Articles by Daniel A Messier

by Hannah Ortiz

Hannah Ortiz is an English major with a Professional & New Media Writing concentration, and is from Hartford, Connecticut. Because she is studying reading and writing, Hannah feels that the censorship of literature is an important topic. Hannah says “I love reading and I believe that people, especially children, should be able to read books that teach us about the world.” She states that we do not have to agree with every book we read, but that “literature can present different perspectives that can educate us about messages we don’t agree with.” Hannah believes that biased literature has been some of the most impactful as it has taught us about the world, and that these books make statements about the world that will last into the future. She also feels that “studying English requires an understanding of how our culture has influenced us. This influence cannot be denied.” Hannah is passionate about non-profit work and community organization: “non-profit organizations address community needs that are often overlooked.” She also writes poetry and her first mini-chapbook was published this summer.

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In a segment on the television show 60 Minutes titled, “Born Good? Babies Help Unlock the Origins of Morality,” Yale University’s Baby Lab puts infants to the test. Using puppets to portray simple dilemmas, scientists attempt to determine if babies can make moral determinations. Reporter Leslie Stahl asks psychologist Paul Bloom how humans become moral. Stahl recounts, “He [Bloom] says it makes sense that evolution would predispose us to be wary of ‘the other’ for survival, and so we need society and parental nurturing to intervene.” Neither Stahl or Bloom answer how society can assist in helping children learn about moral standards. But as children spend a significant amount of time in school, it can be assumed that the educational institutions they attend further their moral development. Children learn how to develop psychosocial skills from their environment, including the reading material they consume in school. Just as this literature can assist in developing morality, many worry that biased literature (literature written with a discriminatory basis or that portrays discrimination) can impair young minds with immorality. However, controversial literature does not have to be discarded or censored in the interest of developing children’s morals. Instead, this literature should be repurposed and utilized for anti-bias education.

To rebuke the censorship of literature for children, one needs to understand the motivations behind this censorship. Society as a whole operates under the perception that children are innocent and need to be protected from the evils of the world. As a result, advocates for children, including parents, seek to limit the exposure of children to controversial literature. It is believed that this literature can spark immoral ideas in its readers’ minds. The censorship is often done with good intentions. A book from Marjorie Heins titled Not in Front of the Children: Indecency, Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth explores the censorship of art and media, and why advocates feel as though children should be shielded from violence and sexuality. Heins states, “Evidence of harm, of course, is often dispensed with in censorship cases where child protection is the proffered justification … it was not really fear of any demonstrable psychological harm, but notions of morality and proper socialization that drove … legal rhetoric.” (Heins 255) Child advocates attempt to prove that cultural influences, such as media violence, drive the youth to act violently. These advocates cannot verify, through studies or other inquiries, that their theories are true, and that art is to blame for an increase in immorality. The correlation is nonexistent, but the fear and the connection remain (255). Advocates believe that children need to be protected from the immortality of the world so that they will not mimic it or suffer damage from it. It is easy to understand why advocates believe that books about racism might fuel racist thinking, or books containing sexist slurs might fuel sexism.

Historically, parents have pursued legal action against educational institutions that share discriminatory literature with their students. The book Censorship and Selection: Issues and Answers for Schools by Henry Reichman and the American Library Association (ALA) reviews statistics and cases connected to literary censorship across the United States. For example, in 1999, an Arizona mother sued a school district for including Huckleberry Finn and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner on the high school reading list. Kathy Montero alleged that “white students were harassing blacks … Monteiro charged that white students called her daughter and others ‘n—–‘ and that assignment of the Twain and Faulkner readings, which use the word, exacerbated the situation” (Reichman 77). The Monteiro v. Tempe Union High School District case proves that the parents that call for censorship are not calling for action solely on the basis of religious beliefs or ignorance. In the case of Monteiro v. Tempe, Kathy Montero was seriously concerned about the well-being of her daughter and other black students (77). Parents wonder, and worry, how literature will be interpreted and utilized by their children. Words have power, and they have the power to influence morality, especially at a young age. But if biased literature, like the works of Twain and Faulkner are correctly introduced to students, this will transform the contexts of these works and allow students to learn positive, moral lessons from them.

