Homework For Thursday 10/30 (Important change of Plans!)

For Thursday, I am asking you NOT to read Schunk's article "Self-Efficacy for Reading and Writing." Instead, I am asking you to read Gee's "Reading as Situated Language." I have taken Schunk's article off of our google groups page and added Gee's.

Before you go into this piece, I want to warn you: it is among the more difficult texts I will ask you to read this semester. It is just 10 pages or so, but it is packed full of complicated terms and ideas. I suggest you pay careful attention to the first two paragraphs of the piece. In paragraph 2, Gee lays out exactly what he is going to do and talk about in the rest of the article. Keep returning to this paragraph as you read so that you can keep track of where you are in the "big picture" of his article at any given moment. Use your feature/function reading skills to keep track of the journey you are taking as you read this difficult text (which is to say, notice the headings, think about which section you are in and refer back to his explanation, again, paragraph 2, of what he is going to do and talk about).

In your blog entry, and this is Blog Entry #9 (please title it as such), please just take notes on the article. Your notes should consist of what you consider to be key passages in the article, key terms (e.g., discourse, language), and your understanding of Gee's argument. You might also pose questions that arise for you as you go. What he is saying in this article challenges our traditional notions of how language works and how people "make meaning." You might think carefully about how and where he challenges our traditional notions. I would also suggest you pay attention to the various examples he gives to make what he is saying a bit more accessible.

Your Blog #9 should be roughly 500-750 words in length. I suggest you just open an MS Word document and start taking notes and use the "Word Count" function to keep track of how much you've got (try to get notes on the WHOLE article...in other words, don't fill your Blog #9 with notes on just the first section). Then copy and paste your notes from Word into your blog post.

FINAL POINT: with an article this challenging, you shouldn't try to understand EVERY single thing that Gee says. What you are looking for is the gist or the general outline of the piece. Imagine that you are trying to look at a picture that is slightly out of focus and trying, slowly, to bring it into focus. This is not an article that one reads once by oneself and immediately understands. It is a challenging piece that requires multiple readings and the help of peers and teachers to "get." Having said this, please don't give up and stop reading when you're lost! Push yourself to keep going. If you feel lost for a while, that's okay...keep going and try to get yourself to that point where you are understanding again. Assume that you will get lost, but press yourself to keep at it.

Good luck.
mm