Janelle Gutierrez

Writing 2

Joshua Smith

6 December 2019

Writing Project 3 

 sustainability  
@esstudies 
 
there’s a lot of interest in the new ways people learn to help make society more 
lasting  
 
12:46 PM ● 11/16/19 ●​ ​Twitter for iPhone 
 
 sustainability  
@esstudies 
 
there are important things to read on getting a job in this area, just not enough advice 
on how to really use it /: 
 
1:14 PM ● 11/16/19 ●​ ​Twitter for iPhone 
 
 sustainability  
@esstudies 
 
found some answers to the problem, lemme tell u bout it, i got a LOT of things to say 
 
1:27 PM ● 11/16/19 ●​ ​Twitter for iPhone 
 
 sustainability  
@esstudies 
 

🙃
soo.. turns out the es program ISN’T at dartmouth college, it’s just from there. it’s 
actually in the namib desert of namibia  
 
1:35 PM ● 11/16/19 from ​Gobabeb Research and Training Centre​ ●​ ​Twitter for iPhone 
 
 
 sustainability  
@esstudies 
 
we gotta come up with ways to talk about the problems that came up during the 
process 
 
1:44 PM ● 11/16/19 ●​ ​Twitter for iPhone 
 
 sustainability  
@esstudies 
 
how can i explain this to someone to make them understand what im tryna say, like 
what it means and what’s required  
 
1:58 PM ● 11/16/19 ●​ ​Twitter for iPhone 
 
 sustainability  
@esstudies 
 
so like.. can we give others the right ideas to get them to understand it? and give 
them a place to really think about and remember??  
 
2:01 PM ● 11/16/19 ●​ ​Twitter for iPhone 
 
 sustainability  
@esstudies 
 
how can we work together with people who have the same ideas/plans in the best 
way possible? 
 
2:26 PM ● 11/16/19 ●​ ​Twitter for iPhone 
 
 sustainability  
@esstudies 
 
 how can students use these experiences on campus? like, how can they REALLY 
apply it into their lives 
 
2:31 PM ● 11/16/19 ●​ ​Twitter for iPhone 
 
 sustainability  
@esstudies 
 
made the work research-related, which works best with the problems. it’s cbr, 
community-based for those who don’t know lol, and its in ses (social-ecological 
system) 
 
2:35 PM ● 11/16/19 ●​ ​Twitter for iPhone 
 
 sustainability  
@esstudies 
 
came up with ways to use these ideas!! it helps students prepare & get ready to learn 
the best way possible :-) 
 
2:35 PM ● 11/16/19 ●​ ​Twitter for iPhone 
 
 sustainability  
@esstudies 
 

😬
it’s important to connect with ur community, u need it to not become one of those 
“helicopter researchers”  
 
2:42 PM ● 11/16/19 ●​ ​Twitter for iPhone 
 
 sustainability  
@esstudies 
 
so after thinkin bout it, we should talk about the new outcomes and things to do next 
to become better with these practices :-) 
 
3:00 PM ● 11/16/19 ●​ ​Twitter for iPhone 
 
 Self-Reflective Essay

For WP3, I chose to combine the topics of my last two writing assignments-- the new

genre of tweets and the discipline of Environmental Studies-- to create a genre translation in this

essay. I decided to take the same academic article used in WP2-- ​Designing a Real-World

Course for Environmental Studies Students: Entering a Social-Ecological System​ written by

Douglas T. Bolger, Karen Hutchins Bieluch, Flora E. Krivak-Tetley, Gillian Maggs-Kölling and

Joseph Tjitekulu-- and translate the abstract from this work into a series of tweets. The two

genres differ greatly from one another, which made the translation process a bit challenging, but

I decided to take up the extra work and work as creatively as possible with this project. Although

my final product looks like it was simple work and done easily, there were actually more

challenges that I had to overcome when creating this translation.

Given the article chosen, there were many challenges faced with recreating this genre.

One of these was figuring out how to include the information from the original text into the

translation. There was a lot of new information I needed to define and understand, then compress

into a simplified, easy-to-understand tweet. Since there was a lot of information from this portion

of writing that I needed to take into consideration, I decided to only translate the abstract-- a

summary of the overall article-- rather than translate the abstract and create summaries for other

portions of the article. Considering this convention doesn’t exist whatsoever in the genre I

translated into, I needed to come up with a solution to incorporate the scientific information and

terms from my original genre into my new translation. I decided the best way for me to

overcome this challenge was to copy and paste the original text into the text box, in which the

translation was written in, then pick out which words should either be simplified or not included
at all in the translation. I wrote the translated text underneath to compare the two and deleted the

original text when I was satisfied with my final translation.

