Damaris Ulloa Marquez

Professor Bocchino

Writing 2

20 May 2024

Metacognitive Reflection

Analyzing academic papers can be difficult at times. My primary text required copious time and

research to understand. The research paper centered around sun protection for kids in the 5th grade by

analyzing friendships. Their writing conventions such as jargon and data are deliberate and are used

because the targeted audience is other experts in the medical field. However, for others, this language is

complicated to comprehend. While trying to expand the message of this paper, I chose to translate it into

a secondary text that can reach an audience that I believe can greatly benefit, which is a children's book.

While reading the article “Friendship Networks and Sun Safety Behavior Among Children,” by

Jennifer R. Tsai, Thomas W. Valente, Kimberly A. Miller, etc, I felt that their research was very essential

to children's development. Through their study, they were able to articulate different factors that affect

friendships, specifically “Peer leaders (n=21) and the non-leaders (n=107)”.1 Through the study of these

leader and non-leader friendships, they were able to help lead a “SunSmart Curriculum” and teach fifth

graders the importance of sunscreen use. Many writing conventions made up my primary text; the ones I

chose to focus on were the article's jargon, audience, evidence and format/organization. When it comes

to organization, the article was formatted purposely with an introduction and chapters that included

subheadings to help navigate the information easier. The article was organized this way to help

understand their data better by explaining every variable in their experiment. For example, Chapter 3

1
Jennifer Tsai, Thomas W. Valente, Kimberly A. Miller, Kayla de la Haye, Trevor A. Pickering, and Myles G.
Cockburn. “Friendship Networks and Sun Safety Behavior among Children.” Network science (Cambridge
University Press) 4, no. 3 (2016): 314.
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included the results and they organized it not only in words but also a chart (table) with all the data and

three images that illustrated the homophily overall, by gender and playing in the shade and by gender

and sunscreen use. With the use of this organization, there were many charts and dot plots that were

extremely difficult to understand so I chose to focus on the main variables such as sunscreen usage,

shade, and long sleeves to categorize children's habits. In regards to the article jargon although it is in

the discipline of medicine they did take a scientific approach but focused more on social prevention so

the language was difficult to understand. They mentioned using specific methods and theories such as

“Intra-class correlation, homophily hypothesis testing, and exponential random graph models.”2

Although it was difficult to navigate this research, its purpose to prevent sun damage through friendship

networks is so vital that I decided to translate it into a children's book. Their study was in fifth graders

yet their primary audience was other experts in their field so by translating it into a children's book,

which contains a simpler, more condensed message, I hope to convey their research purpose in a form

that young kids can understand.

When researching writing conventions for my secondary text as a children's book, I realized

many factors needed to be included. I knew it had to include certain writing conventions such as

drawings, characters, and diction. The usage of drawings in children's books is essential to gain the

child's attention. Including an image of the description of the character's actions, helps the reader further

comprehend the story. They are essential to their development and attaining comprehension skills, so I

decided to focus on this writing convention in my translation. Another convention that is necessary in

children's books is characters, to help develop familiarity with them. By using characters in my

children's book that are similar in age (fifth graders) to those in the study of my primary article, I chose

2
Jennifer Tsai, Thomas W. Valente, Kimberly A. Miller, Kayla de la Haye, Trevor A. Pickering, and Myles G.
Cockburn. “Friendship Networks and Sun Safety Behavior among Children.” Network science (Cambridge
University Press) 4, no. 3 (2016): 314.
 Ulloa 3

to further the appeal of familiarity and help the main goal of sunscreen usage in my children's book.

Lastly, I wanted to focus on the convention of diction. It is so important to use adequate wording when it

comes to any piece of writing, for the case of a children's book I had to make sure the wording was

easily understood by a younger audience.

Getting into specifics of my translation, I wanted to convey the importance of Peer leaders and

non-leaders relationships through the importance of friendship networks that my primary text focused

on. So in my translation, I decided to create a group of four friends, Josh, Ava, Tim, and Lily, but the

idea I decided to challenge was that there was one leader in the friendship. I decided to create a

friendship environment where each character helps empower the others. They all hold the same amount

of influence. The convention that I decided to include was the factors of their research, in multiple charts

in my primary text were the factors of sunscreen use, long sleeves, and playing in the shade when it

comes to children's actions. So I decided to have a character, Josh, who forgot to do all of these things

and assign one to each of his friends to give him advice. The main thing that I avoided in my translation

that was heavily emphasized in my primary text was melanoma and the idea of socially preventable

medicine. Which I believe was an essential part of the article but not appropriate for a children's book.

To still emphasize the importance of sun protection and explain the consequences of not using them I

used a sunburn as an example. This way children are still aware that there are consequences to being

properly prepared to play outside in the sun. Overall I wanted to keep the overall message of the power

of friendships and how they can positively impact the development of children into adulthood. By

developing healthy habits early on, they can all be safe and continue to grow their friendships. This is

why I used the example of playing outside in the sun after taking all the advice of Josh's friends to show

a resolution at the end of the story.

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The concern I kept in mind while completing my translation was making it appropriate for

children. There were so many concepts that I knew were out of their range of comprehension so I had to

find an example with similar gravity to try to help them understand. I decided to use our reading

“Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking)” by Janet Boyd, where she emphasized the importance that every

discipline has its “own range of acceptable jargon, diction, and tone to be learned and applied.”3 So I

decided to look at different examples of short children's books to accurately translate my primary text

into my secondary text. Where I learned that repetition and color were important to keep children's

attention. I also took into consideration our reading “Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical

Analysis” by Laura Bolin Carroll which emphasized that “exigence, audience and constraints are only

one way to understand the concept of a piece of rhetoric.”4 I realized that my secondary text is going to

have limitations specifically in diction that I had to keep in mind when composing my translation.

Overall the translation was difficult but I wanted to convey the main goal of my primary text which was

sun damage prevention through friendship networks into a genre that reached children.

The purpose of this translation was to make sun safety more accessible to children, allowing

them to understand the necessity of sun safety without alarming them. Through the use of the mediums

described above, I adequately conveyed the messages of the research articles. The phenomenon of peer

influence was shown through not only the text, but the pictures included in my children’s book. By

translating the message of my chosen research articles into approachable content for children, I

understand the importance of translation to help people of all ages understand the dangers associated

with sun exposure as well as the impacts of social atmospheres on the spreading of this knowledge.

3
Janet Boyd. “ Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking)”, Writing Spaces:Readings on Writing, Volume 2, edited by
Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky, 92
4
Bolin Carroll, Laura. “Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis”, Writing Spaces:Readings on
Writing, Volume 1, edited by Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky, 48.
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Bibliography

Tsai, Jennifer, Thomas W. Valente, Kimberly A. Miller, Kayla de la Haye, Trevor A. Pickering, and

Myles G. Cockburn. “Friendship Networks and Sun Safety Behavior among Children.” Network

science (Cambridge University Press) 4, no. 3 (2016): 314–335.

Bolin Carroll, Laura. “Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis”, Writing

Spaces:Readings on Writing, Volume 1, edited by Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky, 45-48.

Parlor Press, 2010.

Boyd, Janet. “ Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking)”, Writing Spaces:Readings on Writing, Volume 2,

edited by Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky, 87-101. Parlor Press, 2011.