And just in case you were wondering...........

I figured you may be on the edge of your seat wondering how that essay finished up...........A week or two later, sitting in my lecture and eagerly awaiting some kind of feedback, my lecturer announced that the assignments were back but were “of a particularly low standard with the average mark being around 58%”. Naturally I assumed that, being away from any kind of formal education from so long, mine was one of the more mediocre of the bunch. However, after retrieving my marked assignment and realising that I received a HD my worries about whether I was capable of writing at a university standard where alleviated.

The missing fourth element of the 4 resourses model

Since my analysis skipped over the code breaker element of the four resources model, I thought some of you might be interested to learn more about it. These two videos I found I think are really interesting and explore different aspects of the code breaker element. The first by Steven Pinker discusses language code breaking and the other by Deb Roy discusses language development itself. 

Analysis of a reflection

The experience that I mentioned in the previous post has been cast in a new light since I began studying literacies. I am realising that there was more going on than nerves and self-doubt. It occurs to me know that three elements of the four resources model (Ludwig, 2003, Santoro, 2003) are relevant to my experience in a significant way. However, before we get to that I feel I should mention the changing nature of literacy itself.

In the first few weeks of studying literacies it became apparent that the historical concept of literacy just relating to reading and writing is now considered far too narrow and restrictive (Cazden, et al, 1996). This seems to have been replaced by the concept of multiliteracies, which has come to refer to a whole range of communication mediums from pictures and gestures to multimodal and digital communications and also the very way we use and understand texts as well as the way we interact in social situations (Santoro, 2003).

This change in the concept of literacies applies to my experience of doing my first uni assignment in that I had to quickly become proficient at finding resources online. If I was not literate in modern technology, or if I lacked the financial resources or cultural knowledge needed to make best use of internet access, I would have been excluded from a great deal of information that would be freely available to others (Anstey & Bull, 2004). It is strange to think that I could be, as someone who can read and write fluently, considered “illiterate” under this wide definition of multiliteracies, had I not the ability to be tech savvy.

As I mentioned earlier, my experience is closely linked to three of the four aspects of the four resources model (Ludwig, 2003, Santoro, 2003). While code breaker is not overly relevant, the other three aspects all help shed light new light on my experience. When I first was faced with the essay my pre-existing knowledge, both cultural and linguistic, was the first thing I called upon. While I many not have possessed the skills back then to write the essay straight off the bat, my pre-existing cultural and linguistic knowledge meant I knew how I could go about learning more. This shows how I was using the text participant part of the four resources model (Santoro, 2003).

In terms of being a text user, I mentioned that I had a lot of experience writing in different modalities such as business reports and staff evaluations and the structures appropriate to them. However I had to now take my knowledge of writing and apply it in a way that I had never applied it before. I had to work out what style, structures and tone would be appropriate for this new level (Santoro, 2003). This meant learning to use text in a way that was relatively new to me.

Finally, after realising that I needed to know more about how to write an essay, I went back to previous things I had read and focused solely on how they had written rather than what they had written. I looked at how different authors had used their words to influence their readers and how this changed from author to author and from journal article to book. This allowed me to understand how the same content could be posed in different ways and to enable different understandings or to promote different opinions just by changing the writing style or tone (Santoro, 2003). It was in this way that I was engaging with the text analyst part of the model. 

One last thing I wanted to mention is that I think the study of literacies so far has also helped explain why I had such a sense of apprehension when writing the essay. I had just left a long term appointment as the manager of a business of which I had almost complete control. In this context, I was confident and well trained and this lead to a high level of self-efficacy. However, I had entered a new social context, that of university, and realised that I may not possess the skills needed to fully participate in it. I now realise that my apprehension was not based simply on whether or not I could do the essay, but moreover that a failure to master this new form of literacy may mean a lower level of social inclusion and sense of personal empowerment within this context (Wallis, 2005)

So there we have it. I am finding that the more I study literacies, the more new light is shed on my past learning experiences. This in turn, I hope, will positively influence how I go about teaching in the future.

Reflections on a remembered beginning

It had been 9 years between leaving school and beginning university. It was the fourth week of my first semester and up until then I had been confident that my decision to leave my job and apply for uni (undertaken entirely within the space of a single afternoon) was a brilliantly bold decision. However, now faced with my first essay it suddenly all became a bit real and a sense of unease came over me. In 9 years I had written little more than memos, notices to staff, evaluations and business reports. Could I even write an essay? I mean, I was OK at it in school, and I had read quite a lot of books in the time away, but did that mean I could actually write an essay myself that would be of university standard? The cold realisation that I had never actually been taught how to write an essay in the first place did nothing for my growing apprehension.

I had done plenty of research on the topic so knew my information well. One of the first things that struck me was the ease of access to information due to the internet. The internet had been in its infancy when I was at school so the access to the flood of academic literature was both surprising and welcome. Despite this solid knowledge base, actually articulating what I wanted to say was posing a problem. I went back to a few articles and a few books from my favourite authors, not to try to learn more about my topic but, for the first time, to look at how they had used the language to convey what they wanted to say. The journal articles seemed concise and dry, whilst the books seemed articulate and flowing. I decided I wanted a mix of both. After a few rewrites and plenty of time spent staring at a flashing cursor I finished my essay and submitted it.