Bridging the Gap

There were a few parts of the reading that really caught my attention, and made me think long and hard about the general ideas behind a composition class. The example of David Damon, I think, is far more common than any teacher would like to recognize. David was in college in 1999, and he seemed to be ahead of the times. I have had plenty of students who were unable to leave their computer or phone talk behind when they began writing for class, and as teachers, we need to find a way to deal with this (not by failing them).  Selfe's article seems to point out the fact that David didn't fail because of inability or lack of intelligence, but rather, because his teachers were unable to find a way to connect his life and experiences with what he was supposed to be learning in class. I recognize that text speak and Internet dialog is not considered proper diction for academia, but somehow we need to find a way to bridge the gap between how students write in their personal and professional lives. If people, like David, can be so successful in business and website design, should they be dismissed from a university because they couldn't pass a comp class? David is already doing well, but couldn't he possibly be doing better with a few business or design classes under his belt? It seems that there is something drastically wrong here. Of course I believe that writing is an important tool for every individual, and I think that David gave teachers a glimpse of today almost 20 years ago. Just because students can't form a sentence in a manner that the teacher considers "proper", does that mean the meaning is lost? If students can communicate, and in David's case I would venture to say communicate well, then there is no doubt that we can and should find a way to make room for these people in our classrooms. 

Another thing I wanted to mention briefly, was the activity "colorful handwriting" Anne Wysocki talks about. This idea really excited me! I am not sure I could incorporate it into the class (Eng 111) I am teaching now. However, in the future I would really like to. As soon as I read it I could see the benefits of this exercise--not to mention how much fun it would be. I think it would be an especially interesting way to look at tone. I know that if I was doing this assignment, I would use red when angry, blue when calm, etc. I wonder if others would do the same? Sorry for the tirade, I just really thought that was a neat activity.