Zhou Zhuang (Joe)

Allison Bocchino

Writing 2

15 March 2021

From an Academic Journal to a Blog: Exploring the Genre Translation

To most readers, academic articles are informative but difficult to read. People

may feel sleepy while reading an academic journal for several hours. Therefore, it

would be helpful for authors to convert their academic journals to blog posts to make

their articles less verbose and more fascinating, which will also potentially pull new

audiences to their work. Translating the academic article ”Optimalizing YouTube

Videos to `Improve Students’ Translation Skill” to a blog is a process of learning

conventions between these two genres. To complete this translation, I significantly

change the organization, format, data visualization, and jargon of the academic article

to illustrate how the change of targeted audience affects a genre and its characteristics.

One of the major differences between an academic journal and a blog is the

targeted audience. Considering the change of targeted audience, the organization of

academic genre and non-academic genre needs to be changed. The education

academic journal written by Humaira describes her experience of integrating

YouTube Videos as her teaching method and proves that YouTube Videos can

significantly improve students’ translation skill.1 As a result of the purpose of

 Zhuang 2

academic reading, this article has to be clear, structured, and supported by

evidence.The concise and focussed organization of Humaira’s article shows the

rigorous characteristics of its discourse community because it strictly follows the

structure of an introduction, research methods, findings and discussions, and a

conclusion. The readers of her article are expected to see her explanation of

terminology and description of the research process, which is significantly different

from blog readers’ expectations.

Compared with readers of an academic article, readers’ expectation of a blog is

different. Readers who are not in the education discipline will not put their attention

on the explanation of terminology and theory but are more interested in learning the

teaching process and results. As Melzer has stated, when translating articles from one

genre to another, we are entering a new discourse community and learning the genres

of the community.2 Take this characteristics and targeted audiences of a blog into

account, I read a series of blogs and finally find out that Dave Dodgson’s blog

perfectly fits the education academic article. Dave uses first person point of view and

shares his personal experience with the audience in chronological order. To describe

how his teaching skills and class management are improving in each period of his

career, Dave uses the subheadings like “From pre-career step to career, From much to

learn to still learning, and From much being privileged to privileged to be here”3 to

emphasize his teaching methods in different periods. This make sense because the

1. Humaira, Humaira. “OPTIMALIZING YOUTUBE VIDEOS TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ TRANSLATION SKILL.” Core
STKIP Muhammadiyah Pringsewu.
2. Melzer Dan. “Understanding Discourse Communities” In Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, vol. 3. Parlor
Press(2020), 111.
3. DaveDodgson david. “17 Years a Teacher”, Blogger, 2017.
targeted audience of this blog is teachers or people who are interested in learning the

life of a teacher. If Dave does not put these subheadings in the blog, the audience may

not directly follow the content as it jumps from one teaching period to another. The

appealing and recapitulatory subheadings greatly help me to smooth the transition

from the academic article to a non-academic blog by summarizing each paragraph

using concise and integrated phrases.

To translate the academic education journal to a non-academic blog, I have to

find a way to simplify the research methods and change the jargon of the academic

genre. As a result of the change of targeted audience, I have no choice but to clarify

and reduce the length of the research process, and replaces the complicated

professional jargon with very basic and easy to understand words. During this process,

I was greatly inspired by Elizabeth Taylor’s “Personalized Learning Blog.” The

characteristics of her blog is not telling a story but giving a central topic and listing

solutions around this topic. In a short paragraph, Elizabeth gives her solutions in the

perspective of a teacher, describes her emotions, and narrates the experience of

applying this method to interact with her audience: teachers who need to teach from

home.4 The convention of this blog is giving a guideline with personal emotions and

experience to the audience. For the purpose of sharing Humaira’s effective teaching

strategies to my audience, I use Elizabeth’s blog structure to list her adjustments and

improvement of students’ scores to convince my audience that these teaching methods

are efficient. After all, blog readers are not only looking for something interesting, but

4. Taylor Elizabeth. “Personalized Learning Blog,” Teach Between the Lines, 2020.
looking for suggestions and insights that help them to improve from unprepared to

prepared, and eventually achieve their goals.

Besides organization and jargon, it is also essential to consider the purpose of

writing a blog. Many blog writers write blogs to promote their work. Specifically, in

addition to sharing their thoughts and connecting them to their audiences, they start a

blog in order to make more people learn their work. Keeping this in mind, I looked

over a variety of blogs and found a promotional blog “10 Value Investing Blogs

You'd Be Crazy Not To Follow” that included links to different blogs. In this blog,

Hatto enlarges the size and makes the name of the blog “Contrarian Edge” and

“ValueWalk” bold. This makes sense because the purpose of this blog is to promote

these blogs and attract audiences to read them. If every word is written in the same

font and same size like the academic article, the blog readers will not be interested in

reading them. Based on this finding, I decided to put a link of the original academic

journal and give its title a boldface at the end of the blog to promote the academic

article so that my translation contains more characteristics of a blog.

