A Story Worth Preserving

“But you know your mother really wanted you,” said Connie, seemingly hurt by what I was saying. I was standing in her living room, emphatically yelling and complaining about my parents, listing a litany of hurts that to my 18 year old mind were cruel and harsh wrongdoings. “And another thing,” I would continue. So much anger, so much that I needed to get out of my head, only words and emotion would do.

I thought about what Connie had said, it hadn’t registered at first, my mind a rushing locomotive racing full speed ahead, unable to stop for anything, but – “Your mother really wanted you.” Connie sat on the petite pink sofa, her habitual evening cocktail in hand, Bam-Bam by her side watching me. Her words were only slightly slurred, but I knew she was on her way to that special place. It was autumn, and it was night. A storm was coming, a cold front perhaps. The leaves did not fall to the ground from their branches, they were ripped from them. The lights were on in the kitchen, the television was chatting away. I can see the scene as if I’m sitting in an audience, eyes upon the stage. There’s a pleading look on my face as if to say “See what I mean? You do understand what I’m telling you, don’t you?” But it was Connie who really owned that sentiment, now squeezed into a bullet and shot directly at me in the form of “But you know your mother really wanted you.”

I stopped talking and looked at her, the television the only sound now. Headlights from outside entered the far window of the living room – someone was parking a car, someone had arrived home no doubt eager to enter his home and take refuge from the impending storm outside.

to be continued…

but i AM a writer

“but i AM a writer” – Marlen attempts to define what a “writer” is and finds that perhaps he might just be one.

“A writer is a person who creates novels – a writer is a storyteller,” or so I’ve always thought. Of course I understood that there were other kinds of writers – journalists, reporters and documentarians, biographers and playwrights, but these identities never really held much importance for me…they didn’t register. No, a writer is a storyteller. True, I told stories, and for school, I wrote stories in my journal. I even enjoyed this process. And so despite the fact that adolescence had indeed called on me to be a writer, crafting stories, profiles, or “vignettes” as I liked to think of them, I somehow didn’t assume the identity. My stories weren’t very well developed, more like descriptions of brief moments in time; I felt that this was my unique brand of expression and liked to share my creativity with friends, but still hoped to one day be a real writer, not merely a writer in the worlds of my journal.

Literacy Story – The Year of the Kite

 

I can vividly remember some of my earliest writing, from a poem about the Statue of Liberty, to greeting cards prepared especially for my mother. It was at the ripe old age of 12, however, that I had an idea that writing would come to be a meaningful part of my life. Age 12 was the year of the kite, my first discovery that words could be manipulated and positioned to create meaningful and memorable mental images and movement. I remember my English teacher from that time, vividly – Mrs. Beer: Tall, waspish, blonde-haired with small pale features, proper, reserved, and the first person to fling wide open the doors of literacy.

Language & Cognition (& Pragmatics & Interpretation &…)

Language – communication and expression – and cognition – thought and thinking – when put together equals what? Psycholinguistics, or to quote Altmann, “…the mental processes that underlie our use of language” (1997, xi). Having studied psychology and psychological counseling, the field of psycholinguistics has always held some fascination for me: “Why do we say/write the things we say/write and how do we say/write them?”; “How do we interpret experience and construct meaning using language?”; “What does it take to be a good linguist or language learner?”; “Where does language come from and how are all languages related and yet also unique?”; etc. It is the answers to these questions (well, primarily the second one) that have nagged at me throughout the past decade as I attempted to make sense of human behavior and more recently, language and communication.

Why Does Writing Really Matter?

“Why does writing really matter?” he asked me. I thought about it for only a brief moment as the answer plainly introduced itself, “Because there are things that one cannot say.” “How true,” I thought after speaking those words. Perhaps I should have written them. I have come to realize that though I’m not currently writing to live that it’s the process of free-writing that releases us, let’s the bullshit fly from our fingers to make room for the gems hidden beneath. I use the terms “writing to live” with the intention of revealing the therapy that writing once provided me.“But if I cannot speak it, why should writing be different?” he then asked. I realized that this new question was quite difficult to answer. Perhaps speaking the answer would reveal very little of the truth behind my statement. Perhaps only living the experience would drive the truth home.

O Pioneers, ye ESL Instructors

Scaffolding, Context, and Technology: O Pioneers!

 

Part 1: The Wild Land (click me to read an excerpt from Willa Cather’s novel)

“The Internet is not so much a tool as a new social space that restructures social relations.” – Warschauer (paraphrasing Poster, 1997)

Mark Warschauer, a writer whom I’ve been following for the past few years and have quoted and cited innumerable times in my own writing, poses the question “Not what, not who, but how?” in his 2003 publication, Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide. Examining the reality of internet technology and current issues in the debate of the ‘digital divide’, Warschauer asks his readers to think not merely about the acquisition of technology, but the scaffolding and support that can be provided to its users. He asks us to examine a popular paradigm of the technology haves and have nots and to consider the importance of such technology within social contexts (a scale of varying abilities, access and attitudes towards technology) rather than in extremes. A recent discussion of Warschauer’s writing reminded me of

ESL and Digital Classrooms

How might you use a computer in your classroom?

Wow, this is a difficult one to answer because I’ve been using computer technology in my classrooms throughout my teaching career. My students and I have explored everything from on-line questionnaires, email exchange projects, and CALL drills, to use of computer-mediated video editing, in-class computer-facilitated synchronous language practice, and even cell-phone message exchange. My main paper for the qualifying portfolio will likely be an overview of my research from the last 4 years examining the uses of such technology in Japanese university classrooms and the majority of my published research has centered on the various stages and outcomes of keypal / penpal email exchange projects. Even now, as I develop my own online multi-lingual magazine, both synchronous and asynchronous communication data – as a result of regular emails, text chat, and discussion board use – is beginning to pile up! So the question “How might I…” could be re-worded as

Access and the Literacy Myth

“Seeing Eye Computer Dog”

John S. Pritchett Cartoons
(click the pic above to visit the site)

One of the primary arguments for [national large-scale projects] to expand technological literacy rests on the claim that such an effort will provide all Americans with an education enriched by technology and thus equal opportunity to obtain high-paying, technology-rich jobs and economic prosperity after graduation. The truth of this claim, however, has not been borne out and is not likely to do so. (Technology and Literacy in the 21st Century, p. 135)

In his 1991 publication The Literacy Myth, Harvey Graff explores literacy in the 19th century and reminds readers that literacy can be both a very subjective and ambiguous concept; the definition of literacy may be reliant on the culture in which it is defined. In discussing this phenomenon, Graff coins the phrase “literacy myth” (1991) and it is this myth that Cynthia Selfe explores and…

English Literacy?

 

“Literacy is the path to communism”
(click the link to view the image in its original context)

 

I have long understood that the study (scholastic) of English in contemporary American society is likely one of the most erroneously named. What constitutes the study of English is actually an exploration of not merely the form of language we use (as opposed to a foreign language), nor only the disciplines of reading and writing, but of history, humanity, technology, politics, psychology, religion, anthropology, etc.

Research Questions of the Week

How does writing for blogs or online journals differ from approaching the same topic in other formats?
If a student completes homework on his own blog rather than as a more traditional report for the teacher, how does the concept of perceived audience change, and how is the writing and expression affected?
How does writing either typed on a typewriter or entered into a computer differ from that undertaken by hand; How does the medium in which we write influence or shape our expression?
How do writers decide on the format of their writing (journalistic, poetry, narrative, play, lyrics) and how is format reflective of the author’s character?