Bizzell's great conglomerated theory really appeals to me. I am interested in her ideas about discourse communities. I've been noticing over the last week how true this is. At our school, we work extensively with our students on culture. Lots of time is spent in exploring and mapping out teen culture, the family's culture, our school culture, and our community's culture. We use Venn diagrams (overlapping circles) to help the kids see that some of how they behave and express themselves with their families or their peers is appropriate for school or the workplace, and some is not.
People who are able to judge what sort of behavior is required in a social situation have more confidence and, usually, more success. I believe it would be a great gift to our students to help them identify the type of writing required in a situation, and help them gain the tools to do whatever kind of writing will succeed. This definitely hearkens back to the rhetorical triangle of audience-purpose-occasion.
I am eager to start working with kids to identify their various discourse communities (including the ones they don't yet know they will belong to) and really nailing down the types of writing required in each. It's a tantalizing idea, and one that I think could actually help out all our students, even the "good" writers.
Thank for a great presentation, Shaynee.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment