readings for 2/11/08

Blog for 2/11/08

The first article, “Into the Blogshpere” discussed blogging or public writing for writing students as being more relevant and realistic. The author gives exemplars from other writing instructors, Jerz, Lovas and Walker. Jerz’s use of blogging, his “literary weblog”, I think, is a good example of “modeling” .He uses his blog site to critique other web sites and student could learn these techniques from him. Lovas is an example of both modeling and critiquing, as he uses his blog site for discussing and critiquing professional issues. Walker seems to be using her blog site for feedback for her professional writing and personal issues. The author uses these examples to illustrate the ways in which students can learn the uses and usefulness of blogging for public writing. The article advocates blogging as a way of building community through On-Line discussion. I feel that the on line classroom can also alienate and isolate people, inhibiting development of social skills and truly learning to deal with human emotions and personalities.

Lowe and Williams speak to the social nature of writing (as did the Nystrand article) based on the theories of Flower, Fish et al. At a time when students are just beginning to learn about writing and feel inexperienced and vulnerable; is it fair to expose them to unsolicited criticism from an anonymous public? Teenagers and young adults are very adept with the internet, but we also know that, at times, it can be unsafe. The article discusses the “appeal to a generation who enjoys seeing the private made public”. Citing TV shows like Survivor and MTV’s RealWorld” I would add Maury Povich, jerry Springer and all the “Rag Mag Shows” (as I call them). Why do we lust after the details of Britney Spear’s tragic life? Do we have a generation of voyeurs and exhibitionists (maybe too strong?) that want to share their most intimate personal secrets with the world? And why?

Expanding the classroom into the public forum of the WWW may provide the student with the opportunity for creative, immediate feedback, but may, also, not allow the student to feel like they can make mistakes and write on a deeper personal level, as Lowe and Williams point out. Using a weblog or discussion board like WebCt limits the interaction to the community of fellow students and instructors and provides some structure and allows for selected guidance. The students interact with each other and the teacher and learn from each other. That is not to say that that cannot happen with weblogs. I just feel like the student needs to be given some privacy until they are ready for exposure to the internet. Only the student knows when that is.

In spite of the fact that the internet is becoming the “way of the world” is it possible that it is actually isolating us from each other? In an assignment for communication technology fro another class, I reviewed the history of communication over the ages and the concept of voice communication gave rise to fears that we would no longer know how to write. Now, computer and communication technology has revived writing, in many forms. Now, the question is “will we be able to retain “formal writing”? Is it necessary? With the new “text speak” I wonder what written language will look like by the next generation.

Speaking of “writing in social context”… At first I did not understand the Canagarajah article on “World Englishes (WE). I could not imagine how, if all WE were integrated into composition classes, we could sort, develop and incorporate all the “meshed codes” the author talks about. I have long felt that Native English speakers, Americans and British, specifically, were extremely Ethnocentric in their unwillingness to learn the languages of their neighboring countries; (French and Spanish) in particular. We are also intolerant of poorly spoken English. The author states that English should be a multinational, multicultural Language. Isn’t it? In a country made up of immigrants, we should be very accepting and understanding of a variety of Englishes, after all, we don’t speak the “Queen’s English”. Every area in most counties speaks variations on the “native language” the US is no exception. People from different parts of this country speak different “dialects” with different accents, inflections, idioms and colloquialisms. Can we make our “speech” understandable if we do not have a common written language? Initially I disagreed with Canagarajah. It would be too difficult to develop codes for all the WE. WE need to write in a common formal language.

I then realized that formal written language is not always understood either. This realization came from learning to speak another language. In my work, it has become necessary for me to learn Spanish. I began with, what I call “phraseology”. I learned phrases. That did not help me respond to questions or understand conversations. So, I took formal classes. Twelve years of parochial school French lessons made learning Spanish easier. (I never had to “speak” French). I discovered that the people I was trying to communicate with didn’t understand my “formal Spanish” any better (well, a little) if they were educated. The more educated, the more, I think, they understood my Americanese accent. That really brought home the fact that we don’t write like we speak. I also had a question about the way language has changed over time. Consider the elaborate, poetic and “flowery” language of Elizabethan and Victorian times. An informal letter was so full of passionate language we would wonder about the gender-preference of a Victorian gentleman writing to a male friend. There was much study of the composition of these times.

