15. Academic Literacy in a Wired World

Academic Literacy in a Wired World
by Alice L. Trupe

“Institutions issue the mandate, "Teach students to write," to English departments and composition instructors, begs the question, "Write what?"”
(I really like this question prompted by the writer- It happened to me as well at the meeting with my university president last year)

As a language teacher, the writer has seen the dramatic impact of computer technology on the ways people communicate. The rhetorically effective texts produced in email, chat, and hypertext environments require a new set of literacy skills of their authors. Having witnessed these changes, some key questions have been proposed:

- How should an undergraduate writer demonstrate academic literacy in a wired world?
- Can we continue to assume that freshman writers should be assimilated into the academy by learning essayist skills?
- What should an academically literate students’ text look like?

There are many rhetorical aspects that make electronic text different from traditional print texts.
- Most of them are interactive, and they routinely contain graphic elements.
- Interactivity implies that writers expect response from real readers.
- Email messages and conference posts address specific audiences or individuals and are so designated within the text, instead of being designed for the composition classroom.
- In electronic environments, it is far easier to create situations that develop collaborative skills.
- The audience for email and electronic conference posts is concrete and personal.
- To build effective Web pages, students must develop the ability to think of texts in meaningful sections that may be linked in a variety of ways, instead of weaving the sections into a cohesive whole by using transitional devices.
- Hypertext is truly process-based, with the reader participating in the interactive process of constructing the text as a whole.
- Web hypertexts must incorporate graphic elements, possibly animation, sound, or video elements as well as verbal elements
- Writing for the Web privileges artistic abilities as it is so easy to incorporate desktop publishing techniques, including graphics, where the traditional essay privileges verbal abilities alone.


Traditional Academic Rhetorical Features
Features in the essay that demonstrate school writing competence or indicate lack of competence in a first-year student writer's text are
- Length
- Thesis statement
- Clear cues / organization
- Familiarity of the expected wording and tone in academic text
- Stylistic choices
- Development of voice
- Conventions of “standard English”

Electronic texts may allow abbreviation and less convention on spelling, capitalization, and punctuation as they are intended to facilitate speed of communication. These texts always address specific audiences and allow interactivity; therefore they often lack of evidence, the supporting detail, and contextualizing information required in the traditional essay.
When teacher incorporate emails, chat, and web discussion, they should think about the different writing skills students are required to develop in electronic writing tasks. What kind of literacy are they being taught and been practicing?


My Opinion on this article:

EFL teachers have been using emails and chat in their language classroom and encouraging electronic communication as supplementary practice for EFL students.
Those questions raised by Alice L. Trupe have given alternative views on the electronic literacy in language classroom. What students are expected to do may not concur with what they are trained for. Teachers should be aware of the discrepancies between the traditional skills of essay writing and hypertext authoring.