Utilizing biased books in anti-bias education gives children the opportunity to challenge biased beliefs and perceptions, comparing them to their own understanding of the world. Biased literature can give children the opportunity to challenge what they read, which is an important skill to develop as one continues to consume media. Selection, as opposed to censorship, will ensure that the exploration of controversial texts results in beneficial education about media skepticism. Gillian Klein recommends selection over censorship in her book Reading into Racism: Bias in Children’s Literature and Learning Materials. Klein writes that the most effective and lasting strategy for combating racism and sexism and other damaging bias in books is to teach children to challenge everything they read. “They are developing approaches to combating the effects of biased books in the schools and teaching children to challenge the authority of the printed word and to trust in their own judgment” (Klein 141). Students need to learn to doubt the messages of the media and to develop and ultimately to trust their own judgment. Examining the validity of a source is an important skill. If adults are told not to believe everything they read, why can’t children learn to differentiate between truthful and biased information? Reading Into Racism declares, “learning to read usually involves a verification of what is read … If this process is not checked, the result is adults who believe everything they read—or read only what they wish to believe, choosing their daily newspaper, for instance, accordingly” (Klein 114-115). A failure to challenge the media has long-term effects on one’s morality. If one never sees truth in statements that do not align with their own beliefs or knowledge, they will never learn anything about the world. If one upholds all news sources as authority, they will never be able to make their own judgments, and they may be susceptible to believing untruths. Children who are taught to challenge biased literature will gain the skill of media skepticism and interpretation. This is dependent on the exposure, not the censorship, of biased literature for the purpose of anti-bias education.

Another benefit of utilizing “controversial” literature for anti-bias education is that it teaches children about social issues that they otherwise would not understand. These books can help children gain a better understanding of nuanced social phenomena such as racism, sexism, and poverty. Parents and advocates have often called for the censorship of books that introduce students to social injustice. But Censorship and Selection denies that these works should be censored: “Racial, sexual, and other prejudices are part of our country’s history and of its present reality. The school library will necessarily reflect this, which is not wholly a bad thing since students can hardly be taught to identify and reject prejudicial thought without directly confronting examples of bias and stereotyping” (Reichman 73). Acknowledging prejudice is a momentous event in the human experience, whether or not one is interested in addressing their prejudices. Removing books that mention prejudice will not remove prejudice from the world, and students may already be affected by prejudice, even if they do not recognize it. Instead of ignoring social inequalities, students can have the opportunity to address them through their exposure to literature.

Censoring biased literature or literature that details biases has the potential to assign value to biases. If controversial books are separated from the other literature in a school library, this may attach importance to the works. “’Not Censorship but Selection’: Censorship and/as Prizing” is an article from Kenneth Kidd likening censorship to “literary prizing.” While censorship is typically seen as a negative action, censoring literature can make the literature seem more important to children. Censorship makes these texts appear relevant, even when parents argue against this judgment. Kidd says, “Censorship clarifies what is and what isn’t legitimate in a culture, leading to further debate about worth and often transforming the original standards and expectations” (Kidd 198). Advocates should reflect on their childhood experiences, especially what they considered to be stimulating. Censored literature is comparable to a box in a mother’s closet that she tells her child not to open. Wouldn’t a child hypothesize about that box and believe that it had something life-changing inside? Similarly, a country’s leader could censor a book detailing the crimes of their regime. If the leader suppresses this knowledge, wouldn’t their constituents then wonder if there is truth in the pages? Kidd adds, “…obscenity laws and other mechanisms for censorship ironically have helped enshrine certain materials as literature” (Kidd 198). Books previously labeled as “too obscene” are now considered classics. As society’s morals shift, work that was deemed too explicit is now respected, defeating the purpose of censorship. Again, censored literature is comparable to the words of civil rights activists. While their words were often seen as flagrant, society’s morals shifted; these activists are now revered as heroes. Censoring biased literature will attract interest without context. It is better for educators to explore this literature with their students so that interest and validation is diverted into literary interpretation and moral development.

