think of

genres “as tools to help people to get things done” (Dirk, 2010, p. 252). Overall, my experience

completing the writing projects and learning about concepts like genre in this course have made

me come to the conclusion that making sure a writing’s aspects like audience, genre, and purpose

are all appropriately matching each other’s existence is very crucial to making that writing

effective and good.

A writing deprived of having fitting and matching rhetorical situation aspects like genre,

audience, and purpose is ineffective as a means of communication and is therefore inadequate. I

have learned this and thus have tried to translate academic articles for my writing projects into
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06/11/2023

Writ 2 Lopatko

fitting genres with fitting audiences and purposes. Despite having strived for creating translations

and writings that best fit a rhetorical situation, I had seen places in my writing that I could

improve, which were pointed out by some of my peers and by instructor, Lopatko. After seeing

these opportunities for improvement, I revised my writings to make them better fit the rhetorical

situation I had set them to fit in.

I certainly made revisions to my writing project 1 writings, which were my translation of

an academic article and the reflective letter about the translation. For my writing project 1, I

translated an academic article that discussed how the use of music in a way that is integrated in

the teaching of lessons to people with Alzhiemer’s disease could improve remembrance of said

topics. The rhetorical situation that I set for translation was one where the purpose was to inform

people with serious memory problems of possible treatment, where the audience was people

older than 49 years old, and where the genre was a Facebook post. Revisions that I made to this

translation include breaking up its text into more paragraphs, adding a hook to the beginning,

removing at least one emoji that did not fit the tone of the text, or did not fit the text in general,

and indicating that the possible treatment surrounding the topic did not include intake of drugs. I

included the revision above about drugs as I was considering how people with serious memory

problems are maybe already taking a considerable amount of medications, so I realized that

mentioning that the possible music treatment could be drug free could be an enticing detail to my

audience. Furthermore, I decided to make the revision of adding a hook sentence to the

beginning of the translation as I was considering the conventions of a facebook post. I realized

that, unlike an academic article, a facebook post may need to have a strong hook at the beginning
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06/11/2023

Writ 2 Lopatko

of it in order to entice Facebook users to commit to reading the post. Due to this realization, and

with help from instructor, Lopatko, I decided to include a hook at the beginning of my translation

that could invoke pathos as it could invoke fear and sympathy from the audience because of the

direct acknowledgment of the severity of Alzheimer’s disease. I added this hook in hopes of it

enticing my audience to read the whole translation, which would thus accomplish my goal of

informing my audience on the possible music treatment for memory problems.

In regards to my writing project 1 reflective essay, revisions I made to it include using a

source about Facebook user age demographics to support my decision of reaching my audience

of 49 or older year olds by translating the music academic article to the Facebook genre. I

recognized that without this revision, the justification for the use of the Facebook genre based on

my audience was not as strong. Therefore, I added this revision as it further explained my reason

for having translated the academic article to the Facebook genre. Also, my revisions for this

reflective essay include breaking up some paragraphs to make it flow better, adding a thesis

statement to the introduction paragraph, adding more reasoning for why my target audience may

not understand some psychology related jargon, and making it more clear how a cited source

discussing writing rules helped me be more confident in my writing decisions for my writing

project 1 translation.

Moreover, I also made revisions to my writing project 2 writing. My writing project 2

writing was a transcribed podcast that compressed important information from four different

academic articles that all discussed the genre of the personal statement, and included information

that answered the question of how to write a successful personal statement. My audience for this
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06/11/2023

Writ 2 Lopatko

writing is students who are close to receiving or already have their bachelor’s degree. My

purpose for this writing is to help this audience be better at writing personal statements so they

are more successful at getting into post-undergraduate programs. Revisions that I made to my

writing project 2 writing include removing hedging language like “maybe” to make the academic

article authors seem more like experts, adding context to some jargon like what an occluded

genre is, adding in text citations to direct quotations, fixing one aspect of the references page,

and adding some transition words to the dialogue to make the conversation flow smoother.

Furthermore, I added more dialogue where the host of the podcast, Johnny, summarizes,

contextualizes, and adds on to information that was given by the academic article authors. I made

this revision because I feel that it will help my audience better understand and remember the

information presented, which accomplishes my purpose for the writing of helping my audience

be more successful at writing personal statements. Also, I made it so that the authors used action

words more when referring to what they did in their respective academic articles. I made this

revision in order to make the conversation flow smoother and make it seem more personal and

like a real conversation, like how it would be in a real podcast.

