School contributes to the current reading and writing practices I engage in today. The university professors on campus seem to really want to know students opinions and encourage students to write out their opinions on class websites in blog posts. When I think back to my childhood I remember writing in a diary or journal, even when my sentences didn’t make any sense. Because I loved writing in my journal I learned to love writing in school. I think a person’s practice of reading and writing really depends on the home life. I learned to love to read because my mother loves to read. If I didn’t grow up around that I don’t even know if I would enjoy practicing reading and writing as a child or in present time.

Multimedia technologies, variety of text forms, culturally and linguistically diverse societies are the first topics discussed in the “New London Group” article. Proliferations of communication channels have created an increase in linguistic practices and usage of technology text forms. These practices are also described as a term discussed in the article, literacy pedagogy. Literacy pedagogy has “meant teaching and learning to read and write in page-bound, official, standard forms of the national language.”  This article is targeted to educators because it is about the different types of learning practices within literacy. The beginning of the article states that the authors “argue that the multiplicity of communication channels and increasing cultural and linguistic diversity in the world today call for a much broader view of literacy than portrayed by traditional language-based approaches.” Multilitericies will essentially enable students to achieve an author’s goal or goals for literacy learning.

“Revolutions in communication technology; and the growth of print culture so saturating that it has become a principal means by which some children learn to talk.”

“The piling up and and extending out of literacy and its technologies give a complex flavor event to elementary acts of reading and writing today.”

“What we calculate as a rising standard of basic literacy may be more usefully regarded as the effects of a rapid proliferation and diversification of literacy.”

These statements have been pulled out of the Brandt-Accumulating article because I feel like this is the genre of literacy I started school in. The growth of communication technology is how many children express themselves. A students expressions could be written in a blog and online communication sites. For college students a way of expression is acted through online class discussion boards. This gives flexibility for the shy students to truly learn how to talk and be heard leading to an effect of rapid growth and spreading of literacy.These literacy and technologies can also bring a complicated twist to elementary acts of reading and writing today because slang terms and improper statements could be considered acceptable on personal online blog/communication rooms. The literacy fear in this is that people will forget how to write a socially acceptable literate sentence.

I thought it was interesting when Brandt talked about church-dominated societies. People could only read in order to learn the right behavior. The social view went from an avenue to morality into an indication of moral behavior. Schools today still practice this idea of “reading to learn the right behavior” because students read to learn how to write the right way; the way society wants it to be.

I am taking Engl 431 and part of that class is to intern in a ENGL 030 class. The past few weeks the students have been letting myself and the student instructor know what they are doing in their English 130 academic classes. They described their classes as:

1. “Our teacher wants us to give presentations on the major we chose and interview people in our major field. example political science major will interview a parole officer.”

2. “We write blog posts on pinterest pictures.”

I have always considered myself as an opened minded person considering any type of writing as a literacy practice. But I didn’t react that way…When I heard these students say what they were doing in their classes I felt like blurting out “BUT THAT’S NOT A COMPOSITION ACADEMIC WRITING PRACTICE!!”. It goes to show that apparently deep down I don’t think all types of writing practices should be considered literacy practices. I think Academic Writing should be specifically Academic structured writing, not fun blog posts that can happen later on in your major. I took English 130 here at Chico State almost three years ago and I wrote essays on exciting topics but my essays were structured properly. Since when are presentations considered writing composition class practices? Obviously literacy practices of Academic Writing have changed on this campus. I just thought my reaction was interesting and wanted to share it

Many things can fall in the category of a social view of literacy. In class on Thursday all of us students mainly talked about what falls into the social view of literacy. Most of us just talked about reading instead of writing. I think people focus so much on reading as a main literacy practice because people can learn basic writing skills by reading other people’s material. It seems like writing that takes place every day in an average Joe’s life isn’t considered a writing literacy practice. In a day to day routine people may write business letters, emails, Facebook posts, etc. This practice of writing isn’t considered a literacy practice anymore because people have incorporated slang or incorrect spelling into these activities. Sometimes I think this doesn’t affect people, but I can also so the slang and incorrect spelling as being a problem; it can go either way.  In our diverse society there are different religious institutes, different parenting moral, and different state school standards. All of these three groups can have an effect on the social view of literacy. Parents can restrict their children from reading comic books because they think comic books are immature and won’t educate their child but then this leads their child to not read at all. Sometimes a public protest can take place on certain books even though the book can enhance literacy skills; an example is churches wanting to ban Harry Potter out of school libraries because it is witch craft.

When I think of literacy as an individual pursuit I think of a new parent wanting to read books about parenting, religious people wanting to read their Bible, sports fans reading blogs online about certain player’s statistics and improvement etc. If people relied on just individual pursuit to gain and improve literacy skills I definitely think some basic skills would be obtained by those who are willingly reading. My fear is that some people just don’t like reading. It’s not the fact that they can’t find their reading genre muse, or that they feel stupid, but I think people literally just don’t enjoy reading it just isn’t fun. This kind of reminds me of the people who just won’t read the directions to put a new product together. Why read when they can just jump in and use trial and error to just figure it out as they go.

The reading that I do in my life is honestly the reading I have to do to get the career I want. I consider this individual pursuit as well as forced. Sometimes I don’t want to read because I am tired of a long day of four classes and five hours of work and I literally don’t want to read anything. My only motivation to read when I hit these circumstances is “there’s going to be a test on this I should probably read it and just be exhausted until I graduate” and that is my individual pursuit kicking in.