Censoring biased literature teaches children to act with an authoritarian basis as opposed to a democratic one. Censoring literature sets the precedent that controversial issues or content should be censored as opposed to acknowledged. If all controversial ideas were censored, society would fail to progress. Societal and moral development is dependent on inquiries and solutions, debates, and engagement. Stifling ideas and words will only obstruct communication and change. Heins asserts in Not in Front of the Children, “Intellectual protectionism frustrates rather than enhances young people’s mental agility and capacity to deal with the world … censorship may also have ‘modeling effects,’ teaching authoritarianism, intolerance for unpopular opinions, erotophobia, and sexual guilt” (Heins 257). Besides preventing youth from developing a better understanding of life, censorship furthers the idea that knowledge deserves to be stifled. This mentality can grow toxic: if teachers can censor books, why can’t students censor each other in the classroom? If a student hears an idea that challenges them, what is stopping them from censoring any mention of this idea? The American Library Association agrees that censorship endangers intellectual freedom. Reichman notes, “Removing a book from a classroom or school library because it offends some members of the community increases the likelihood that students will see suppression as an acceptable way of responding to controversial ideals and images” (Reichman 4) Removal of potentially offensive literature defies the morals of tolerance and inclusion that schools attempt to instill in students. If educators disagree with the messages in this literature, they have the opportunity to discuss why these biases are harmful through anti-bias education. Simply ignoring the problems in these works does not allow space for critical thinking and prohibits moral development.

Parents and advocates mistakenly believe that children enter the world, and the classroom, as blank slates without moral perspectives. But psychologists like Paul Bloom have proven that the world only shapes morality; it does not create it (“Born Good? Babies Help Unlock the Origins of Morality”). Literature written by discriminatory authors or containing discriminatory aspects should not be removed from classrooms or school libraries. This literature serves its purposes in teaching students about social issues and assisting in moral development. It also teaches students to view literary work with a critical eye. Censoring literature only holds this work to a different, heightened standard, and discourages students from considering different perspectives. Resources like Reading into Racism inform educators how to handle biased books. One activity Klein suggests is having students write letters to publishers who have released racist books (not books about racism), inquiring about the motivations behind racist content (Klein 132). This encourages students to advocate for themselves and consider why a text may have been written. The most important lesson Klein shares is this: “Teachers need to recognize their responsibility as agents between their pupils and the books: they are automatically endorsing the materials with their own implicit approval unless they specifically say otherwise and indicate the passages with which they disagree” (112). With the correct educational intervention, biased or controversial literature can be read and discussed, furthering the moral development of every person in the classroom.

Works Cited

“Born Good? Babies Help Unlock the Origins of Morality.” YouTube, CBS News Online, 18 Nov. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRvVFW85IcU.

Heins, Marjorie. Not in Front of the Children: “Indecency,” Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth. Rutgers University Press, 2007.

Kidd, Kenneth. “‘Not Censorship but Selection’: Censorship And/as Prizing.” Children’s Literature in Education, vol. 40, no. 3, Springer, 2009, pp. 197–216.

Klein, Gillian. Reading into Racism: Bias in Children’s Literature and Learning Materials, Taylor & Francis Group, 1985.

Reichman, Henry, and American Library Association. Censorship and Selection: Issues and Answers for Schools, ALA Editions, 2000.

by John Nobile Carvalho

John Nobile Carvalho is a Biochemistry major from Uberlandia, Minas Gerais, Brazil. John’s inspiration for writing this paper was in finding the most significant and impactful moments of language learning. The reason he considers his essay important is “because during the writing process I was able to recall memories and think of the journey I’ve been on, and all the challenges I’ve faced while learning two languages.” He also credits remote learning with providing plenty of time to devote himself to his studies and this project: “I was aware that this factor could help me focus and write something interesting for people who are not bilingual as well as people who are bilingual.” Besides being a student, John is also a musician and a book lover, and counts the blues and science-fiction books among his passions. He states that he “could never live a day without playing my guitar for a few minutes, or not reading a few pages of a book. These are the two ways I have to escape reality and enjoy the moment.”

