How did switching genres from academic paper to podcast allow you to think in a different way about the subject of your paper? How did it allow you to use language differently?
Language must be presented differently based on the context in which it is used. This means that writing for a person who is listening to you is much different than writing for a person who is reading your work. A person listening requires less complicated sentences than a reader, because they do not have the opportunity to pause for a moment while attempting to understand what the speaker is saying. A person speaking also has to think about their presentation of the material being discussed. The quality of their voice now matters as it hadn’t before while their words were on a flat sheet of paper. Vocalization comes with depth. Inflection, speed, and tone all come into play.
The reader is typically paying more attention than the listener, and this is not a fault of their own, it’s one of the medium. This isn’t to say that a reader could gleam over a page and miss loads of relevant information, just that they are able to take their time and consume new information at their chosen pace. To rectify this you must keep what is said relevant, short, and interesting. Any media that relies on the voice often is more about how it’s being said than what information is actually being shared. People like a certain style and they like to be entertained, so I must make an effort to keep them entertained.
I was able to think in a different way during this assignment because most of my focus was on how what was written down would sound if it was spoken out loud. Because of this I maintained a much more casual tone, and put more emphasis than I typically would on certain points. Subtlety is much harder to put across in a spoken medium than in a written one, so it pays to be to the point.