Overall, taking this Writing 2 course has improved my writing. I have learned how I can

make my writing more understandable as I have read that “when in most of your sentences you

put characters in subjects and actions in verbs, readers are likely to think your prose is clear,

direct, and readable” (Williams, 1995, p. 12). Moreover, my understanding of writing and

communication with the use of genres has grown throughout the quarter as I have learned and

read that ““genres develop…because they respond appropriately to situations that writers
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06/11/2023

Writ 2 Lopatko

encounter repeatedly” (“Generalizing” 576)” (Dirk, 2010, p. 252). Me understanding this about

genres has led me to understanding that genres are very important as they can be used by writers

to write appropriately in a rhetorical situation. I have applied this new knowledge of genres to

better choose appropriate genres to translate the academic articles in my writing projects into,

which fit the audience, purpose, and topic of the writing I am trying to create. Furthermore, the

statement from Anne Lamott that “Very few writers really know what they are doing until

they’ve done it” made me feel calmer about how I did not immediately know how to create or

create perfect first drafts for my writing project writings (1994, p. 22). I felt more confident in

my writing abilities because this statement made me realize that even high level writers

sometimes struggle to write amazing first drafts, so I should not worry too much about writing

perfect first drafts and just try to do my best to write them.

I consider my writing strengths to include being able to understand and summarize the

ideas of texts, which is shown by how I am able to compile the central, specialized ideas around

the personal statement genre from four different academic articles into my writing project 2

transcribed podcast. I am able to first identify what each author specialized in, and then compile

these ideas into another genre, which I consider a strength. Another writing strength I consider

myself having is the ability to understand the conventions of a genre, and then apply them in a

text in that genre in order to make the text seem like it is an authentic text in that genre. I

demonstrate this strength in being able to use conventions of the Facebook genre, for my writing

project 1 translation, like hashtags, including a picture, having emojis, and having a link that
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Writ 2 Lopatko

leads to more information on the topic discussed in the post. The use of these conventions make

the translation feel more like it is a Facebook post, and thus make the writing more effective.

Weaknesses in my writing that I would consider myself having include me sometimes

making paragraphs or sentences too dense, and me sometimes making sentences too convoluted

or too formal. Evidence of my too dense paragraphs weakness includes that I broke up

paragraphs in both my writing project 1 translation and reflective essay in my revision process,

which indicates that the paragraphs were too dense and large in the first place, and so much so

that I decided to break some of these paragraphs up. Also, evidence of my weakness of

sometimes making sentences too convoluted or too formal includes how, for my writing project 1

translation, I changed the convoluted sentence, “In a study where people with Alzheimer’s

Disease were tested to see if they could remember things better when these things were learned

in sequence with music that related to the thing they were learning, it was shown that some

people did remember things better when they were also listening to music while learning.” to the

less confusing sentence, “In a study that worked with people with Alzheimer’s Disease, it was

shown that some people were able to remember topics more and better if they listened to topic

related music while learning the topics.” Me making this revision indicates that the unchanged

version of this sentence was too convoluted, suggesting my weakness of making convoluted

sentences sometimes. I have worked with these difficult areas in my writing by listening to

feedback from my instructor and peers, and making revisions to better my writing in the areas

where I am weak. My sense of my own abilities as a writer has changed since I wrote my in-class
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06/11/2023

Writ 2 Lopatko

piece the first day of class in the way that I am now more aware of my writing strengths and

weaknesses because of the feedback on my writing I have received illuminating them to me.

My writing goal that I set for myself this quarter was to basically become better at writing

analytically in a way that is enjoyable to a reader. I feel as though I have made progress on this

goal as I now better understand the power of genres and how they can be used to create

analytical writings that still appeal to a certain audience. After this class ends, I can continue to

work at accomplishing this goal by learning more genres and writing in more genres that are

analytical and enjoyable.

The feedback that was most helpful when revising was the feedback that gave me direct

suggestions, like to make a specific sentence better, or to add more context or explanation to

certain topics or terms. What I like most about my work in this portfolio is that the writing

project translations to the genres of a Facebook post and a transcribed podcast significantly

condense down information from the respective academic articles, while still keeping the core

information from the articles. I would still like to improve upon being able to condense the

academic article information so that I can condense the information even more, so more people

will have to use less energy to be able to absorb important information from the academic

articles I translate.
Johnny Martinez

06/11/2023

Writ 2 Lopatko

Works Cited

Anne Lamott. (1994). Shitty First Drafts. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.

New York: Pantheon, p. 22.

Joseph M. Williams. (1995). Style: Toward Clarity and Grace. Chicago Guides to Writing,

Editing, and Publishing, p. 12.

Kerry Dirk. (2010). Navigating Genres. Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, 1, 252. Writing

Spaces, https://writingspaces.org/past-volumes/navigating-genres/