Digital Literacy

Digital Literacy
As video and computer gaming has started occupy a considerable place and time in our college classrooms, Literacy and Composition instructors can make use of them in order to develop students’ reading skills and critical thinking. In her article Gaming, Student Literacies, and the Composition Classroom: Some possibilities for Transformation, Alexander contends that “ incorporating a strong consideration of gaming into composition course may not only enliven writing instruction for many of our students, but also transform our approach to literacy” (37). She also argues that by analyzing and dissecting students’ attitudes towards gaming, teachers can design teaching materials that concentrate on topics such as gender, sexuality, sexism, and stereotyping and their relation to literacy.
I totally support the use of technologies in the teaching and learning process especially if they attract students. And this is what we lack in our traditional literacy. Psychologists believe that lack of motivation is one of the factors that hinder learning. This is because without motivation processes such as concentration and curiosity, which I consider key factors in operating memory, will be absent. Thus, any means that pushes our literacy forward is welcomed. However, we need to be mindful of some issues these games may bring to the educational classrooms: racism and stereotyping, for example. As we know almost most of these games create an imaginable war between a hero and rogues who should be from different races. The hero is always the winner, and the rogues the defeated. Now let us imagine this scenario. A heterogeneous X classroom consists of students of different races some of whom are Arabs. They are watching a game called Delta Force: Land Warriors, which project Arabs as enemies for the US. It also represents them as savage, barbarian, hateful, and rogues. Now the question is how these students will feel and react. There is no doubt that they will feel degraded and discriminated. They will resist all that and even may turn into “ difficult students”.
The conclusion that we can draw from this discussion is that games available now may work perfectly in homogeneous classrooms which consists of the same race. And here is the limitation of these games as audiovisual aids. We all realize that games are originally designed for entertainment. Thus, teachers should carefully choose the ones they want to use and see if a student will be hurt. Practically this is difficult because it is not only a matter of race, but also of gender, sexuality, and class. What is the solution, then? We should design games for pedagogical purposes.

Rural Liteacy

In his article Rhetoric and Realities: The History and Effects of Stereotypes about Rural Literacies, Kim Donehower states that culture plays a very important role “in shaping public notions of literacy in rural communities”(37). Kim believes that this culture may appear in others’ eyes as something strange and then it turns into stereotypes or stigmas. And in his article, he gives Appalachia as a region that suffers a lot from such stigmatization. One of the stereotypes associated with Appalachian natives is that “they are either barbarians or paragons of the pioneer spirit or, somehow, simultaneously, both”(39).
What struck me the most in the article is the suggestions that Shapiro made to remove these stigmas. The most destructive suggestion is relocating Appalachians to cities and their suburbs. In my point of view, this is an unreasonable solution. First, these people have the right to live in the place they were born into. Second, the country needs farmers and cattlemen. And if they are evacuated, who will take their place? I find his suggestion that these people be modernized is very logical. It is the role of the government to provide them with all modern life conveniences such as technologies and economical systems.
I am coming from a rural area in the Green Mountain, Libya where people farm and raise cattles. In 1950s and 60s, 98% of the population were illiterate because they were cut off from the urban life with all its systems including cultural and educational ones. So, people in that region were stigmatized with ignorance and barbarism. In 1970, the government began its project of developing all rural areas in Libya and one of them was ours. The government spent generously to turn these areas into small modern towns with telecommunication systems and well-equipped institutions. If you wander these towns now, you will see a small model of big cities. In spite of what the government did so far in the region, it could not wipe out the stigmas associated with “mountaineers” (as we are called in big cities). We are still ignorant and barbarian.
I do support Kim in his claim that stereotypes are cultural. I can say that all stereotypes about mountaineers in Libya are projected in jokes, comedic serials, and films. They are part of our popular culture and have become fossilized concepts. For me as a mountaineer who studied in a big city, I did not feel embarrassed when I heard these stigma though some of them were insulting. The reason was that I led the same life as they did and I spoke and learned the same accent. I was completely assimilated into the city. The problem was with those mountaineers who showed little difference, especially different accent or behavior. Once they were recognized, they were peppered with jokes and criticism. I know many who left the city and their academic study and came back to the region. And this is the most destructive part in this issue.

