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 Teaching writing in
online and paper worlds
The following is being written in preparation for TESOL
2008 in New York City: Teaching writing in online and paper worlds.
Demonstration, Writing IS, #114600, April 3, 2008, 4:00-4:45, Liberty
Suite 2, Sheraton Hotel, New York City. It is unfinished. -Thomas
Leverett, CESL, Southern Illinois Univ., Carbondale IL USA
62901-4518.
This year's presentation:
Teaching writing in
online and paper worlds (home)
Last year's presentation: Student weblogging for fluency,
integration, and skills
[ Introduction,
Reasons for using weblogs ]
[ Ways to use
weblogs, weblogging as a genre itself ]
[ Kinds of
fluency ] [ Skills ]
[
Integration
-into what exactly? ]
[ Weblogs happen:
stuff happens on weblogs ]
[ Portfolios ] [
Portfolio showcase ]
[ New blogger, old
mac: tech problems ]
[ Resources
]
[ Weblogs in
esl/efl: bibliography ]
Digital fluency as goal and objective
My writing class has a number of standard outputs: summary,
summary-response, cause-effect essay, argument essay, and quantitative
survey report. We teach thesis statements, topic sentences,
introduction, conclusion, in-text citation, reference, APA; we teach
grammar such as making complex sentences and remembering to use periods.
We expect students to know, use and respond to words like "margins,"
"font," "justify" and "italics." Putting our work online gives us more
words and ideas to use, things to master: "upload," "delete," "logon,"
"highlight" and "cursor" to name a few.
As I look back on a term in which, like all, I had mixed success in
teaching these, what strikes me is that there were many other, perhaps
more important cultural and language-related lessons that I taught above
and beyond the immediate ones. How to address a teacher; how to ask for
help when one needs to make a link; how to apologize when one has missed
class for days without an excuse are three that come to mind. Students
face a dazzling array of cultural and perceptual hurdles, challenges to
mastering a new culture which are much more difficult than mastering the
language alone, yet many or most of them are not written into the goals
and objectives of the course; we are aware of their problems, for
example, not explaining why they missed class before asking to make up a
quiz, yet we rarely put the teaching of these cultural rituals into a
careful methodology that would ensure students' mastery. I'm a little
embarrassed about teaching blatantly cultural things so systematically,
since I consider myself a language teacher and am aware that many
students consider themselves needing and wanting to learn the language,
but are much more leery of the culture. Yet I'm also aware that
mastering these cultural details and rituals is probably more crucial to
their future than, say, mastering the art of capitalization.
Some of the skills we teach are directly observable; in other words, we
can clearly see who has mastered them and who hasn't, every time. This
term, for example, I gave as part of a final exam an article in the
Crimson White, a college newspaper at the University of Alabama.
Many of my students interpreted the article to be by a person of that
name, and wrote as the first line of the reference, White, C. Veteran
esl/efl teachers will be familiar with students' common trouble in
interpreting authors' names, newspaper names, and other names; I
realized how much the correct interpretation of Crimson White was
cultural, and how I myself had used cultural knowledge to put two and
two together and figure out what Crimson White represented.
Needless to say, I couldn't demand that all my students have all of
those cultural skills as a requirement for passing the exam. But I
could see clearly, by giving the exam to all students, who had in fact
mastered them, or perhaps who was just lucky in appearing to master
them. In the same way, the weblogs on the last day showed who had
mastered linking, formatting, editing, and my favorite, getting a
single-post url in order to link to oneself. Quantifiability and
observability make skills much more likely to be mastered, since
students have visual clues; they can see how others have done it, and
thus they know when they have done it the same way.
Most of our students are at least vaguely familiar with weblogs when
they arrive, and so have little trouble understanding the nature and the
value of the set of skills they are learning in the process of putting
their work on weblogs. I am never sure exactly how much they have used
weblogs in their own language and culture, before coming to us; nor do I
know how the skill set would be different, in their culture, from what
it is here. I do get the impression that being able to talk about the
skills is probably more valuable to them than the skills themselves, as
the weblog as an immediate medium is probably a temporary waystation in
the evolution of online presentation. Skills involved in file transfer,
formatting, linking, and browser manipulation are basic in nature, but
pale in comparison to some that they are introduced to, by nature of
contact with the medium. Dealing with a frozen computer and browser
fluency are perhaps the most important of these, but there are more.
