PB3A

For WP3, I have chosen to write about drug safety. I stumbled upon the article “Is MDMA (‘Ecstasy’) Neurotoxic in Humans? An Overview of Evidence and of Methodological Problems in Research” by H. Valerie Curran and decided that the both younger and older audiences would benefit from being exposed to the effects of hard drugs. As I outline the way in which I will present the vital information tailored in the original academic scholarly article I have to consider the specific conventions that are associated with the various audiences and their relationship with corresponding genres. Some genres that would attract children are children’s books, fictional novels, fairytales, and cartoon movies. On the other hand, some genres that adults encounter include non-fiction novels, advertisements, resumes, e-mails, text messages, business cards, movies, and social media comments and statuses. In regards to my Writing Project 3, I have selected to translate the mentioned scholarly-article into a script of a play for children and a script of a radio talk show for adults.

I believe that through a play, I could deliver the message that hard drugs should be avoided. I will be able to present the topics of the scholarly article in a manner that won’t intimidate the young audience. Essentially, my goal is to depict to children and to adults the negative effects of hard drugs such as MDMA that are described in the scholarly article. I believe that creating a script for a children’s play would allow me to accomplish this because I could use a combination of tactics such as colloquialism, humor, and a variety of tones to help the children understand a parallel message to the one in the scholarly article. Inversely, I believe that translating the play into a radio talk show script would enable me to make the information depicted in the scholarly article clearer for adults because I could essentially expose the statistics and facts mentioned in the scholarly article and present them in an organized manner that would be easier to understand. I will probably do so by having a pretend interview with the author of the scholarly-article on the radio. The pretend author who will be a neurobiologist will then share her knowledge, or technically, the knowledge and information gathered from the scholarly article and share it on the radio along with her concern for users of MDMA and the future implications of its widespread use. MDMA according to this scholarly article is an extremely pertinent hard drug. It has become increasingly popular in recent years. Although most scientists understand that correlation is not necessary causation, there has been a correlation between the increasing popularity of music festival attendees and the amount of hard drugs that are surfacing in the United States. Even though the tendency of people to go to more music festivals does not cause them to take hard drugs such as MDMA, the fact that these music festivals provide their attendees with the opportunity and setting to be under the influence of these hard drugs contributes to the belief that music festivals have some type of influence on the prevalence of the hard drugs that are surfacing throughout the United States.

PB2B

Although it is more apparent in some genres than others, creativity is a substantial part of the writing process. Whether one is drafting a novel, research paper, or scholarly article choices are made in a creative matter such that assist the writer with the display of his/her ideas in the most efficient manner. Writers typically have to make choices when attempting to phrase their ideas. The choices made by the writers could either be subconscious or intentional. More often than not, writers make conscious decisions regarding the tactics that they use throughout their writing. In the case of both “Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources” by Karen Rosenberg and “Annoying Ways People Use Sources” by Kyle D. Stedman the tactics engaged by the authors are intentionally selected to help convey the ideas of the authors.

To begin, Karen Rosenberg, the author of “Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources” utilizes many tactics/ moves. For one, Rosenberg begins by offering her encounters with reading as an undergraduate student. To do so effectively, Rosenberg intentionally decides to write in the first person perspective. This is a tactic that is extremely beneficial to deliver such a message because by offering the first person perspective, Rosenberg demonstrates to her readers that they are reading a narrative offered by an actual real person. On the other hand, if Rosenberg were to talk about her experience using the third-person; the reader would naturally be forced to question whether the anecdote being told is true and whether it is relevant to what they are reading about. The first-person technique ultimately enables Rosenberg’s readers to connect with her on the matter of learning and subsequently loving to write. Second, Rosenberg uses similes in order to provide her readers with a deeper understanding of the imagery she attempts to provide. The author mentions that she “adopted an overstuffed red chair in the library that enveloped [her] like the lap of a department store Santa.” By referring to such a vivid image, one that most Americans living in cities are familiar with, the author depicts her comfort in such a specific way that enables the reader to become immersed in the imagery by the mere fact that the reader himself/herself has sat in a department store’s Santa’s lap. Moreover, this simile speaks to the fact that the chair in the library in which she read on provided her as much comfort as joy as a child experiences when sitting in “Santa’s” lap at a department store. Both a child who sits on Santa’s lap and the author is her reading niche enters a surreal, dream-like world that provides comfort and joy. Next, Rosenberg uses hyphens throughout her essay in order to bridge together phrases that ultimately feed off each other were the author having a conversation. For example, the author suggests, “Whichever it was-a problem with the readings or with me-I carefully chose my classes so that I could read novels, poetry, and plays for credit.” In this very sentence, the author’s tactic of bridging her sentence together by using a hyphen is a great move. The hyphen enables the reader to continue reading the sentence in a very conversational manner, a manner that must be recognized in order for one to truly grasp the way in which the author intended for the sentence to be read and understood. Thus, Rosenberg’s use of the hyphen is imperative to getting her readers to read her writing in the way that she intends it to be read. Lastly, Rosenberg employs rhetorical questions as one of her tactics. Her use of rhetorical questions suggests that the author is attempting to entertain, engage, and provoke the reader to think while he/she reads her writing. For instance, after Rosenberg describes herself procrastinating by noticing one of the guys in her class minute movements she wonders “Did I find him sexy?” This rhetorical question creates a space for the readers’ thoughts and opinions. Through this rhetorical question, Rosenberg drives her readers to answer the question and thus become more engaged with its answer and more engaged with her writing in general. Thus, Karen Rosenberg’s moves in “Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources” allow her to engage her readers and be more effective in delivering her ideas.