Another challenge, while not primarily text-related, was deciding on the format of the

translation. If you compare the two texts, one is heavily text influenced with not much visuals in

the article, whereas the translated genre, however, is the opposite as it can use more media and

contain only a little amount of writing. I decided that to really show the difference in text, I

should try my best to recreate the image of tweets onto this essay, giving a clear visual as to how

it should look. I struggled with the correct format, deciding on whether I should personally tweet

each sentence and insert screenshots onto this essay. After realizing that seemed to be too easy of

a way out of solving my problems, I overcame this challenge by trying out different styles and

options provided on google docs, such as font, text size, and tables, to create the best outcome. I

used tables to create the image of a single tweet and added a picture from the original text to

symbolize the “profile picture” of the person tweeting. I also decided to name the person

“sustainability,” which was the name associated with the article I used, and created the username

“@esstudies” to stand for Environmental Science Studies. I referred actual tweets to find out

what font seemed the most similar and create the same visual of tweets onto this essay.

When creating this translation, I also needed to decide on the audience in which these

tweets would be directed towards. In the original text, the ideal audience is Environmental

Studies students. When it comes to tweets, the audience really varies depending on the type of

tweet presented. I decided that I should aim for the general college student audience, which

would consist of an audience between the estimated ages of 17-23. I figured, since Twitter is a

fairly informal and casual writing platform, I would make the tweets sound casual and
“relatable” in a sense. I referred back to how college students in this age range would tweet and

tried to apply what I noticed to my translated tweets.

Throughout this project, I learned much more about the goal of the primary text. Because

my new genre uses more simple terms that I am familiar with, through translating I was able to

put the words into a form I could understand better. I also had to define the unfamiliar scientific

terms to really understand what it was I was translating, which gave me even more insight into

what I was reading. I was able to read the text in a more casual tone, which was the most useful

in terms of learning what was being written. I could see the differences between the two genres

and understand just how much of an impact a genre’s conventions have on the information

written. For example, before translating I had no idea what the scientific term “pedagogy” meant.

After defining it, I realized it simply meant to teach, so I connected this to similar words I

already knew of. From this, I translated the actual text of “​There is increasing interest in using

“real-world pedagogy…” to​ ​the translated tweet “there’s a lot of interest in the new ways people

learn...”1 I went from a more complex term I didn’t understand, which is used in the original text,

to a simple term I could easily understand, which is used in my translation genre. When reading

the primary text, it felt like I couldn’t really comprehend what I was reading. However, once I

began to translate the work, I slowly saw how conventions can affect your understanding of the

writing.

There were a couple of concerns I had in mind when creating this translation. One

concern that stuck out in my mind was ensuring that I was able to present the information from a

1
​Douglas T. Bolger, Karen Hutchins Bieluch, Flora E. Krivak-Tetley, Gillian Maggs-Kölling and Joseph
Tjitekulu, ​Designing a Real-World Course for Environmental Studies Students: Entering a
Social-Ecological System​, (MDPI, 2018) 1.
text that was completely different from its new genre in a way that made sense. For this, I chose

to refer back to the reading ​Lesson 4:Cohesion and Coherence​. I chose this piece of writing

because it helped me understand how the structure of a sentence can impact the overall meaning

of the writing. I referred back to this reading to ensure that I could connect my translated writing

to one another, considering they are written in separate text boxes but should be related

altogether to the point where it would be understandable if written in one paragraph. For

example, using the sentence where they talked about not being a “helicopter researcher,” it

wouldn’t make sense if I tried to restructure this sentence and/or insert it somewhere else. The

reading of the tweets wouldn’t flow right and it would become not as cohesive with the other

tweets.

I also chose to reference back to the reading of ​Navigating Genres​ by Kerry Dirk-- an

in-class reading based around how certain conventions really define what a specific genre is-- to

really understand the difference between the two genres. This reading was especially helpful

with identifying the appropriate conventions to include in both works. It helped me really get an

idea of what I should notice and pay attention to in understanding how to use these conventions.

While it was fairly challenging to create this paper, I am satisfied with how it turned out.

This assignment allowed me to really use my knowledge gained from past research and

assignments and apply it onto this writing. I was also able to use my creativity with visuals in

formatting this text, using pictures and different fonts to really create the image of the translated

genre I was aiming for. I now understand a text that seemed very difficult to read at first, which

shows that I accomplished the goal of the discipline in which my text falls under. The goal of the

genre of tweets is to spread information to others, which was indirectly done to myself as I was
able to teach myself new work through this translation process. This whole process has opened

my eyes to the possibility of integrating academic work into a non-academic genre, showing that

really anyone can learn and comprehend work if they’re willing to put in the work to understand.