Jessica Guda
Dr. Harker
ENGL 3100
February 27, 2015
Midterm
2. Barton’s ecological conception of literacy raises the possibility that much of what makes us literate (broadly defined) occurs outside of formal schooling. Trace your own path to literacy in a short narrative. Pay particular attention to events outside of formal schooling that have contributed to your literacy development. Give examples from Barton to support your claims about literacy. Word Count: 699
“The first point to be made is that literacy impinges on people in their daily lives” (Barton 4). My own introduction to literacy occurred in just this manner. My parents were the two biggest influences in my path to literacy before school. I had a father who was methodically-minded and bilingual and a mother who was an involved “stay-at-home” mom. They gave me the natural curiosity to discover literacy outside of the realm of formal school. In fact, after joining school I had to fight to regain the ecological view of literacy that they gave me.
Very few have ever heard of Suriname, South America, but that is where my father was born. Literacy offered each member of his family a new life, a life that my father took up in America when he went to school and eventually met my English-speaking mother. Dutch, the language of my father’s family, became associated with activities that were specifically related to him. For example, we always knew when Dad was paying the bills because of the clacking accountant’s calculator and the Dutch numbers streaming from his office: “een en veertig, veertig”. My father, a man of few words, who only read when necessary, contributed to my most formative memories of language simply by being bilingual. After a short quip in Dutch, he would ask “You know what that means, girls?” Of course the answer was “no”, so he would explain. It was in this way that I learned how to question meaning very early. He also has a habit of making lists. Every day off, he sat at the table to make a “To Do” list. Eventually, he taught us to do the same. In addition to lists, he also introduced me and my sister to music from artists like Bob Marley, Pink Floyd, and Ace of Base. These artists colored our Saturday chores when our father shouted out artists as they played. To my father, I attribute my sense of curiosity surrounding words and definitions. He also allowed me to connect written words to real life events.
My mother’s approach to literacy was different as she held the typical nurturing role in my family. She sang us lullabies from infancy, read us children’s stories from about that same time, and made bedtime stories magical. Even as we got older and were able to read by ourselves, she still snuggled up with her two girls to read us novels. Her reading also included the Bible, and she eventually enrolled us in church groups where we had to memorize verses weekly. With the privilege of such an involved and literate household, my curiosity and desire to read grew healthily. I was able to read small books by four years old, and not because anyone forced me, but because I was curious. My mother added onto the curiosity that was from my father when she gave me a way to see literature as magical. Instead of a chore, reading was an opportunity for wonder.
As soon as I went to school, my perspective on literacy changed. One of the most timid ones in class, I sat the unassumingly in the back. I was going to be perfect and do whatever I was told. I was so uncomfortable that I eventually lost my ability to read in school, something that eventually caused me to fail the IOWA test. It was at this point that I was thrown into remedial reading. Teachers saw me as handicapped, but my reading abilities, instead of improving in remedial reading, got worse (Barton 13). Fortunately, because of constant battles with pneumonia, I missed weeks of school at a time multiple times a year. While at home my reading improved as my stress decreased. My view of it went back to what reading was before school: a part of life. Eventually my mother made the change permanent by homeschooling me. After this, my reading improved steadily, making advances as my view of literacy changed. Both parents gave me a sense that literacy was embedded in social life and thought. In short, they allowed me to develop an attachment to literacy that was in line with Barton’s ecological conception of literacy.
3. Emig, Sommers, and Shaughnessy delineate an approach to writing instruction that is indebted to process-oriented pedagogy. In your own words, summarize and evaluate the arguments of each author. Finally, explain how the authors are challenging the status quo with respect to prevailing methods of writing instruction. Word Count: 700
Emig, Sommers, and Shaughnessy strive to delineate writing instruction through challenging the status quo and suggesting that the way in which teachers teach the writing process is not how professionals produce work. If there is such a discrepancy between writing process instruction and the writing process of professionals, these scholars believe that it is imperative that school systems change their manner of teaching.
When asked to describe his writing process, author John Ciardi responds this way: “You’re asking for lies. It’s inevitable. I’ve been asked to do this over and over again, and lies come out” (Emig 231). Emig notes that for this and other writers, composition is not linear. There is no clear understanding of the writing process except that it is unpredictable because each writer is unique. It is this sort of information that provides support to Emig’s comparison between twelfth grade composition and work from “established writers” (229). In her selection entitled The Composing Process of Twelfth Graders, Emig studies styles of composition through three different types of evidence: first are claims from professional writers, then “dicta and directives about writing by authors and editors” (228), and finally, the global research that deals specifically with the writing process of twelfth graders. In all of the papers that students wrote for the study, it was clear that the writing process that these students knew did not depict real-world writing scenarios
Meg Sommers moves away from the beginning stages of the writing process, and takes issue with the way in which students see revision. In Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers, Sommers does much of the same thing as Emig. She contrasts how professional adult writers view revision with how students view the “last stage” of the process. She asks for writers from each group to explain what revision meant to them. Such terms as “reviewing” and “scratch out and do over again” were employed by students. For them, syntactical errors were most important (325). Professional writers, dissimilarly, all explained this compositional stage as “rewriting” or “revising”, a process that they constantly perform. One writer says it this way: “Rewriting means on one level, finding the argument, and on another level, language changes to make the argument more effective. Most of the time I feel as if I can go on rewriting forever” (328). In other words, professional writers do not know what their main point is until they discover it through writing. Students, however, are expected to begin with a theme that they will reinforce with writing. Here is another place where our current methods for teaching composition do not line up with professional writing.
