Extended Essay 1

For centuries, since the acts of reading and writing were first formed, the way that people read and write has been changing constantly.  We are now entering an era in which the way we read and write is being influenced by rapidly advancing new technologies and the Internet.  This brings concern to many people as to whether or not the changes occurring in this day and age are either beneficial or detrimental to the “problems” the U.S. has regarding literacy.  According to the website Dictionary.com, which I was able to reach instantly thanks to the marvel of the internet, to be literate is to be “1. able to read and write. 2. having or showing knowledge of literature, writing, etc.; literary; well-read.” One of the first aspects of reading and writing we covered in Unit 1 of this writing course was the phenomenon of the internet and how it has changed the way writers are able to reach and share pieces that they write with their audiences at an immense scale, while also providing instant access to the reader’s interests.  The second piece of writing that we were provided with in this unit was the article Is Google Making Us Stupid, written by Nicholas Carr, in which the writer mentions that he and other writers have noticed a bit of a change in the way they read.  Next, we were exposed to the pessimistic article written by Chris Hedges.  He explains that America is trapped in a dependency for image based information, and that the minority of the people that live in the U.S. are actually living in the literate world.  The last two pieces that we read for this unit are completely based on the topic of literacy.  One of the articles, written by Sylvia Scribner, called Literacy in Three Metaphors, gave us a neutral scientific analysis of literacy, while the other, written by Andrea Lunsford, Our Semi-illiterate Youth? Not So Fast, shows us the opinion of the writer backed up by two social studies.

             Sullivan shares his love for reading and writing through his explanation of the phenomenon of blogging in his opinion.  To begin, the author mentions the connection between blogs and the act of keeping logs in past times.  They are different in a sense that through blogs, the author can compose a small piece of writing and reach his audience at the click of a button to just a few seconds, while logs were recorded for long periods of time and were not available to other readers until the traveler arrived at his destination.  But on the other they have the similar component of providing a sort of enlightenment or entertainment through the act of writing and expressing opinions and personalities.  The writer was first exposed to the world of blogging when he encountered the website, “blogger,” which is coincidentally the same website we have been using to blog in this course.  He recognized that it was necessary for him to have a presence in the new and rapidly expanding online universe.  In his article, Sullivan indirectly sheds a bit of light on the fear of illiteracy by explaining that blogs create an open table for writers to let go of their writing and become exposed to others that will then provide feedback.

            Nicholas Carr recalls being able to “immerse himself in a book or a lengthy article” (Carr).  The author seems to share that he is developing some sort of attention deficit disorder as he notices that he tends to dose off after just several pages of a piece of writing.  One part of Carr’s article that stood out to me was the way that he states the fact that he is not the only one that is noticing a change in the way people read today.  Other writers have also begun to observe that they read books very little or close to none, which shows how the Internet has caused the ultimate demise of information shared through writing in the form of books.  This has created a new type of way to read, which is known as power browsing.

            To ridicule the country from which you hail can most commonly be seen as a taboo in the U.S.  The way that Chris Hedges does this is by explaining that the people in this country are becoming completely dependent on image-based information, rather than information shared through books as it was in the past.  The writer dives into the topic of presidential candidates and the fact that they are forced to lower the speaking level of their speeches to one of a 6^th grader, while in the past, presidential candidates spoke with a speaking level of a 12^th grader or higher, which I find to be a little saddening coming from one of the leading countries of the world.  As I stated in one of my blogs for this unit, “knowing that presidential candidates are lowering their speaking levels to accommodate the majority of citizens, and that entertainment providers are shifting their outputs to lower quality levels due to the desired quality by the illiterate public is surprising…” (Hedges)

            Sylvia Scribner, an American psychologist and educational researcher that graduated with a masters and a PhD from well known schools, sheds a bit of light on the topic of literacy in her article Literacy in Three Metaphors, considering her extreme focus on the subject.  The way I comprehended her piece was that she separates literacy into three different stages, which one must work for.  The first is literacy as adaptation and it refers to “commonsense” literacy skills that most humans begin to develop early on in life.  The author describes the next stage, literacy as power, as a “relationship between literacy and group community advancement,” (Scribner) which is socio-political side of the culture of literacy.  The last stage, literacy as a state of grace, ties into religiously focused communities that have “the tendency…to endow the literate person with special virtues,” (Scribner) simply because they have the ability to read the texts.