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The process of becoming a bilingual person can be seen as a long journey, which has several challenges, but at the same time several achievements. Learning a new language can be considered a challenge because it goes far beyond just learning to use words, expressions and knowing how to apply correct grammar, and what I mean by that is that you have to make mistakes, live in situations where you feel vulnerable, and go through difficulties. Even though it is not a simple task, I believe that this process allows us to develop persistence, willpower, maturity and a lot of discipline. Given the explanation, I ask myself the following question: what was my process of becoming bilingual, and how did that make me who I am today?

Well, my journey started relatively early in my life. The first memories I have in mind, when I had contact with the English language, was around the age of 7 years old. I mainly remember the moment when my father used to listen to songs that had quite different lyrics than what I was used to listening to in Brazilian music. I remember asking my dad what those words were and what they meant, and I also remember referring to them as ‘‘strange words.’’ I can perfectly remember the way my father had explained to me that it was English; he said it was a type of language that human beings use and that in particular it was used elsewhere in the world. That fascinated me, and with each day that passed by, I would ask my father to show me more and more music by American artists; this led me to develop a passion for Blues, Rock, Jazz, and Soul Music. I loved the rhythm, melody, and harmony of the songs of these musical genres, but there was a big problem. I could not understand practically anything about what the lyrics were saying, and that was quite frustrating.

After a while, it started to bother me, so I realized it was time to take an initiative. I realized it was time to seek to understand the meaning of the lyrics of the songs I loved so much. I remember sitting on the floor of my room, trying to read and pronounce each word in the rhythm in which I heard them in the songs. I also remember feeling quite angry at first because I could not understand anything at all. Over time, this curiosity made me discover that I could use online translators and websites that made music translations available from English to Portuguese. At that moment I realized that there were no more limits for me. I knew that everything would start to flow naturally.

Basically, my relationship with the English language started to develop organically, and after a few months of practicing English, the words that did not make any sense started to make all the sense. I was obsessed with learning new words, phrases, and expressions. When I least expected it, with the help of subtitles, I was able to watch cartoon shows, movies, and documentaries in English. I felt fulfilled when I was able to understand certain simple dialogues, for example in the video games that I used to play, and for me, that was rewarding. Another memory I have was when I joined elementary school, and the public school where I studied used to offer English classes, and I remember having ease in these classes thanks to all the effort and dedication that I had put into studying and practicing English on my own.

As time went by, my relationship with the English language was solidifying and becoming stronger and stronger. I practically did not listen to music in Portuguese anymore; I did not care about watching cartoons and films in Portuguese anymore, which made me more immersed into American culture. I remember in 2009, when I was only 11 years old, my cousins and colleagues who played football with me asked me why I did not like to watch Brazilian and South American football like “A Liberators da America” (South American Tournament). I always said that European football championships like the Premier League (from England) were more interesting, but they did not understand that I thought it was interesting because I was discovering a “new world”. Right after I turned 14, my parents gave me my first skateboard, and it motivated me, even more, to continue learning things related to English and American culture. I used slang in English with my friends and tried to speak in English with my English teachers at school. I used to sing and play songs in English. I found it fascinating the fact that in less than seven years I had already learned so much about English.

During these seven years of studying and learning the English language, I remember listening to a lot of people around me, like my parents, uncles and aunts, cousins and several friends saying that I was doing the right thing. English was a synonym for “success and mystery” in my mind. They used to say “João, you must learn the English language, as this will bring you great opportunities in your future”. Everyone was absolutely right, and I say this because all the incentives and motivations they gave me were essential for my evolution and progress. I am incredibly grateful mainly for my parents, because thanks to them, I was able to have access to a good education. I was able to access the necessary resources to continue making progress. Without them none of this would have happened, and I would never have gotten as far as I did.