Shaughnessy builds on the work done by Sommers and Emig in her efforts to explain “the types of difficulties to be found in basic writing (BW) papers at the outset, and beyond that, to demonstrate how the sources of those difficulties can be explained without … empty terms” (389). Shaughnessy’s work—in light of a brand new open admissions policy in various colleges in the seventies—is an attempt to incite empathy and understanding in professors who, for the first time, have an extremely diverse audience. She tries to get professors to understand the logic behind the errors that they encounter. It is not her goal to get teachers to ignore errors, but to work in a way that leaves no student feeling discounted. Though Shaughnessy spends most of her time on errors, she is in line with Sommers: sentence level errors are not the biggest issues facing students. Instead, the fear of separating from illogical writing conceptions that have been passed down from an ill-founded system plagues students’ work.
It is my opinion that Emig, Sommers, and Shaughnessy would enjoy the abolition of standardized writing techniques, though each writer would take issue with different parts of the four-part process. Emig takes issue with the prescribed creative process while Sommers and Shaughnessy disagree with a standardized and blind ‘slap on the wrist’ approach to error or revision. All of these authors would rather the linear writing process be replaced with a seed-like narrative of composition where eventually, after enough writing, the student discovers what he or she wants to say.
5. According to Connors what led to the literacy crisis that initiated the development of compulsory composition? Connors also delineates institutional, social, economic, and cultural conditions necessary to sustain both periods of abolitionism and reformism. What are some of these conditions? By way of conclusion—and drawing from Connors and Barton— speculate about the extent to which public conceptions of literacy motivate literacy crises? Word Count: 427
Connors claims that it was the media who began the literacy crisis that led to the development of compulsory composition. “The literacy crises of the 1870s spawned the freshman course and the literacy crisis of the 1970s saved it from the radical critics of the 1960s, another literacy crisis could send abolitionism scurrying. (Connors 62). Our language around literacy, in other words, determines the fate of freshman composition course directly, but there are other factors that contribute to the success of “abolitionism” or “reformism” according to Connors. If the U.S. gets heavily involved in any war for a substantial amount of time, for example, the cries for abolitionism diminish. People would much rather keep things relatively consistent at home in the face of turmoil such as war. According to Connors, “Wars seem to create a desire for tradition and stasis where they can be achieved on the homefront” (62). Thinking of the most recent cry of war that I can recall, “Bring home our troops,” I immediately understand the validity of Connor’s statement about abolitionism and war. Even this simple cry for the removal of American troops from Iraq directly suggests a return to the comfortable. During restoration, perhaps, there could be a return to abolition, but not until the occurrence of such a restoration of order. As far as reformism goes, it is most invigorated by the cries of abolitionism, so the scholar can be sure of the fact that once there exists a strong presence of abolitionism, reformism will be the next phase.
The reason that waves of abolitionism versus reformism are so informative is because each phase is brought upon by the language that the media and scholars employ to describe literacy. This fact links directly back to Barton’s claim that the metaphors surrounding literacy and illiteracy are stronger than people realize. If we see illiteracy as a “disease” to be “cured” or “ignorance” that can either be fixed with “proper training” or else as the sign of a lesser person—as Lounsbury might have us believe—we start a blind panic that can lead to short-sighted solutions. It is Barton’s view that “in both developing countries and industrialized countries we are not talking about a short term ‘crisis’ to be solved by some quick campaign, but this has more to do with the provision of adult education” (Barton 218). As such, we must first change our thoughts concerning literacy through expanding our conceptions of literacy. We next must change our language around literacy and illiteracy in order to incite understanding and initiate change.
Bonus: “You’ve composed many open-ended questions to date in this class. Which of the many questions you’ve posed is your best question? Argue for its merits in 250 words or less.” Word Count: 248 without question
“If we were to adopt a system, such as Lounsbury implies, where no student is obligated to take a class or perform an assignment that he or she has no interest in, what would be some of the impacts on society socially and in the workplace?”
Considering an ecological view of literacy, such as Barton promotes, individuals are of the utmost importance. After all, “An ecological approach takes as its starting-point this interaction between individuals and their environments” (Barton 29). Location, family, literacy exposure, class, and choice are all factors in such an ecological view of literacy. Lounsbury claims to agree with the importance of individuality when he posits his response to freshman composition courses. According to an individualistic viewpoint, they should be abolished. Instead, students should study only what interests them.
I believe that the above question is my best because it forces the reader to look deeper into the issues that arise whenever we put an idea into action. Before the New Literacy Studies, when scholars developed educational reforms to “solve issues of illiteracy,” they did so with good motives. There was, however, not enough insight about the side effects of such reforms, so the issues against which we now stand went overlooked. Through these questions, I argue that we are in danger of the same if we do not ask ourselves difficult questions. If the ideals of the New Literacy Studies go too far, I wonder what the complications could be. I did not only intend to avoid simple answers, but wanted to challenge the precepts of an individualistic society. Surely we live in such a society now with things like Spotify and Netflix, which keeps us from encountering whatever we do not like, something about which I have serious misgivings.