On a final note, I translated the academic article to a non-academic blog to learn

about the conventions of two different genres and their discourse communities. The

change from an academic journal to a non-academic blog shifts the targeted audience

from professional education scholars to anyone who is interested in education, which

indicates the importance of the targeted audience. Keep in mind that we are

continuously creating and interpreting rhetoric when publishing our blog.6 Essentially,
5. Hatto Nael. “10 Value Investing Blogs You’d Be Crazy Not To Follow,” Wall Street Survivor, 2020.
6. Caroll Laura Bolin, “Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward rhetorical analysis,” Writing Spaces: Reading on
Writing, vol. 1. Parlor Press(2010), 47.
rhetoric is the art of speaking. Understanding rhetorical conventions of educational

academic articles and blogs helps me to use a blog language to attract new readers and

keep them coming back. It is tedious to read an academic article over and over again,

but the blog genre maintains the fundamental idea of the academic writing genre and

transfers the knowledge to an audience with less redundancy.

 Zhuang 6

Works Cited

Caroll Laura Bolin. Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward rhetorical analysis. Writing

Spaces: Reading on Writing, Vol. 1, 45 - 58. Parlor Press, 2010.

DaveDodgson, David. 17 Years a Teacher, Blogger, 6 Mar. 2017,

davedodgson.blogspot.com/2017/03/17-years-teacher.html.

Hatto, Nael. “10 Value Investing Blogs You'd Be Crazy Not To Follow.” Wall Street

Survivor, 9 July 2020,

www.wallstreetsurvivor.com/10-value-investing-blogs-youd-be-crazy-notto-follow.

Humaira, Humaira. “OPTIMALIZING YOUTUBE VIDEOS TO IMPROVE STUDENTS'

TRANSLATION SKILL.” CORE. STKIP Muhammadiyah Pringsewu, February 1,

2018. https://core.ac.uk/display/229584463

Melzer Dan. “Understanding Discourse Communities” In Writing Spaces: Readings on

Writing, Vol. 3, 100-115. Parlor Press, 2020.

Taylor, Elizabeth.“Personalized Learning Blog.” Teach Between the Lines, 12 Aug. 2020,

www.teachbetweenthelines.org/personalized-learning
 YouTube Videos : a Teaching Technique to Improve Students’ Translation Skill

MY TEACHING EXPERIENCE

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Zhou Zhuang 5 hours ago 2 min read

YouTube Videos : a Teaching Technique to Improve

Students’ Translation Skill

YouTube today has displayed a variety of topics that attract students from different
backgrounds to watch. Therefore, I decided to use YouTube Videos as my teaching
techniques to keep my classroom interesting and to help my students focus on practicing
translation.
Recently, I started teaching eighth grade students whose native language is not English.I
would like to share with you my experience of use YouTube in this classroom.

From verbal content to both verbal and text content

Usually, YouTube videos display verbal visualizations that are easier to use to listen to and to
learn to speak, but I would like to improve students’ overall translation skills, both
interpretation and translation. Thus, I asked my students to decide what type of video genre
they want, and then interpret and translate what the video is talking about verbally or in
written text.

From much to improve to still improving

Most most students in my classroom have poor translation skills, only a few students are fairly
good at translating. I was not frustrated by their overall performances and I looked forward
to seeing their progress after using YouTube Videos. After a period of time of using YouTube
videos, students’ scores were improving. But the results are not quite satisfactory, I believe
that I have to adjust my teaching method to help students reach their full potentials.

From much better to being satisfactory

Based on my observation from cycle 1, I decided to adapt my teaching method and noticed
that the following three actions were effective:

1. Before the class begins, students are given time to study or listen to the video they want
to translate before performing in front of the class.

2. I communicated more actively with the students and provided simulation by delivering
constructive questions in order to get feedback and to understand students’ expectations of
the videos they want to translate.

3. For videos that students have difficulties in understanding, I would give them an
opportunity to change their videos with new easier videos and by considering the video’s
speed.
 The results of second cycle is satisfactory. I am glad to see that most of my students' scores
get improved from poor to fairly good.

YouTube videos are great resource for anyone in English education field, especially for those
who aim for improving their students' translation skills. If you follow my teaching methods，
you won't immediately make your students have perfect translation skills, but it will help
improve your teaching.

Where to find my original work: https://core.ac.uk/reader/229584463

Title: "optimalizing YouTube Videos to Improve Students' Translation Skill"

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