To text-speak or not to text-speak

Technology has changed the way students write in some forums, and it is necessary for students to know the difference. There are different genres and formats for writing professionally, so why shouldn’t they be able to distinguish when their informal writing is not appropriate?

In an online discussion forum, high school English teacher Valerie Mattessich wrote the following post:

I am starting reading-response blogs with my students and am torn between allowing them to use text-speak on their blogs, which will maximize authenticity, and requiring proper capitalization and punctuation, which will make me feel better as an English teacher but may ruin the whole point of blogging for them. Thoughts anyone?

The question posed above is simple to answer if you consider the purpose of the blog. Is the blog to encourage reflective or maybe prewriting activities for more formal writing? If so, then students should be able to write how they feel comfortable because the primary goal is to get their ideas flowing. Hampering them with formal constraints in a personal environment (blog) they create to reflect themselves, seems conflicting. If the purpose of the blog is to encourage them to write publicly and establish themselves as an authority on different subjects, then more formal writing should be required.

This seems to be a “hot” topic in our profession yet I have not personally experienced the issue in assignments.  Have I ever? Yes, but rarely, and it is not the common occurrence that teachers, administrators and parents seem so worried about. At least it is not evident on the surface. Instead, I am more concerned that while the sentence styles are formal and properly punctuated, the content of the essays are becoming more brief and disjointed, likely a reflection of social media and web influence.

Instead of students having difficulty “code-switching” they seem to have more difficulty writing a lengthy, linear essay with a developing argument or supporting points.

 

 

 

 

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Celebrate All Reading and Writing

Amber Heffernan’s article, “Rethinking Graphic Novels in the Classroom: Broadening Our Concepts of Literature to Benefit Readers” helped me recall a fond undergraduate student memory. I was taking a 300-level creative writing course focused on short fiction. It was the first day of class and the professor arranged us into a circle. She started by introducing herself and describing her writing and authors of inspiration. Students subsequently did the same, almost. A few students tried to impress her with classic and/or trendy, respected authors of the time, but a few students were more honest and cited authors like Danielle Steele as their favorites. The professor and dignified students snickered and judged outwardly.

Finally, when it was my turn, I talked about what I was currently reading and writing and it wasn’t exactly profound. I might have been reading RubyFruit Jungle and writing ridiculous love poems, but at least they were honest reads and writes. Sure, I had likely recently read Beloved, but I didn’t choose it, another prof did, so I didn’t offer it up or pretend to be enthralled and inspired. In closing, I praised the other students who read Danielle Steele and Stephen King and their goals to be as accomplished as them because at least their books were being read and not gathering dust on some pretentious bookcase.

Heffernan has the right idea, albeit kicking and screaming the whole way, validate reading of writing! We want students to learn to read and write with academic or discipline literacy, but we won’t celebrate the reading they do now? Learning starts with confidence and for a lack of a better term–a starting point. Heffernan designed a legitimate lesson plan using a graphic story, and just like with the classics, she won some and lost some, despite the cool and trendy genre.

When is Talking Teaching?

Schenbach and Greenleaf highlight to classroom studies in “Fostering Adolescents’ Engaged Academic Literacy.” In a history course, the teacher’s “monitoring of the students’ reading as they think aloud with partners to surface and solve comprehension problems is strategic. She is helping students build a repertoire of strategies for this kind of rigorous work with text, punctuating students’ sustained work with metacognitive conversations (Schoenbach, Greenleaf, Cziko, & Hurwitz, 1999) and discussions of the text” (109). At the same time they are learning history, and they know it.

I love to teach writing but sometimes I wish I could teach a different subject, like maybe history. I’m sure it’s not any easier. It just seems less murky. I don’t really even get to teach literature. I teach writing. That is my charge. Sure, I can use a short story as a prompt for writing, but if I spend too much time talking about the story versus writing, one of my students looks at me like, “Hey, this ain’t no lit class. Are we going to be tested on this story next week?”

I am tired of trying to justify to my students why we “talk” about material other than “the act of writing” in a writing class. If we talk about an essay in the book and look at the author’s strategies, it seems grounded enough for them. But I often feel like when we talk about a topic, any topic, as an example to work together to develop an outline, or maybe an introductory paragraph strategy, they think we are “off topic” because we aren’t talking about writing.

Yet, as far back as Plato, the dialectic is the means to discovering truths or maybe even “the truth” about a topic. Right? What are we supposed to do? Write about writing? Sometimes I am tempted to give that assignment (writing about writing) to the student who doesn’t see the point of discussing the topic or “content” of an essay to at least some extent. Instead, what seems to work most of the time is to shift gears and ask the student what is his or her topic for the next assignment and have a group discussion on that topic.  And just like a bad date, we love to talk about ourselves. Before they know it, as a group we have helped the student consider points he or she hadn’t even thought of previously, and the student is taking notes that will help develop their essay later.

But do they even see how they are learning and developing as writers by talking about (insert topic here)?