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last.updated 1.23.13

 

Further Definitions of Literacy


Purpose

Throughout the century there have been competing arguments about what literacy is, what literacy does, and what literacy should be. We will begin to begin to address these issues and think about there applicability to English Studies.


Before Class

  • Buy textbook
  • Respond to instructor's introductory email
  • Read Ong "Writing is a Technology..." [BB]
  • Read Olsen "Writing and the Mind" [BB]
  • Read Scribner and Cole "Unpacking Literacy" [BB]
  • Read Wysocki and Johnson-Eilola "Blinded by the Letter" [BB]

Discussion I–Being an Academic Reader

As a class we will discuss the strategies you used to read and understand these texts.

  • What strategies do you use to understand the scholarship?
  • What do you do when you do not understand something you read?

Discussion II–What is Literacy: A Historical Perspective

Ong, Olson, and Scribner & Cole provide fairly clinical explanations of literacy. We will discuss the following:

  • What questions do you have about these texts?
  • What are their arguments?
  • Ong and Olson mostly disagree on the relationship between speech and writing? Where do you position yourself in this debate? How is this relationship significant to English Studies?
  • Although Scribner and Cole position their implications outside of the classroom? Are their implications applicable to the English Studies classroom, especially considering the ways the classroom is being conceived at more progressive institutions?
  • What definitions of literacy are you beginning to develop based upon these readings? If most bodies at an academic institution beleive that the English department is responsible for students being literate, what then is the responsibility of this department? What should it be?

Discussion III–X Literacy

What Does it Mean to be Literate in the 21st Century?

Wysocki and Johnson-Eilola question the ways that literacy is appropriated as a metaphor, especially in terms of technology education. We will discuss the following:

  • What questions do you have about this article?
  • What are their arguments?
  • How would they respond to the video?
  • What other knowledges in English Studies should we cautiously attach "literacy" to?

Freewrite & Discussion III–What does it mean to be literate in English Studies?

You will be given ten minutes to write on the following question: What does it mean to be be literate in English Studies? Another way to think about this question is to ask yourselves: What literacies should students who earn a BA in English Studies have learned by the time they graduate? Also address the question: How does this differ from what it means to be literate after earning one's undergraduate degree?

To answer this question, your group should contextualize your English Department.

  • What type of institution are you at?
  • How does your English Department define English Studies? (You may choose to look at some of your programs to get an idea, but don't spend a lot of your time doing this).

We will discuss your answers.