The plenary speaker was Ann Johns, professor emerita of linguistics and writing studies at SDSU. Her speech, entitled "Literacy for Life," addressed the new challenges for life literacies. For example, our students are now more visually literate than "print literate"; therefore, should we continue to ignore their genres such as "My Space"?
For best teaching practices, Ann Johns wanted us to--
- determine current literacy practices and previous instruction
- In this election year, our students may be receiving election literature in the mail.
- Their previous literacy instruction may have narrowly focused on
- the five-paragraph essay
- the fiction genre
- the rule of never beginning a sentence with "But"
- the rule of never using first person singular in writing
- examine our students' immediate, and future, literacy demands
- We should consider collecting writing prompts from various disciplines to inform our classroom teaching.
- We should realize that there are four kinds of academic papers to teach, not just one.
- Many of our students have no plan when reading. So they either keep their textbooks clean or highlight everything.
- Other people will measure the success of our students, not us.
- promote various literacies for life
- use reading as the basis for all skills and encourage reading practices that can be applied to multiple texts and contexts
- making a plan for reading, purpose-driven reading, prompts for reading
- predicting content from the title and other features
- noticing the text macro-structure and how the writer leads the reader through the text
- interacting with the writer by highlighting the text and asking questions
- noticing how language (grammar/lexicon) is used by the writer
- summarizing or paraphrasing sections of the text (A method to teach paraphrase is using this formula: "...says...means...the importance of...")
- managing, analyzing, and synthesizing multiple streams of information
- applying the readings and other streams of information purposefully--to a variety of real-life tasks including responding to mandatory exams demanded by others
- model writing practices for multiple texts and contexts
- assign writing under different conditions including collaborative ones where students are evaluated by each other
- encourage planning before writing, perhaps by using headings and subheadings
- promote reflections and meta-cognition
- ask students to reflect on their own changing literacies, answering questions such as--
- How was my writing process for this assignment different from my process for the last assignment? (a good "quick write" topic as a warm-up in a writing class)
- What do I need to continue to work on? (name specific terms, not just "I need to work on grammar")
- foster student research into literacy contexts
- Students can ask of a text that the teacher or they have collected, such as election fliers:
- Why is this text valued in this context or community?
- Who owns this text? Who suffers from it?
- ensure that assessments are fair and mirror your teaching outcomes
- portfolios, especially as a means to appeal in cases where students fail timed writing exams
- both formative and summative assessments that count. Give students points for:
- peer and self-review
- reflection and analysis
- collaboration
- Understanding Students Who Were “Born Digital”
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/10/02/digital - Where Literacy Is Headed
http://www.ncte.org/about/gov/cgrams/news/130271.htm - Needs Assessment for Adult Learners
http://www.ericdigests.org/1998-1/esl.htm - Creating Effective Writing Prompts
http://www.nwrel.org/eval/writing/DEPrompts.pdf - The Five Paragraph Essay Considered as Kudzu, a Shoebox, a Crutch, and Training Wheels
http://granades.com/2007/04/18/the-five-paragraph-essay-considered-as-kudzu-a-shoebox-a-crutch-and-training-wheels/ - ESP and the Curse of Caliban
http://fds.oup.com/www.oup.com/pdf/elt/library_classics/explorations_c14.pdf?cc=global
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