Lesson 1:Analysing handwriting (pages 101-102)
I always thought a person’s handwriting said a lot about him or her. After reading what Crystal had to say about handwriting I learned how technical it actually is. It’s not just sloppy or neat, big or small. Handwriting is also about shading, angles, speed, lines, and connections. Anytime you ask students to turn in something they handwrote it can become a challenge to decipher exactly what they wrote, and understanding a little better just how handwriting works can help us not want to hurt those that write illegibly. It also helps if you have students turn in things handwritten on a regular basis, such as a journal. This way you can get to know them by their handwriting. You can link their style and what they say with their handwriting. I think with things being written the majority of the time on computers this is something that may not be used often, but it is still helpful and important when learning about how a person writes. It also becomes important when correcting a student’s paper. As teachers our handwritten needs to be clear so that we do not confuse students with the suggestions we give them.
Lesson 2: :Learning to write: functional skills (pages 137-138)
Crystal says that functional skills “require an appreciation that writing is used for a wide range of purposes and a variety of audiences.” This is something I think many incoming freshman are aware of, but do not necessarily know how to use to their advantage. While they obviously know the difference in how to write a short story or a research essay, they don’t always know what kind of essays to write, whether they should be persuading or leaving their opinions out of the paper. I thought it was interesting to see that many teachers are now giving their students purpose-driven essays to write, such as providing their students with real-life audiences and situations to address. If students have a purpose for why they are writing something, other than it is simply just a paper to receive a grade in for a particular class, I believe they will not only do better on the essay but also put more effort forth. If we as teachers assign essays that can help our students in other classes we will help them succeed not just in our class, but in turn they will help us by providing us with their best work.
Lesson 3: Internet interaction does not equal social interaction.(pages 153-158)
Today’s society relies so heavily on computers and the interaction we have with computers and many people would never wonder how computers could hinder learning instead of helping it. The problem with computers that Crystal points out is that they are not humans. You can interact with them and with people on them, but only to a certain extent. I have often thought about the interaction people have with computers and how it affects them. Lately, I have thought about it and the consequences it has to preteens and teens. One of the girls I used to baby sit for years ago that I am still close with is a teenager and her mother has asked me questions about the vast online world of Facebook and instant messaging. While I use both I did not have either until later in my life. It has become a whole different world with those in middle school and high school right now. Crystal talks about the tone of voice when trying to interact via the internet and this is just one of the problems faced when dealing with internet chatting, especially with teens. Whether dealing with freshman in high school or freshman in college internet interaction has become such a staple of their world that it is hard to turn away from it. When teaching, we now have to deal with the way teens talk online as part of their handed-in assignments. I have been told it is not unusual to receive a paper with “you” spelled “u” or “with” spelled “w/.” The problem is those that we will be teaching have become so used to writing and interacting like this that it is hard to turn them away from it.
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2 comments:
It is weird to think about the differences between just us and our students which may be a gap of only 5-10 years. At 24, I can remember learning about computers and cell phones, but it wasn't a luxury item in the sense it becomes now. The first time I had regular access to the internet was dial-up for researching and locating information, just as when I came to college at 18, I had just received my first cell phone and didn't even know what "texting" was. Now our students, even though the age gap isn't huge, truly experienced a different set of technologies in high school and grade school. My 5 year old cousin is about as experienced at using computers as I was at about 15, and for many young kids their biggest exposure to conversation is texting and IMing. Not only will this be a "problem" for us teaching in the spring, but will be a bigger problem when kids my cousins age are in our class rooms in 13 years.
I absolutely agree with what you're saying, Adam. This is sort of a source of anxiety for me, in considering how I will navigate this new linguistic landscape. My experience, much like yours and Jenn's, (but maybe even to a greater extent) with computer mediated communication was limited when I was the age of a first year writing student. To betray my age, when I was a freshman at OU, a very primitive version of email was being offered to the student body. At that time, most everyone I knew was a bit hesitant about using it, and we still preferred other forms of communication, although everyone we knew at school had access to it. The main reason I didn't use it at that time, was that a majority of people did not have email or the internet at home, it was something confined to library use, so its usefulness in communicating with anyone, anywhere at any time was yet unrealized. Now the students we will be teaching have grown up with this kind of communication and are very well versed in it. I question how I will negotiate this situation as a teacher. I would not want to be a teacher who relentlessly clings to outdated modes, but at the same time, like Katie said elsewhere in the blog, I am loathe to accept OMG or "u" in place of "you" in an academic paper. So my big question is, where should the compromise between CMC and "standard" English occur? It seems that something useful can certainly be gleaned from this new mode of communication, but I am still at a point where I am not sure how one would go about it.
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