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Summary: Michael Bunn’s “Motivation and Connection: Teaching Reading (and Writing) in the Composition Classroom” mainly talks about whether teaching reading in terms of that its connection to writing can motivate students to read and increase the likelihood that they find success in both activities (reading and writing). The article uses many academic evidences and research examples to prove that teaching connection between reading and writing indeed can encourage students to read more and help them find success in reading and writing.

Click here for younger audiences.

Click here for older audiences.

Self-Analysis: For younger audiences, I choose to write an interesting and attractive story. The story can be that: “There are two children, Eric and Bill in a village, and both of them want to be writers in the future. In order to achieve their goal, both of them choose to take writing classes in school. But, they have different teachers for writing classes in school. In the first writing class, Eric’s teacher tell him that reading and writing have closed relation. By reading articles, readers can know how writers think when they write the article and why writer write in this way. In the process of reading, readers actually are learning how to write. And Eric’s teacher concludes that reading can improve writing. To be a writer, it has to be a reader first. However, Bill’s teacher does not tell him the connection between reading and writing. His teacher just claimed that reading is a crucial part in this writing course. He will check reading notes in the beginning of each class. If someone does not finish reading, he or she will loses some participation points. Gradually, there are many creative and attractive words, phrase, and sentences in his essay. His essay becomes more and more comprehensive, has fewer and fewer mistakes. However, Bill still write what he wrote before. In other words, he has no improvement about his writing. … Time goes quickly, Eric and Bill have finished a whole year’s writing course. When it comes to how many books they read in whole year, Bill says that he just finish what teacher asked to read, but Eric claims he has read thirty books more than teacher required. When it comes to what grades they get in the writing course, Bill gets a solid B but Eric has an A+. The gap between Eric and Bill has appeared in this year. Finally, Eric achieves his wish and becomes a famous writer, but Bill does not become a writer because he write like before and does not improve anymore.”

For older people, I choose to write a news report to them. The news report can be like this: “Recently, whether teaching students connection between reading and writing will motivate students to read more articles and books and increase the probability to find success in reading and writing triggers many professional people’s arguments. According to Michael Bunn’s research, many educational experts’ observation and research have proved that teaching students the connection, reading is a method to learn how to write, between reading and writing can encourage students to read much more and increase the probability that students find success in both activities. Thus, parents also need explicitly tell their kids the connection between readings and writings in order to motivate their children read more books and write better articles.”

Self-analysis: Michael Bunn’s paper, “Motivation and Connection: Teaching Reading (and Writing) in the Composition Class,” is a scholarly academic article, which has many features, such as: having a large amount of supporting examples and evidence to support its argument to persuasive; so long that has over twenty pages; and the tones are serious and languages are academic and scholar. In this case, the audiences of this article are limit to some small group of people, such as educational experts, teachers and professors, due to its features. Except these people, no one is willing to read such a long and boring paper. If author of this article wants more people to know the importance of teaching the connection between reading and writing, he must change the genre. If author wants to attract younger students and older audience, such as parents, to read his article, he must write his paper by considering their habit of reading. However, author should change the focus and meaning of the original article. If author change the focus and meaning of essay, what is the connection between new article and original? They will be totally different articles in this way. Our goal of changing genre of essay is to attract different group of audiences and tell them the importance of teaching connection between reading and writing.

When the audiences become to younger people, it has to consider what younger children like and do not like. To be more specific, younger children like reading stories and comic books but not research papers. Thus, we can make a story to attract younger children’s attention. Also, younger children do not have as much professional knowledge as these experts have, thus it should not use too complex words and sentences in new genre. Not only younger children cannot understand such boring language and professional words in academic paper, but they either even do not care what the paper talks about. What they like to read is vivid stories which are easy to understand and interesting, comic books which are relaxed and humor. In addition, to attracting younger readers, the tones should be interesting; the language should be simple and easy to understand; pictures can be inserted if it is possible. Thus, I choose to write a story to younger students. After reading the above story, younger students can get some crucial conclusion, which should be similar as the academic article claims, by comparing Eric and Bill’s experience. However, I believe younger students, especially primary school students prefer to read such story, because the language of story is much easier to understand than that of academic paper, and the tones of story is more attractive than that of academic paper too.

When the audiences become to older people, such as our parents, it has to consider what they will read and interest in daily life. They like to read daily news and magazines which is relaxing to read and also need not too much time to read. In addition, why would older people care about whether teaching connection between reading and writing can improve students read more and write better? The most direct and important reason should be that they want to know the right way to improve their kids’ reading and writing. So, the new genre can involve some instructions to parents, which tell parents what they can teach their kids about the connection between reading and writing. In addition, the article that for older people to read should be brief and persuasive, since older people do not have so much time to spend in reading like over twenty pages academic paper, and they either will not believe any unwarranted argument. If author want to attract most of older people, his article has to be brief and persuasive. When the new genre can satisfy above requirements, it will attract most of older people, especially most parents. Thus, I think news report is the best method to tell older people about this argument in that news report will not waste their time and also be persuasive to them. This above news report is so brief that most of parents have time to finish reading it, and it also persuasive because many experts will not make a baseless conjecture together. In addition, it also tells older people “So what”, which is helpful to their kids for finding success in reading and writing activities. Thus, I believe such a brief and persuasive news report can attract most of older people, especially parents.

Like stories for younger children and news report for older audiences, different genres of a similar topic is suitable to different group of readers. In order to attract different kinds of audiences, writers can make different genres with similar topic and focus on the basis of features of different kinds of audiences.