Academic Discourse vs. Home Discourse

Barbara’s article Plateau Indian Ways with Words shows how the indigenous rhetoric affect Plateau Indian students’ writing and brings us back to our discussion of home discourse vs. academic discourse, but in a broader way. Reading the previous articles and the current ones, I can confirm one fact: the person who speaks is the person who writes. However when we write, we always put on a different identity with scientific characteristics. We try to use different expressions and different syntactical structures as well as we exert efforts to explain every point mentioned since we do not expect that our readers know our context or our subject. But in oral discourse the case is different. When we speak, we use different registers and depend largely on stress, rhythm and intonation. The difference between the two discourses, then, is fait accompli; but the most important questions that we should ask are “ is there anything bad with either discourse?” and “can we combine both discourses in a piece of composition?”
And to answer the two questions, we need first to discuss the issue of identity. It is a truism that one’s identity is a complex structure. It is shaped and carved by our social practices ( economical, political and cultural) as well as by our social forces (gender, race, and sexuality), all of which differ from one place to another, from one time to another and from one society to another. It is also a truism that our behavior including language is a projection of this identity. The way we eat , the way we walk and the way we speak and write will tell you who we are. It is impossible to find two people who share all these social elements. They may have some in common, but not all of them. In other words, our identities are like our fingerprints. They characterizes us. So, Ali ( a male, heterosexual Arab who came from a working class family, subjected to dictatorship and lived in an Islamic culture) will be different from any other person in our 597 cohort.
We come back to our point. As I said above, our language reflects our identity. Thus, all our social practices and forces will form our language and give it a different flavor. Since this is the case, we should not blame our students for writing such and such or for using a particular expression. In addition, we should not distinguish between them based on the way they write. Our students coming from middle class families, for example, will write better than those coming from poor families, as a general rule. As teachers, then, we should take all this into consideration. We should appreciate what our students compose and understand that their productions are a result of different factors, many of which are not controllable. The challenge for teachers, in my point of view, is how to make academic discourse be part of our students’ identities and how to push them to combine the two discourses in a distinctive and interesting way.
I remember when I was a high school student, I could not differentiate between the two discourses though I wrote very well. The only thing that I considered while I was writing was inserting as many formal expressions as possible. I do not remember I was aware of the other elements of academic discourse. This humble experience confirms the fact that academic discourse should be not be learned but acquired. The hard question is” how do we lead our students to reach this stage”.

It is all about identity; it is all about otherness. It is all about how you leave your print in your piece of composition. In her article Toward a Mestiza Rhetoric, Lunsford argues for that. She asks for breaking rules. She calls for developing one’s norms. The change, she knows, is not easy. The process is inclusive. “ It is kind of like a fish in the Pacific Ocean, with the analogy that the Pacific Ocean is the dominant field and the fish is this postcolonial, this feminist, or this queer, or whoever is trying to make changes”(50). The problem for her is how to make students involved in this. She realizes that they will never dare that. She believes that their instructors will not accept their exotic style. Swearingen and Moe give an example of the way we perceive the world with different lenses. They argue that the rhetoric of their Chinese predecessors are not explained very well and their they contributed to rhetoric in the same way their Western peers did.
I do agree with Lunsford that everybody should write his point of view and should show readers how he sees the world around him. However I disagree with her when it comes to second language learning. In my experience, speaking and writing cross culturally are so dangerous. This is because your writing will reflect your identity which is a product of a culture different from natives. I remember when I was in the Intensive American Language Center, I wrote a paper on September 11 event in which I discussed the topic from an Islamic viewpoint. I showed in detail that what happened was against Islamic teaching and that Islam was always a religion of peace and goodwill. I remember I presented the paper in front of three teachers. I could see signs of dissatisfaction on their faces. They perhaps did not like me to praise another religion in front of them or perhaps associated the event with Islam. In sum, they were unhappy. However, in the case of natives, Lunsford’s ideas are illuminating; they will help people think for themselves and develop their critical sense.
The applicability of her ideas in teaching composition seems to be difficult. Her model is amorphous. No specific rules; no definite steps. It is a great challenge. It is all left to the student to choose his own way of joining the conversation. Even if the student writes very well, teachers will not appreciate that. From an observer point of view, I can confirm that some of our 597 blogs are of that kind. They are personal and academic. The important question is can we teach this experience to our 101 students? Can we urge them to find their way?

Discourse Analysis

Discourse Analysis
In his article Inquiry and Discourse, Gees presents a more different concept of discourse than that we have studied earlier in this semester. For him discourse it is not that stretch of sentences and utterances that we produce in order to communicate with others. For him, discourse is a way of “combining and integrating language, actions, interactions, ways of thinking, believing, valuing, and using various symbols, tools, and objects to enact a particular sort of socially recognizable identity”(21). For him discourse is the scenes that we live everyday in every place (our homes, schools , streets, workplace, etc…) The discourse he is talking about is that one connected to previous discourses; the discourse he is addressing is a complex net of relations. The idea he wants to communicate is that our life is a thread of beads. Each bead represents a discourse and each bead consists of different elements. In her chapter Putting One’s Business on Front Street, Monroe takes one bead of her life and the lives of some people in two schools in Michigan State and analyses its elements. In her chapter she wants to show how these elements ( technology, people, institution, and knowledge) interact together to produce a different discourse.
The findings of her analysis are in sync with Gee’s idea that discourse changes according to time, situation, and people. The results she is presenting only applies to her situation. The people she was studying, the technology she was using and the situation she was in were unique in terms of identities, culture, family backgrounds and quality. Since I was a teacher of English as a foreign language, I had a similar experience of using technology in teaching. My people were female and male, Libyan students who formed a
homogenous group in terms of race, class and culture. My situation was teaching Advanced Composition. My time was Spring 2007. The topic I was teaching was How to Write a Formal and Personal Letter. The assignment was to write two letters( formal and personal) and send them over email to me. The results were different from Monroe’s, of course. My students did very well with formal letters. The expressions they used and the topics they broached were so formal. The topics ranged from applying to a job or a university, asking for one day leave from the boss or inviting me to a party to writing a formal complaint to the dean. The students made every effort to use so formal expressions that many native speakers may not write in similar situation. In sum, their emails were amazing.
The students’ problems arose when it came to writing a personal letter. Around 90% of them wrote about formal topics and used less formal expressions than those written in the previous letters. The topics were about some hot issues in the media, discussing some points in class, or explaining the recipe of some dishes. Only 10% of them performed very well on this assignment. They talked about their personal lives- their likes and dislikes, families, hobbies, etc… And all of them were male students.
The reason was our culture. The student-teacher relationship is so formal in Libya. When a student converses with his instructor, he should use titles such as Dr., your honor, discuss formal topics, and talk while standing even if the teacher is sitting. It is such nice a dream to have a seat in her office. This is why my students wrote perfect formal letters and failed to write personal ones. In my point of view, they found it difficult to paint a picture in their minds of their teacher other than that of a stern and scowling face. It is true, then, that a discourse draws another discourse.

