Reflection

 For the assignment of  The New York Times and scholarly articles students had to report on the way these types of articles are written and make further connections on whether they are directed for a general audience or a scholarly audience. The ways authors write their papers range from if it follows the IMRAD format? Does it use basic vocabulary? Or does it apply visuals?. From this Assignment I learnt skills that now and later will be helpful when it comes to analyzing certain texts. The first skill that I enhanced through this assignment was my strategies for revising a paper; reading, drafting, and editing of articles. An example of this is the scholarly article which is long but only by revising how is written can tell many things to the reader, The other skill that I improved through this assignment is to engage in genre analysis and multimodal composing to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond because of how students were supposed to analyze the genre of writing for a general audience paper that are the New York Times articles. 

  Exploring the article Genes may control your longevity, however healthily you live

  The article “Genes may control your longevity,however healthily you live” by Gina Kolata, released on January 29 of 2026 in the New York Times explores the topic of longevity and how outside factors affect it. Kolata is reporting on the research done by Uri Alan of the Weizmann institute of science in Israel for a general audience as a way to persuade people to change their lifestyle to a healthy one. The article is appropriate for a general audience because it contains expert testimonies, generalizes scientific results and appeals to the audience directly.

  The article is appropriate for a general audience because it applies opinions of people that have expertise in the field related to the research. The use of expert testimonies in articles increases credibility and creates a trustworthy link between the reader and the article. Throughout the article the author includes researchers like Dr. Bradley J. Willox who is  a director of a geriatric research at the University of Hawaii,Dr. Olshansky who is an emeritus professor of epidemiology at the University of Illinois and Dr. Thomas Perls, a geriatrician and the director of the New England centenarian study at Boston University. 

All of the experts addressed in the article come from departments like epidemiology which focuses on health on how diseases and health conditions spread in population and geriatrics which focuses on the care of older adults. These departments are directly  related to the research topic to support the claim and increase reliability. The use of this one is important because when a general audience sees the role of the person that is advocating for them, they trust it. Expert testimonies are used throughout the article to provide background and credibility to the topic in easier vocabulary for the audience to understand.

The next thing that this article applies for a broad audience is the use of basic vocabulary when it comes to scientific results for easy reading comprehension. The act of making the article easy to understand is making the article and results from the research accessible to a general audience and more importantly it is health related which concerns any type of reader. Kolata in the article explains the results led by the study “Ultimately their analyses led to an estimate that genes account for more than 50 percent of the difference in life spans in a population,compared with the 25 percent or less that had been suggested in earlier research”(Kolata 2026). Kolata explains results in simple terms on how great the genes account in life spans. The explanation of scientific results is a great component for this article because it revolves around the results of the research and explaining these results makes the  research comprehensible for most readers. Health is a very broad topic and it can have complicated terminology that most researchers will understand but to generalize this  terminology is more important because health related issues are important for human kind. Generalized scientific results are used throughout the article to avoid confusion of the data and clarify the research findings. 

 The article also included a direct connection between the reader and the article by appealing directly to the audience using the word “you”. Appealing to the reader directly by including the word “you” changes the overall tone of the article to be persuasive and adds a call to action in the article. Kolata in the article states “Your potential life span is written in your genes, according to a new study. You can lengthen it a bit with a healthy lifestyle, but if your genetic potential is to live to be 80, for example, it is unlikely that anything you do will push your age at death up 100”(Kolata 2026).  Kolata is using the word “your” frequently to directly emphasize the importance of the findings for the reader and how these could impact their life. In order to reach the audience a call to action was needed because only by appealing directly to the audience can a change happen in their habits. 

The article by Gina Kolata,“Genes may control your longevity,however healthily you live”, is suitable for a general audience because of the use of expert researchers to increase credibility and reliability, the use of basic vocabulary when explaining research results in a way that it has easy comprehension and avoids using scientific terminology, and applies a direct connection with the audience through the use of the word “you” which adds a call to action to the article. This article being understood by a general audience can be used for a greater purpose because anyone can suffer from health issues but changing their habits can lower the chances of the health issues.

References 

Kolata G. 2026. Genes may control your longevity, however healthily you live. Science. [accessed 2026 Feb 13]. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/29/health/longevity-lifespan-age-genes.html