In addition, Kyle Stedman’s “Annoying Ways People Use Sources” also incorporates certain moves employed by the author that are both beneficial and disadvantageous to his writing. To begin, one of Stedman’s moves includes making lists. This is a great move employed by the author because instead of overwhelming the reader with a long sentence, or a condense paragraph, Stedman organizes his ideas in a format that makes the ideas clear and precise. Therefore, the reader is exposed to order and organization, which subconsciously helps the reader follow the flow of ideas provided by the author. Second, Stedman uses the formatting move of italicizing. This move often enables a writer to emphasize a certain word or phrase. Through this type of formatting emphasis the reader’s attention is focused on the word because it is often of much importance. However, in the case of “Annoying Ways People Use Sources,” Stedman may have overused this move thus rendering it less effective. He decides to italicize the terms “rules, decrees, or laws,” which are all in the same sentence. By italicizing words that are potentially synonyms, the author move of italicizing becomes less effective in terms of drawing emphasis. Finally, the author employs the second person as one of his moves. This could be both a great move and a disadvantage to the writer as he attempts to deliver his ideas in a clear, organized, understandable, and structured manner. In Stedman’s case, the second person allows the writing to gain a sense of timelessness. This enables the author to literally assist the reader with reading and understanding the ideas presented in his writing. By mentioning to the reader, “when you got the quotation in the second paragraph, you didn’t know what you were supposed to think about it; there was no guidance.” However, once the author writes in the second person he gains the power to literally guide his reader thus solving and clarifying any confusion that the reader might have. In conclusion, most writers use certain moves whether they intend to or not. Sometimes the moves and tactics that the writers employ work to their advantage, yet sometimes they could be distracting. Finally, the use of moves and specific techniques of one writer is a product of the writer’s creativity.

PB2A

While comparing and contrasting a sample research paper generated by SCIgen with a scholarly article, I noticed that many aspects of the two pieces of writing, which surfaced as similarities, also underscored their differences. To begin, the formatting of both papers was extremely conventional. Both papers had an abstract, clear bolded subtitles, a title with a large font, usage of italics for emphasis, an abstract, an introduction, and the name of the authors written under the title even though for the generator sample research paper, the authors are a mere pretense. Other than these papers’ similar format, they are similar in the way that they are written in an extremely formal matter. Grammar, punctuation, and spelling is up to par. Both pieces of writing also make sure to cite the sources that they provide. In addition, both papers are not written in the first person for the mere purpose of sounding scientific, unbiased, and overall objective. If one decides to look further into the reasoning behind these stereotypical “research writing” convention, one would notice that these conventions allow the scholar to present an idea, argument, or notion in a purposeful and precise manner that could be understood clearly by his/ her audience. Not only are these conventions imperative in order to convey the typically complex and infatuating research analyses, they are simple enough so that the other could truly focus on his/ her writing and not have to deal with other intricacies. In essence, the intricacies that regard writing music, a play, a poem, a free-write, a diary-entry, and creative writing as whole do not apply to this type of writing. This type of effortless writing style tends to be incredibly efficient because the author is able to focus on the intricacies of his research and its analysis instead of the intricacies of the way in which his/ her complex ideas are presented to the audience.

            On the other hand, there are some apparent differences between the two pieces of writing. For one, every author has a unique style and tone that even when following strict research paper writing conventions could be noticed by the reader. Specifically, the sample research paper produced by the SCIgen generator attempts to depict to the reader the sophistications of the process that took place in order to make the reader understand how the data that is later presented in the research paper was collected, evaluated, and analyzed. On the other hand, the scholarly peer-reviewed article makes sure to mention its sources and introduce them in a way that eliminates any doubt that the reader must have about the credibility of the sources of the data that is presented in the research paper. Comparing the way in which the generator and the scholarly paper legitimize the information that is being presented reminds the observer that the data in the paper generated through SCIgen was produced in a minute amount of time and in an effortless manner with no intention of truly being taken seriously. Yet, the data in the scholarly paper discovered in the University of California, Santa Barbara’s library database was a product of efforts made to legitimize and ensure that the sources of evidence are credible, intensive peer-review and peer-editing, and a process of vigilantly selected words, sentence structure, and formatting (italics). The product discovered through the library’s database obtains characteristics that were intentionally utilized by the scholarly author to spark insight and provoke critical and creative thinking. In conclusion, although the research paper generated by the SCIgen generator and the scholarly article discovered through a university’s database share many similarities, one must note that these similarities are purely external and surface-leveled as well as realize that the differences between the two papers expose the way in which a paper that is produced faster than the speed of sound could never come close to the quality of a paper that has been thought-out, planned, legitimized, edited, and tweaked to perfection.