            Unlike many of the other authors that we studied during this unit, Andrea Lunsford has an optimistic point of view regarding the change in reading and writing that is overcoming humans.  In a study of writing that Lunsford began about a decade ago, she had students not only write pieces that were required for school, but also “life writing,” which was to be concentrated on topics that the students were interested in.  It turns out that those students became much more enthusiastic and committed to the writing they did out of class.  The author states that we are becoming stronger in some fields of writing such as spelling, which has increased by 300% in the past 25 years thanks to a study she conducted.  Lunsford explains that the new type of writers just have different styles that they can incorporate for certain situations; such as using lingo when texting a friend, and then being able to switch from informal to completely formal for lets say a business report.  In the studies that were done by Lunsford, “these students did plenty of emailing, and texting; they were online a good part of every day; they joined social networking sites enthusiastically.  But rather than leading to a new illiteracy, these activities seemed to help them develop a range of writing styles, tones, and formats along with a range of abilities.” (Lunsford)

Works Cited

Carr, Nicholas. "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" The Atlantic. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Jan. 2013.

Hedges, Chris. "Chris Hedges: America the Illiterate - Chris Hedges' Columns -Truthdig." Truthdig Main News. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Jan. 2013.

Lunsford, Andrea. "Our Semi-literate Youth?" Stanford.edu. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Jan. 2013.

Scribner, Sylvia. "Literacy in Three Metaphors." Harringtontech. N.p., 3 Jan. 2007. Web. 28 Jan. 2013.

Sullivan. "Why I Blog." The Atlantic. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Jan. 2013.

Reflection

If we are going to consider the difficulty in this class, I have to admit that it has felt like a perfect workload with blog topics that do not seem to bore me to death.  I find myself being able to sit down and actually let the words flow from my head to the keyboard through my fingers.  The most challenging part of working with the posts has to be finding original and creative material after reading the material provided.  After learning that most writing is done as a response to another piece of writing I realized how extremely repetitive my writing really was of the reading that I had done in the past.  Another aspect of the experience so far in writing and responding for the blog posts that I found to be a bit challenging was writing the comments on other people’s blog posts.  It wasn’t the actual writing of the comments that was challenging; it was difficult to find errors in the writing of the other students.  Either I am too good of a person to critique another person’s writing, or I do not have the writing skills that are necessary to analyze and judge a piece of writing.  I have to say that the most interesting part of the experience so far, which is also the most surprising is the fact that I was intrigued by the majority of the reading assignments that we were given.

My attitude towards reading and writing on the Internet has changed in the sense that I am now more exposed to the action enough to understand why people do it.  It has also become a bit of a habit for me to browse through news sources on the web to become a informed on what goes on outside of my world.

Literacy

The title of Scribner’s article apparently provides us with the notion of what the writer is going to talk about.  She shares her thoughts on literacy in the form of three metaphors: literacy as adaptation, literacy as power, and literacy as a state of grace.  Literacy as adaptation refers to the simple “commonsense” literacy skills that many people develop in the early years of life.  Scribner states that “the literacy-as-power metaphor emphasizes a relationship between literacy and group community advancement,” and it dives into the socio-political aspect of literacy.  The last metaphor, literacy as a state of grace, tends to be understood implying “the tendency in many societies to endow the literate person with special virtues.”

Lunsford disagrees with the belief that the youth of our nation is quickly becoming illiterate and is able to back up her views with two studies on which she provides information about in her piece.  Her point of view is very obviously optimistic considering the changes that are occurring in the way that humans are reading and writing.  I agree with the fact that people are developing new ways to express through writing, but one thing that is not looked into was the obvious change in writing that has been going on for centuries now.

