Sunday, February 22, 2015

pb3a

The scholarly published article is A Scientific Prediction of the Discovery of the First Potentially Habitable planet with a Mass Similar to Earth. The scholar paper mainly focused on using authentic evidence and mathematical formulas to prove that the finding of a new planet is possible to support lives. The author uses the convention of research paper, which provides the thesis in an academic way. In order to make the paper more authoritative, the author divided the whole paper into several sections with subtitles. In each section parts, the author mainly focused on one particular area to introduce the topic. For example, in the abstraction part, the author highlights the main topic like background and methodology. By doing this, the readers will find it well structured and easy to follow. The main purpose of the paper is to provide the authors idea to a scholarly audience for discussion. In this case, the paper is quite long to make the point stable and explicit. Hence, the organization is pretty strict in order to make readers easy to find where they are reading about. Instead of dividing the paper into several sections, the author also uses more academic words and fails to explain them. By doing this, the author makes the paper appear more formal to the professional scholars. Facing this specific audience, the author uses different moves like using academic words and conventions like following the genre of research paper. When other writers want to display the idea of this scholar paper to a more general audience like the normal citizens, they need to consider other genres to better represent to them.
When the audience is kids, the specific genre that is useful to display the idea of discovering life-support planet is scientific novels. Unlike scholarly published research paper, the genre of scientific novels may expresses the same main idea but in a more funny way. The writers of scientific novels may use imagination to color an scholar idea. While the research paper reports that some estrasolar planets may support lives by using Keplers law, the writers of scientific novels will focus on imaging what the life looks like in that planet. They will use exaggerated imagination to depict a new life style of that planet without scientific evidence. In addition, there is no need to give an explanation about why this planet could support life. While methodology is quite important part to support an academic essay in order to make it authentic, scientific novels only needs imaginations to support his idea by making the idea into an interesting story. Although they both expresses the same idea of life-support planets, the different audience will cause the writers to use different genres to better represent the idea. For example, one specific audience, the teenagers that are between 16 to 20 are interested in creative fictions that contains imagination and mysterious stories. It is useful to use scientific fiction as a genre to displays the idea of life-support plants. Instead of using academic words like research paper, the author in scientific fiction use super heroes or other creatures to represent the symbol of new lives that live on that planet. Moreover, in order to grab teenagers interests, the authors use colorful pictures and interesting anecdotes to make the boring academic idea more entertaining to teenagers. By doing this, the teenagers will find it interesting to keep reading and also the scientific novels keep teaching the scholar idea.
  On the other hand, when the audience is grown-ups, parents especially, it is essential to grab what they desire to know besides the academic idea. In this case, a news report would be a good choice. Compare to teenagers, what the parents care the most is the reality. When they know that a possible life-support planet exists, they wonder how this will affect their lives instead of having fantasy about that planet. In this case, choosing news report to display this scientific idea to adults like parents help better explain the connection between this planet and the daily lives. The reason is that as a news report, it only displays ideas that can be proved scientifically. Unlike scientific novels that sometimes can lack evidence in stories, news report, to some extent, more strictly follow science viewpoint. Moreover, unlike a research paper that only provides evidence of find that planet, the news report will normally neglects to report the evidence. This is that the audience in news report is normally not that as professional as scholars. The main purpose of news report is to connect this scientific idea to peoples daily lives. For example, the news report may express the idea that this planet may provide a new living system for humans. In this case, news report can better grab the parents attention and also keep the scientific idea.

2 comments:

  1. Yue You, I like the two genres you chose to translate the scholarly, academic article on because I can see how they can appeal better to a younger and an older audience than the academic paper. However, I don't understand why a scientific novel wouldn't have evidence about why a planet could support life. I understand that it wouldn't have specific details like the academic paper but it could still have some basic evidence to prove why certain things happen. What other elements of a scientific novel could also appeal to a younger audience? Also, for the news report, you can elaborate more about how a news report can connect to people's daily lives. This could help explain how a news report can appeal to an older audience more effectively than an academic paper. Overall, I think you chose two good genres that can be translated from the academic paper that would be more effective in appealing to each audience.

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  2. Yue,

    I like what Sandy suggested about how a novel can include factual scientific information. Absolutely! Maybe not everywhere, but it can definitely surface in there somewhere --- ask yourself, "where would scientific information come up within a story? How could that be used? Who would be using it? Characters talking to each other? Looking at something, like a sign or a poster? The narrator explaining something?"

    Ask yourself: what essential elements of the original genre (the scholarly article) do I want to translate over to the new genres? And why?

    If you can answer those questions, you'll be well on your way.

    Z

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