Some, like putting links or titles in a template, establishing privacy
settings, or setting up systems to monitor other weblogs are not
necessary but can make life more convenient.
Routine use of web sources has required a set of skills that we are only
now coming to terms with; it's only been in the last twenty years or so
that we have gone from getting 99% of sources from books in a library,
to getting 99% from the web. Students must now be able to use Google
and know Google from a database, but also be able to know shallow
Aboutinfo articles from more substantial ones. Other necessary skills
include url-reading, url-hacking, finding the source and/or date of
electronically published work, finding a familiar site through Google;
following links from that site to a desired site; knowing when and how
to use Wikipedia in an academic setting.
I feel confident in showing students the world of weblogs and getting
them to make one, according to their own preferences, as well as use our
class one respectfully, cooperatively and carefully. When they fail or
go over the line, we remind them; we make teaching points out of it. But
there are two other realms that we barely scrape that I feel will be
absolutely necessary for them in their future. One is handling e-mail
correspondence, and the other is managing chat systems, in other words,
not only using language appropriately in e-mail and chat environments,
but also mastering the mechanics of sending, receiving, storing,
transferring, and deleting language in these environments.
Shrewd observers of modern life have noticed how much people tend to
read into e-mail, and how quickly they overread email, to the point that
a very conservative approach to its use would always be advisable to our
students. The combination of apparent informality of a medium, and
absolute permanence (combined with the ability to both send an e-mail
anywhere at any time, or keep it indefinitely) makes it an extremely
dangerous medium, much like chat and the social networks, in which you
are lured to be completely honest, and at the same time have the
constant possibility of having your words travel the world, or be stored
forever and then travel the world- hanging over your head. It is
actually the permanent features of weblogs and the electronic media, the
fact that they are archived forever, or forever turning up in Google, or
there to be translated, run through a computer translator, or read by
one's enemies, years later, which are perhaps the scariest thing about
electronic media as a communication tool, the very features which have
made older generations leery of the medium, yet this is a dichotomy that
the young are somehow quite comfortable with. We always hear, "it's so
personal, so immediate, so engaging," referring to weblogs, or perhaps
Twitter, or chat- yet what is really profound, and scary, is the feeling
that, having burned words into cyberspace, there will forever be a
burned spot somewhere, waiting to reveal us and our true thoughts. The
sense of privacy, as we knew and once valued it- gone forever.
This is the teacher's dilemma, for, as I've said, young students don't
generally have a problem with it.
bibliography
Leverett, T. (2007). Student weblogging
for fluency, integration, and skills, Writing IS, Demonstration,
TESOL 2007, Seattle WA, Mar.
Leverett, T. (2006a, Aug.). This is your class
on weblogs. Teaching English with Technology 6, 3. IATEFL
Poland Computer SIG Publication.
http://www.iatefl.org.pl/call/j_tech25.htm#cla. Accessed 3-07.
Leverett, T. (2006b, Aug.). Three ways to
integrate weblogging into your writing classes. Teaching English
with Technology 6, 3. IATEFL Poland Computer SIG Publication.
http://www.iatefl.org.pl/call/j_tech25.htm#way.
Leverett, T. (2006c). This is your
class: This is your class on weblogs, from Daring to enter
the blogosphere. Prog. Admin. IS, Paper, TESOL Convention, Tampa,
FL, Mar.
Leverett, T. (2005). One teacher's
perspective on weblogs in a curriculum, from Leverett & Montgomerie,
Teaching teachers
to use and teach with weblogs, Internet Fair, CALL-IS, TESOL 2005,
San Antonio, March.
Stevens, V. (2008, Feb. 4). All I know about blogging and microblogging.
adVancEducation.
http://advanceducation.blogspot.com/2008/02/all-i-know-about-blogging-
and.html. Accessed 2-08.
[ CESL ][cesl students' weblogs ][ cesl teachers' weblog ][ Tom Leverett's weblog ][ This is your brain:
this is your brain on weblogs ]
 Page maintained
by
Thomas
Leverett, CESL, SIUC
Photo above (Leap of Faith) by Kurt Larsen.
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