Reflection on a Mentor Text

The article "Striped for Parts"(http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/11.03/parts.html) by Jennifer Kahn could be presented as a mentor text to a class of grade 11 or grade 12 biology students. While Kahn's text is outside my primary teachable domains, English and Physics, it integrate the hard sciences and the liberal arts, providing science students of any discipline with the opportunity to examine popular science writing and consider the differences in convention and style between it and true academic, scientific discourse.

In a biology or interdiciplinary context, this text could be integrated into a unit of study on reading and writing in a scientific context. After several lessons in which students explored the concept of objectivity and the formal structure of both lab reports and scientific journal articles, I would introduce this text as a means of engaging students with high levels of English literacy who are creative or artistically oriented. In contrast to authors of academic journal articles, Kahn seeks both to inform and to entertain, and the grotesque nature of the text and its subject matter may interest students – particularly males. Given its relatively vibrant prose style, her work may also interest creative students who have not yet been exposed to the ways in which they can write on subjects related to science and technology while remaining unconstrained by many of the conventions of scientific discourse. Often these conventions render scientific writing stale and disaffecting, so the article could be introduced as a means to discuss techniques authors use to engage and capture the interest of their audiences.

However, the rejection of these conventions in popular science articles and the focus on entertaining rather than informative content comes at the cost of abandoning the principle of objectivity. Khan's emotionalism and sensationalism, while engaging, make evident her personal biases. The very purpose of scientific writing becomes lost in a pleasant haze of dynamism and snappy prose. Through an exploration of the article, students should become aware of the effects – both positive and negative – of a shit between academic and non-academic scientific discourse.

A possible lesson developed around this article might consist of:

1. Guided reading in which students read each paragraph and identify the central topic or argument.
2. Reflection on each segment of the article using BLM 4.3: Informational template
3. A systematic breakdown and discussion of the text, contrasting it with previously-discussed examples of scientific writing. Groups could consider topic prior a whole-class discussion, which would be organized based on a series of topics including:
   1. Reflection on the introduction to Kahn's article, its effect on readers, and the information that it relates to a reader.
   2. Word choice and use of language which in turn influences...
   3. … our sense of the author's emotional state or investment in the issues covered in the article (Guiding Questions: What words, phrases, or constructs would not appear in an actual scientific journal article and why? What do they tell us about the author or her views that would not otherwise be apparent?)
   4. The structure of the text as whole, which does not divide as easily into defined components such as abstract, introduction, results, analysis, conclusion, etc. as does a lab report or even a traditional scientific journal article with a logical progression.
4. Based on the results of the previous discussion, we would then assess the effects on style on the message and information conveyed in the article. Students should assess what has been gained and what has been lost in the shift from academic to popular scientific writing. Which do they enjoy? Which better serves its purpose(s) (which are different in the two contexts)?