Identity and Culture

I strongly agree with Manroe's statement that "ethnicity alone should not be taken as having predictive value. A teacher should not prejudge that an individual student will automatically produce a certain kind of narratives, basing that prediction solely on a student's ethnicity"(89). We, as teachers and researchers, should not attribute students' educational problems to a specific element of the social force(race, gender, or class) And here, of course, I am not belittling previuos research or refuting their results. What I want to get at here is that we live in a large discourse consisting of many elements each of which affect and contribute to our culture and, thus, to our identity. This, perhaps, acounts for the conflicting results of the previous research. some studies mentioned class as a cause for educational problems; others considered race and gender as direct reasons for them. In other words, no fixed and lasting reason exist.
It was always the concern of scholars to disclose the factors that affect our identity and form our culture. Classical and orthodox marxists, for example, relied on economic reductionism to do so. They argue that the base( economy) overdetermines our life(social relations, education, politics, etc...) Consequently, economy is the engine that generates everything in the society. This, of course, was refuted by cultural theorists who believe that our culture consists of " a relationship among levels [race, gender, class, etc...], constituted in relations reducible to a single essential one-to-one correspondence"(Slack,2007:117) Accordingly, our education is affected by all these levels, all of which contribute in one way or another to it. What remains is the degree of affect of each level.
( Sorry for being late, Malcolm. I have a cold)


References
Slack, Jennifer(2007)'The Theory and Method of Articulation in Cultural Studies' in Morley, David and Chen, Kuan-Hsing (eds) Staurt Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, London: Routledge.

Academic Discourse again

This week’s articles and the last one’s give good examples of the problem of discourse they try to solve and show how intricate for specialists this problem is. The problem, in my point of view, is not discourse itself; the problem is the way we look at discourse. In the four articles that we have studied so far discourse is defined as the traditional academic language we use in our classrooms, essays, or publications. And this is a narrow meaning of discourse. In fact, discourse is a group of non-congenial things that produce a meaning. In the case of the academic discourse, the discourse will be us (instructors, scientists, and students), our culture (including language), the principles and rules of science, and the educational institutions, all of which are historically bound and all of which affect the type and quality of the discourse.
According to this definition, Royster’s statement that “ academic discourse, like all language use, is an invention of a particular social milieu, not a natural phenomenon” is not precise. This is because she excludes the nature of science in forming our language. The fact is that the type of science overdetermines the type of language we use. For example, in Physics we use a language that is scientific because we deal with a field that is concrete and rule-governed. In contrast, in philosophy or literature, our language she should be conjectural, emotional, and imaginative because our interest is in values, emotions and senses.
The other idea I find strange in the reading is that only traditional academic discourses are objective, argumentative and skeptical. What about our home discourses? What is the clause “I don’t think so”, that we use in our daily conversations, about? If I say to you this is an interesting film and you respond by saying I do not think so, this means that you want to start arguing; you want to present antithesis; you want to convince me with a different idea. Likewise, if I say to you I saw a ghost yesterday and you respond by saying are you serious?, you are posing a question; you are doubting; you are asking for facts; What I want to communicate here is that our home discourses have the same traits as academic discourses do; but what they differ in is the context and style. In home discourses, the conversation is between two or more people who speak face to face or through signals and who maintain the conversation by feedback. In academic discourses, on the other hand, the conversation is between a writer and a reader one of whom is absent. And here lies the problem. When students move to the new academic discourse, they do not realize the fact that they will maintain a conversation with a different nature in which they will be either readers or writers; a conversation in which their partners are unknown.
The other difference between the two discourses is the style. In home discourses, we use colloquial language which depends on abbreviations, reduction and informal lexicon. In contrast, academic discourses make use of standard language with formal vocabularies and structures.