William Cope
Nithin Kalorth
Jako Olivier
Ida Brandão
Mitchell PetersMultimodal Literacies MOOC’s Updates
Update #3 Issuer - recepient phenomenon
I have always been fascinated by the writing - issuer/ reading- recipient effect.
As a Teacher, when having writing lessons, I usually encounter in textbooks and workbooks the “proper” structure for writing, for example, an essay. We go through introduction, main ideas, supporting ideas, opinions and conclusions to teach the “proper” format of an essay.
Then the students have different kinds of exercises, not only that involve writing, but also the comprehension of a text, divided in chunks that they have to place in an specific part of the essay or different paragraphs that have to be placed in the correct order including introductory, main ideas, and conclusive paragraphs.
During this exercises students have discussed with me and their peers, their choices as correct. They argue about points of view and perspective, and to be sincere, sometimes I also believe the “Answer Key” is questionable.
I do understand that giving structure to a second language is absolutely necessary. On the other hand, I also believe that for non-scientific purpose texts, the writer should capture their particular essence in a text, and this means to “break” some rules.
As I stated at the beginning, the writer / issuer of a text writes up a plot which will be interpreted by the reader / recipient through its own experience, or as Skinner states, “Behaviorism”. Chomsky’s patterns of cognition are reflected in this interpretation of the text. So, how much of what we write arrives in the same meaning to the reader as the one originally conceived?
I am really interested in this phenomenon and would like to study in more detail. Thanks to the video of Grammar Multiliteracies and their 5 questions that involve “meaning” I believe writing can get less regulated and more conveyed to meaning. Now, some things don’t change and the 5 phases of the writing process I believe are totally current and give us the necessary structure to the text, whichever its meaning is.
https://www.ets.org/s/toefl-essentials/test-takers/
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/writing
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/essay-writing/?gclid=Cj0KCQjw8amWBhCYARIsADqZJoXYNOTp0wwbqpbskPhEJJwqx3GIVJpuowBUSa9eF2zKdjTNJK4Mu
Thank you for your post! This is an interesting topic. I am also a second language instructor, and it's interesting to compare what we teach from a textbook to how people actually speak the target language in their everyday lives. I teach French, and there's a huge difference between textbook French and how the typical French person speaks to their friends. I do believe that it's important for students to learn the rules before breaking them. I also think there's this idea students often have that if something is written, it must be perfect (perfect spelling, grammar, usage, sentence structure); but then I ask them if they speak or write their native language perfectly all the time, and they realize that they do not! I like to show students examples of more informal texts, like tweets and YouTube comments, to show that even native French speakers don't speak or write correctly all the time, and that they play with language, orally and in writing, just like English speakers, or speakers of any language, do. I usually do these sorts of activities with intermediate or advanced learners, as it's not as meaningful to beginners if they don't understand the basics yet.