Part 2—Going Online

Creating New Communities

Sharing studies of discourse communities creating a classroom discourse community

Expanding the classroom walls with an online site

Preparing students for an academic literacy environment that now includes online interaction

Our Project

To design An interactive website for our freshman

writing courses, an alternative to our campus LMS, working from within the specific context of our composition curriculum

A space for a writing community that values the prior knowledge students bring and that facilitates their interaction as they reshape and extend that knowledge

Students In Our Writing Communities

Participate in a new communicative setting

Can acquire and shape new insider ways

Connect prior ways and new ones through ongoing participation

Students on Our Online Sites

Can alsoFind a bridge

between the online worlds they experience outside the classroom and the new ones they will encounter in academia

On Our Online Site

We wanted to foreground the

real diversity of our classrooms

make a place for students’ different voices and experiences

On Our Online Site

We wanted to create a space

where students would share their writing with a real audience

Would become good peer readers of each others’ writing

Sharing online

Now students would post all of their informal inquiries and drafts of longer reports.

They would read and comment as readers and fellow researchers on each others’ work

They could take time to skim the work of many of their classmates, deciding whose work to engage with

Together we could discover patterns across their different communities/different studies

Ade—recently arrived from Nigeria

Ade: a good story

Osas: Hey Ade let me tell you about something that happened today.

Ade: What? Ivie: Na lie, Na lie. Ade: Wait one after the other. Osas: Ivie just come from school today. … My

sister wan dey form yankie. She say one boy dey disturb am for bus (school bus) nai she just shout, shut up! Everybody for the bus just silent.

Ade: Hey for my sister mind oh.

Ade: what makes a good story

We find it funny when anyone of us is trying to form or act in the American style or used the American accent, which is different from ours. . .

For someone in my house to say “wad up duh?” would be funny not because it is wrong but because of the language, style and voice. We speak Pidgin English, which is not the Standard English.

Ade: speech acts—greeting

When I wake up every morning, the first thing Ido when I see my father is to greet him in ournative language ‘laloke’. In my community it isexpected that when you wake up in the morningyou greet your elders in the native language. It isa common practice of respect, tradition and love.Although in today’s society children in mycommunity, often want to imitate othercommunities that say ‘hi’ to their parents andfolks in the morning.

Ade: values

I still think of my place in both societies; I

feel like I am on the margin of two cultural

worlds but not fully a member of anyone of

them. I like cultural practices of close

relations among family members. I believe

in respect for one another. But I do not feel

that a man should be ‘all that.’

Jonathan: African American and Puerto Rican

Jonathan: from transcript—about baseball game, job interview

David: So all the fucking runners advance.

Jonathan: If the bases are loaded.

David: naww… they weren’t loaded and they

just advanced the nigga on third … know

it’s six four.

David: Fucking bitch.

Jonathan on transcript

David is mad and so he decides to say, “So

all the fucking runners advance”. When we

are together all language is acceptable. We

are not polite because this is our own

discourse community. This is a community

that will not put judgment on you for

swearing, because we all swear.

Jonathan on transcript 2

When David saw the New York Yankee, from third base walk to home plate and score he replies by saying, “Naww”… they weren’t loaded and they just advanced the “nigga” on third… now it’s six to four Yankees”. “Naww” is slang for the word no. In our community the word “nigga” is common. We say the word every day. . .We only use this word when we are in our discourse community

Jonathan: Community Norms

Proper English is not proper in my

discourse Community. To speak in proper

English means that you are a nerd, or a

snob.

Jonathan: connections to other research

The similarities that I find between the high school boys in "The Informal Group" by Paul Willis and my discourse community is the childhood ways of having fun. When we are all together we like to have fun and joke around. Having fun keeps our minds away from our problem and difficult decisions in life. "If you’re feeling bad, your mate'll soon cheer yer up like, 'cos you couldn't go with out ten minutes in this school, without having a laugh at something or other," said Joey (p. 293). Like “the lads,” we are just trying to have fun. We laugh "to defeat boredom and fear, to overcome hardships and problems-as a way out of almost anything." (Willis, pg. 299).

Ade on Jonathan’s research

While I read through his work, I thought of my younger brother who is also 18 and his friends. Sometimes when I hear him talk, I know his group of friends is not much different from Jonathan’s group. They try to form words and give meaning to what they have formed. This keeps them going as insiders and leave outsiders feeling odd.

I found out that someone who is always speaking Standard English might not feel comfortable in their community. People who speak, Standard English always may run the risk of being teased if he or she joins the group.

Ade on Jonathan’s Research

I was most intrigued by his report because of the discourse community he chose to study. In his first sentence he says, ‘in my discourse community we are family’. I had thought he was going to write about his immediate family or family relatives. I now understand how my brother feels about his friends and why he speaks English in ways that my family thinks of as bad.

Students learn

• about varieties of English and why people might use different varieties in different settings

• about the richness of different languages, dialects, discourses and the complex relationships between them

• about the fact that academic discourses are also complex and varied, with different insider terms and shared values

Students’ Responses to the Website

Most visited the website frequently and used it to extend their contact with the classroom community.

They gained a richer understanding of others’ communities.

They liked sharing conversation about writing and growth in writing

What We Learned

Technology is effective when it supports: Student inquiry Student authority Authentic sharing of work Informal as well as formal writing