Repurposing Academic Writing for a Popular Audience
Mindy Williams

This repurposing assignment explores the connections between academic and public writing. For instance, what if public writing requires its author to use research? How do texts written for non-academic audiences differ in both tone and style from similar documents written for academic or professional audiences? What different strategies must one employ when writing a public text for a popular audience? This assignment explores these and other questions through a project that is part individual work and part group work. Here are the details:

Group work
In groups of three, students determine both the context and the audience for this assignment. As a group, they create their own fictional publication. It could be a newsletter for a political group, a webpage for a club or organization, a magazine focusing on a particular set of interests, etc. They come up with a name for their publication, a print format, and a target audience. Although each student writes individual articles for this publication, as a group they are responsible for the design of their publication and for writing an About Us section of about 200-300 words that describes the purpose of their publication and its intended audience.

Individual work
Students choose one of the previous academic papers they have already written in WRIT 1133 and repurpose it for the particular context and audience their group has created. Repurpose here basically means to rewrite for a different purpose and audience. This repurposed paper should be significantly different from the original version (in other words, students should not just change a word or two in the original paper); the repurposed paper should be between 800-1200 words (no more than 1200!!); and it should fit in with the overall goals of the publication and be written towards the publications intended audience. This means students have to carefully choose both their group members and which paper they repurpose.

Evaluation criteria
Although students will each have their individual responsibilities, they will receive one grade as a group. This means that they're responsible for the quality of the material their group members submit, and vice versa. The final draft will be graded on: 1. inventiveness of the purpose and audience of the publication; 2. quality and clarity of the About Us section; 3. clarity of the overall design of the project; and 4. quality and connectedness of each individual article. This means that the final project should be well-conceived, well-written, and well-edited.

Supporting Assignment Steps
1) Students first find an existing publication that they could potentially use as a model for their group project. This could be a newsletter, a magazine, a brochure, etc. Students they type a 1-page description and evaluation of the features of the publication (what choices does the model make in design, content, etc, and what is good and bad about these choices?).
2) In-class work continues.
3) Each group is required to deliver a 10-minute presentation of their project. While the format and content is up to the students, the aim of the presentation is to let other students know what they've done, what choices they've made in developing this publication, what problems they have had and overcame, etc.

 

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