The opinions expressed by Sylvia Scribner and Andrea Lunsford in their texts, Literacy in Three Metaphors and Our Semi-literate Youth? Not So Fast, differ from those of Hedges and Carr greatly.  Hedges and Carr view the change in forms of reading and writing in a pessimistic manner, while Lunsford is confident in the changes and Scribner provides a sort of neutral scientific analysis of literacy.

Carr and Hedge

The writer mentions very early in his article that he feels as if his mind is changing in a particular way.  Noticing that he tends to dose off after several pages of a piece, Carr recalls being able to “immerse himself in a book or a lengthy article.”  Other writers stated having felt the same spectacle in the way that they read books, or in some cases stopped reading books altogether.  The simplicity of research brought on by the Internet, and the mass amount of information that has been posted on the Internet have ultimately outdated the use of books for people with the desire for instant information.  It seems as if there is a slight attention deficit disorder coming over the people that are most often on the Internet, which can be seen as a new form of reading (power browsing) where we gain a new sense of self where instead of being “What we read”, we become “How we read.”  It could be that Google is making us stupid, or our own thoughts are making us believe that we should limit ourselves to depending on a machine.  The thought of being “better off” with a piece of intelligence replacing our brains is simply sickening.

In a way, Hedges is ridiculing America for falling into the trap of the world of image based information, as he surely categorizes himself in the minority of people that are living in the literate world as he states.  I am starting to paint a mental picture in my head that the illiterate are faced with an endless ditch of suffering, filled with irresponsible presidential campaign votes, caused by multiple repeated lies set up by fake candidates.  This is consequently followed by a life of mal-education for children, and a lack of skills that are necessary for generic human self-sustainment.  Knowing that presidential candidates are now speaking at 6^th grade levels to accommodate the majority of citizens, and that entertainment providers are shifting their outputs to lower quality levels due to the desired quality by the illiterate public is surprising and at the same time, just plain sad.

The two writers, Carr and Hedge, have both realized a change in the way people are reading.  Carr simply and passively states that a new form of reading has emerged, while Hedge intensely critiques the way America has turned into a predominantly illiterate nation of adults with 6^th grade educations.

Reading and Writing (Defined)

In general, reading can be seen as a way for people on this planet to become enlightened.  This can be enlightenment in a very broad range of things.  Reading can also be a vehicle for someone to enter a completely different world when you consider novels.  Keeping up to date with current events in this kind of technologically advanced has become so easy that there are more and more people every day that are giving up on books and doing all of their reading online.

What I learned from Harris's reading that we were assigned was that writing can be looked at or defined as a move of some sort.  His novel really focuses on the concept of rewriting, hence the title of the book.  He talks a lot about how most writing is almost always in response to someone else's writing.  I  believe writing is mostly used when someone wants to express themselves.

Introduction and Coming to Terms – Blog 3

One of the first things that Joseph Harris mentions about writing in his novel, Rewriting, is the fact that most pieces of writing are formed in response to the work of others.  In turn, this makes the act of reading before writing that much more important.  Harris believes that “this interplay of ideas defines academic writing.”  He talks about what is necessary in the process of rewriting and what people need to do to turn already written pieces into their own writing, which includes avoiding plagiarism, documenting sources, citing authorities, and acknowledging influences.  But directly after he states this, Harris indicates that integrating these steps cut out the ability to truly delve into another persons writing in order to make it your own.

As the author describes the structure of the book, he reveals that chapter 1 will talk about the clearest form of rewriting, which is the representation of another’s work “in ways that are both fair to them and useful to your own aims in writing.”  I agree with Harris’ idea that there is no such thing as a completely accurate summary of a piece of writing, because there will always be a different set of eyes and different combinations of values that either approve or disapprove of someone else’s summary.  He later shares that “Coming to Terms” is to represent another work and to translate it into your own.

After reading both the piece by Andrew Sullivan and the first two chapters of Joseph Harris’ novel I got the feeling that they both had the same viewpoint that reading and writing are two very powerful instruments that people should use more often to communicate, while also becoming more aware of what is surrounding them.