Now, after fourteen years of dedicating myself to studying the English language, I realize that my view on it has changed dramatically. At first, I was just a child venturing into a strange and unknown language, and that was incredibly attractive. When I say that my vision has changed drastically, I mean that now this language is not only a source of curiosity. It has practically become the tool that allows me to connect with the world, and in a way even with myself. I can say with all conviction that being bilingual is one of the most important tools I have in my life. I would say that English for me today is like the oxygen that I breathe all the time, and what I mean is that I can no longer live without it.

English is not just another language that exists in the world. For me, English has shaped my identity and the person I am today. What I mean by that is that English is not just a language, in my life it goes much further. A beautiful example that I always carry in mind is how English made me develop a beautiful conception of music. I consider myself a musician, and I consider music as one of the greatest inventions of mankind, and thanks to the English language I was able to venture into the world of music. Nowadays I study music every week in English: I play in concerts; I play with my friends, so through this example, it is evident how English managed to shape one of the main characteristics of my identity. Another example that comes to mind is that since I was a child, my biggest dream of all has been to become a scientist in the future. That dream only started after I watched countless scientific documentaries, read several books by phenomenal scientists like Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson, and with every day that passes I am sure that my dream will be realized. Thanks to English, I was able to develop the habit of reading, watching documentaries, searching for information and building knowledge, and in my opinion, I think this is incredible. Through the study of this language, I was even able to value my mother tongue even more because like English, Portuguese is an intriguing and spectacular language that I am proud to speak.

To emphasize how crucial the process of becoming bilingual has been in my life, I can tell you how my life has changed completely since I moved to the United States. My first real contact with American society was a wave of feelings and emotions. To clarify what I am trying to say, I could use the experiences of author Orhan Pamuk (2007) as an example, when he describes how frustrating and difficult it is to adjust and adapt to a new culture and a new language. The silence was sometimes my only form of expression, as it was his. However, the best part is that this “wave of feelings and emotions” made me realize that all the years of study and my effort should be valued and put into practice. After a few months, I already felt more comfortable, so I was able to enjoy everything that this new environment had to offer me. I developed not only a love affair with the English language but also with the city of Boston. I had an epiphany and a profound reflection that, like Brazil, the United States is also the place I refer to as home.

This leads me to another interesting and profound reflection that I have been experiencing lately. The fact of moving to the United States is not only a great opportunity to have a beautiful future, and it is not just another phase of my life. It is also an opportunity to be able to connect worlds and cultures. Amin Maalouf (1998) clearly describes how beautiful it is that bilingual people living in other countries can be sources of knowledge, and according to him, these people have a great responsibility in acting as bridges that connect different cultures.

Maalouf is absolutely right, and his reflection resonated with me because I feel this responsibility; I feel responsible to share the American culture with my friends and family who live in Brazil. Likewise, I am responsible for sharing Brazilian culture with American society. I think this is extremely important because if I do that, I can make a difference in the world, I can help the world. I can help the world become a harmonious place, and I feel that I can use the knowledge I have to help people to develop more empathy, respect, and love for people from different places and cultures. Being bilingual and living in another country means having the responsibility to help people and eliminate any kind of prejudice, intolerance, and misunderstanding that they have in mind.

Given all these facts, contexts, and personal experiences, I return to my question: what was my process in becoming bilingual, and how did that make me who I am today? Well, the answer is quite simple, I have had an incredible journey so far. Every second studying English, all my effort, every person involved, every mistake made, every learning experience — all of this was crucial to getting me to where I am today. This journey brought me knowledge and reflections, which helped me to better understand the world and myself. I would never have imagined that English would bring me so many opportunities — all of this was beyond my expectations. I am sure that English will bring me more unique experiences, and I can say with all gratitude that I am ready for all of them.

References

Maalouf, Amin. (1998). Deadly Identities (Brigitte Caland, Trans.). Al Jadid, 4(25). Retrieved from https://www.aljadid.com/content/deadly-identities.