I found it interesting that ‘national minorities”, described as the group whose history is along as the dominant group, have been given a place in language rights and writing, but other Ethnic minorities have not. Considering how many more people in the world speak a language other than English, why is English the dominant language? (I realize there are many explanations for this.) Considering how many Spanish speaking countries there are in the world, why is Spanish not the “global language”? The author’s examples of other ethnic authors and their influence to bring their context to their writing, such as AAVE and the writings of Smitherman helped me to understand how code switching or hybrid text works. When she began discussing teaching students to explore other grammatical options from other Englishes, it began to make sense. I could see how this could be a pedagogy for composition studies. But, will it work for “high stakes” writing? I enjoyed the author’s textural experimentation to illustrate her point.

Kathleen Yancey’s address to the CCCC in December 2004, for me, anyway, seems to incorporate what the two previous articles were saying. The internet and the WWW are dominant factors in our lives. Students know how to use it and they use it “in their own voice”. (Emphasis mine). It should be a part of composition studies as it is the medium of reality for today’s students. Yancey portrays the future of pedagogy of composition studies by quoting the definition of composition as the” thoughtful gathering, construction and reconstruction of a literate act, in any given medium (Morrison). I think this illustrates that composition has to be seen in many contexts and voices, not just written words in a formally structured language.

If a new philosophy of education is to prepare students for the real world, then education must allow them to use the medium they live in, namely web based interfacing and global interconnectivity. In spite of this, I still think that some formal structure of learning the”canons” of Rhetoric and composition. Practicing in a safe, gated community of the classroom and web based campuses, like Web Ct, will help prepare students for the “deeper waters” of the global community of the internet and multimedia formats (or Genre, as Yancey calls them).

Her article was so much easier to read and understand than Canagarajah’s, which to me, was linguistically abstract. I felt like Yancey was addressing more than members of the CCCC, communicating “across the curricula” I see the phenomena of the internet in Nursing, as patient bring their information to their providers that they have obtained from the WWW. They access their records and communicate with their provider via e-mails and web sites. As nurse educators, we are using the internet for communication between students and faculty and student to students. We are using the WWW for instant and up to date research to support evidence based practice (both in nursing and education). Although we are not putting our learning processes into the public forum, we are learning from each other, sharing our experiences, critiquing each other’s work and the instructor has receded to the background, as a guide. Assessment strategies have changed as well. Yancey states that they must change to incorporate the many genres available for students to be creative. How does nursing relate to composition? Nurses write. They write technical papers, they develop research from story telling, they construct meaning from that research. A nurse can demonstrate “caring” through a poem or montage of pictures. Is this not composition? Teaching composition for any student’s purpose, gives the student the opportunity to construct, or “compose” “a literate act, in any medium”.

The last article (Writing in the 21st Century) was really hard for me to follow. I understand the research process and the importance of studying what is being studied. Was anyone else annoyed by the repetition in the article? It was as if they were” padding” the article to meet some word requirement. How any times is it necessary to state the years that the study covered? My annoyance disrupted my comprehension of the article’s points.

Again, I am reading about the review of chronology of contextual writing and instruction of Nystrand (2006). And in spite of earlier repetitiousness, the article helped me to understand the research in writing and writing education. It brought together, statistically, what I had been reading in the other articles, about contextual composition, minority languages and various other aspects of writing. The authors’ study of the five year period by their own admission is limited in its scope of resources, but gives a preliminary picture of the areas of writing education that are being studied thoroughly and those that are not. Writing education in the formative years of language processing and identity development of preschool and young school-aged children seems to be lacking.

As I have not studied composition or writing education, I must admit that these statistics only tell me a superficial story. It does become evident even to an inexperienced educator, that the early years are the most impressionable and how children learn to speak, read and write is important (as the researchers stated) to the development of writing in later years. It is stating the obvious to say that more research in these areas is needed.

I welcome your comments.

Patti w.