Pamuk, Orhan. (2007, April 7). My First Passport: What Does it Mean to Belong to a Country? (Maureen Freely, Trans.). The New Yorker. Retrieved from
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/my-first-passport.

by Hadassa Sossou

Hadassa is a Biochemistry major from Brockton, MA. She is multilingual but does not consider herself a “multilingual student” since her primary language is English. She speaks four languages and is now learning Japanese. This semester, Hadassa met and befriended many international and ESL students at the university. She states that “after I met them, I realized that they had a lot of struggles with writing in the classroom that I never considered. So, during my research for this essay, I wanted to learn more about what could cause difficulty and how that could be resolved.” Hadassa also has learned that “understanding composition pedagogy clarifies the goal of academic writing and helps me to prioritize which ideas need to be written and in which order to achieve that goal.” She believes that writing this essay was a chance for her to promote equity in her community: “I think there is so much to be learned from people who don’t live like me. I find so much joy in traveling and meeting people, learning their language, and experiencing a piece of their culture.” Hadassa is also an event coordinator for the Black Student Center.

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The goal of any English composition course is to cultivate professional writers from student writers. Therefore, the English curriculum often focuses on developing aspects of writing that students can use to be successful in the composition discourse community. While certain features of writing are helpful to writers who are native English speakers, those same features can be difficult for students who are multilingual or English language learners to employ. Therefore, with a rising number of international students and English language learners finding themselves in composition classrooms, many pedagogical practices exclude multilingual learners from being successful. However, after an examination of practices familiar to multilingual writers, I determined that a curriculum which uses techniques that foster a strong use of voice can grant multilingual students the skills to become stronger writers in the English Composition discourse community.

I draw from the experience of English professor Jane Danielewicz who details her success in cultivating competent writers in her text “Personal Genres, Public Voices.” She demonstrates that when students write in genres where there is an emphasis on first person experience, they develop strong identities as authoritative writers (Danielewicz 421). While “authority” has been accepted as a quality of writing integral to creating texts accepted by the English Composition discourse community, “voice” is less definitive. However, it is through a strong sense of identity and authority that student writers master the effective use of personal voice (in my experience); a skill teachers often overlook in the classroom. This is likely because voice is used as a metaphor and carries “ideological baggage” which can make it difficult to teach as a definitive quality of writing (422). However, voice is the quality of writing that links the author to their text. It allows them to not only convey their thoughts but also emotion and enthusiasm. It is “that quality of a text that lends it social power… allow[ing] meaning to be heard, understood, and possibly acted upon” (424). As such, voice is integral in creating a text that engages with readers.

While a strong use of voice, in the context of American English composition, is considered good writing, Vai Ramanathan and Robort Kaplan in their article “Audience and Voice in Current Ll Composition Texts: Some Implications for ESL Student Writers” point out that “the notion of presenting a strong self or voice in writing is a Western notion and one that is not necessarily relevant in other cultures” (26). This difference in culture presents a problem for composition teachers. How do they foster an understanding of a topic so central to writing, yet as “ideological” and indefinite as voice to writers unfamiliar with its relevance?

The answer may lie with the use of narrative. While presenting a strong voice may not be a common writing strategy for multilingual writers, they may be more familiar with using narrative writing. While observing an ESL (English as a second language) student through her writing process, Anne Pomerantz and Erin Kearney considered the narrative approach a tool multilingual writers can use in their writing. In their article “Beyond ‘Write-Talk-Revise-(repeat)’: Using Narrative to Understand One Multilingual Student’s Interactions Around Writing,” Pomerantz and Kearney explain that narrative works as a vehicle that enables the creation of “order and coherence” (226). Encouraging multilingual students to use narrative thus can help them to organize their ideas and take a position that not only explains their claims and conveys their thinking, but is compelling to an audience. This is the essence of the use of voice: effective communication of personal values and experiences that “allows meaning to be heard, understood, and possibly acted upon” (Danielewicz 424). Through this narrative approach, multilingual students are able to make use of their voice.

The narrative approach also creates a method for multilingual students to differentiate between their experiences and the experiences of others. Danielewicz emphasizes that “this cultivation of self and voice in a relational context is crucial… Students may be able to construct voices that not only represent the “person” or “individual” but that also invoke or stand for the pluralistic, the group, the communal.” (440). Understanding how your voice and your experiences relate to others’ gives you the ability to create claims that are more engaging and relate experiences that resonate with a larger audience. Multilingual writers are no exception. Pomerantz & Kearney note that through “individual life stories and more collective narratives, we craft positions for ourselves and others” (Pomerantz & Kearney 224). It is through these narratives that multilingual students can understand their ideas, and become more apt to effectively communicate how their ideas differ from the collective. This effective communication cultivates a sense of identity among the larger world of writers. Thus, multilingual students can use narrative to validate their claims and experiences: “assigning value to it, and perhaps most notably, allowing for the teller to exercise his/her authorial agency” (224). Therefore, a multilingual writer now has the tools to determine what story they will tell and how that story relates to their audience. However, there is yet another hurdle multilingual writers must overcome.

Multilingual students are at a disadvantage when considering their lack of exposure to commonly used English texts. In his essay, “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community,” James Porter emphasizes the importance of familiarity with the discourse community. He notes that “[the] immediate goal is to produce “socialized writers,” who [create] competent, useful discourse within that com­munity” (Porter 7). This “socialization” requires that the writer (or apprentice to a specific discourse community) is familiar with the norms, practices, and intertext intrinsic to that community. It is with this familiarity that a writer can develop their voice. Danielewicz explains that “a public voice … results from the writer’s engagement and position in the world” (Danielewicz 423). This engagement with the explicit text and the intertext is vital not only for acceptance in the discourse community, but for attaining the confidence to reference sources and build from established ideas. However, without the knowledge of intertextual elements or the discussion around it, how can multilingual writers cultivate the confidence to participate in the conversation governed by the discourse community? This is where multilingual learners may hit a roadblock.

The nature of intertext requires the reader to draw on shared experiences. This can become an obstacle for many multilingual students. Ramanathan and Kaplan note this obstacle by writing: “depending on the degree of shared cultural knowledge that ESL student writers possess, they may or may not recognize such intertextual maneuverings, let alone successfully integrate them into their own writings” (Ramanathan and Kaplan 26). The nature of intertext requires the reader to draw on shared experiences — whether that be cultural experiences or simply shared texts within the discourse community. Therefore, it cannot be expected that multilingual writers will have a solid understanding of the intertextual elements of a text they never had the opportunity to become familiar with. This difficulty is worsened depending on the topic on which the student is assigned to write. A student originally from Singapore would have a hard time writing about gun control simply because that topic would require him to take an ethical stance with no social awareness around the issue (Ramanathan and Kaplan 26). If one has no experiences with other writings or they are not familiar with them, they cannot exercise the agency to create claims and support them since that agency comes from a good understanding of the intertext. That doesn’t take away from their ability as a writer, but draws from their familiarity with the English composition discourse community. This obstacle can be removed by familiarizing multilingual students with a wider array of readings — especially ones commonly used in their discourse community. Once they are more familiar with the intertext and conversation around certain topics and issues, they can be able to determine which experiences are relevant to include and will cause engagement with their text.

Choosing which experiences to share is also dependent on who the author is sharing the experience with. In most American English composition classes, this would be taught as ‘consideration of the audience’. Consideration of the unintended and intended audiences is a commonly taught skill in composition classrooms since it is seen as the quality of writing that allows “students behave more like professional writers” (Danielewicz 443). In the United States, writing is seen as an interactive activity between writers and readers where the writer presents the map for an adventure and both parties go on a journey and make a discovery, even though the discovery may not be the same for both the writer and the readers. This is not the case for many other cultures. Ramanathan and Kaplan observe that:

The value that mainstream U.S. society places on explicit, decontextualized information that is relatively decodable in other contexts by other people in both speaking and writing, but especially in writing (Gee, 1989; Ramanathan-Abbott, 1993), is not necessarily shared by much of its own African American culture (Gee, 1989, 1990) or Japanese or Korean cultures (Eggington, 1987; Hinds, 1987). Because audience participation in both the text’s construction and interpretation may be greater in these cultures, the need for being explicit (in writing) may not be seen as necessary (28)

While both U.S. writing and the writings of other cultures share the idea that the writer and readers participate in a “conversation,” the emphasis on who carries the conversation differs. American English composition emphasizes writing that clearly states and explains claims and the reasoning behind them. All information is presented (both explicitly and intertextually) and explicated in order to communicate the author’s idea successfully. Whereas overseas, the roles of the writer vary. For example, in “some Asian cultures, while they may recognize complexities in a topic, lay greater emphasis on the participation of the reader/listener for effective communication” (Ramanathan & Kaplan 27). In this case, the audience must put in greater effort to understand the writer or be more informed on their topic, rather than the writer taking the time to explain the context for all his thoughts. To continue the analogy, the writer need not present his reader with a map because it is already expected that the audience is familiar with the location and route to the destination. In either case, the student draws his authority in the strength of his claims and the audience’s ability to understand him. However, the multilingual student should pay extra attention to ensure that his claims are explained thoroughly and effectively.

Composition gives students the opportunity to explore new ways of thinking, join in on conversations, and be heard. Teaching through the use of narrative can give multilingual writers the opportunity to reap the same benefits as monolingual students. If multilingual students can see English composition as an opportunity to voice their opinions and tell their stories, rather than a slew of writing rules that they must memorize, their writing will be more successful, more enjoyable, and more fulfilling. Thus I urge educators to consider the growing population of multilingual students and their needs and create a curriculum that will not only benefit them, but all students.

Works Cited

Danielewicz, Jane. “Personal Genres, Public Voices.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 59, no. 3, 2008, pp. 420–450.

Pomerantz, Anne, and Erin Kearney. “Beyond ‘Write-Talk-Revise-(Repeat)’: Using Narrative to Understand One Multilingual Student’s Interactions Around Writing.” Journal of Second Language Writing 21.3 (2012): 221-38.

Porter, James E. “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community.” Rhetoric Review, vol. 5 no. 1, 1986, pp. 34-47.

Ramanathan, Vai, and Robert B. Kaplan. “Audience and Voice in Current L1 Composition Texts: Some Implications for ESL Student Writers.” Journal of Second Language Writing 5.1 (1996): 21-34.

by Adia Samba-Quee

Adia is a Political Science Major with a Minor in Africana Studies from Springfield, MA. In writing this essay, Adia was able to “reflect on my relation with writing and how I am perceived as an individual through my writing. I consider letting go of my prideful and embarrassing ego a huge factor in my development.” Like many students, Adia felt the remote learning semesters to be “historically bad on my mental health.” Efforts and interest in school fluctuated wildly and “I didn’t think I’d made much of an impact on my professors this year.” But, Adia is “learning a lot about myself as of this moment, and I think one of the passions that has stuck with me is learning, creating, and engaging.” Adia is a dedicated writer who has befriended some active writers who are around the same age, and they have made a conscious effort to “feel comfortable writing things they want to read and not what others want to,” which this essay hopefully reflects. Adia also enjoys engaging with others through work and school: “Whether it is one on one interactions or events for my online community, I enjoy knowing I made someone feel good because I feel good in turn.”

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It was the last five minutes of my Fall Semester English 102 Zoom lecture when I implored my professor about the implications of James Gee’s thoughts on “Discourses.” Maybe it is because I have the poor habit of finding issue in between the lines, but I had felt the entire text was firstly, incredibly vague (a characteristic I thought I had to get used to regarding academic text) and secondly, underestimated the role of the secondary discourse, which I had interpreted as dialects Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) use at home to talk to their community members.

My professor, at the time, dismissed my concerns and simply asked me to reread the text to get a better understanding of Gee’s ideas. And although I reread it, and still felt just as slighted as before, it wasn’t until I was introduced to “Should Writers Use They Own English” where I finally could process not only my own feelings about the text but grasp the full extent of Gee’s thoughts on language. The authors butt heads consistently in this discussion, to my own satisfaction. And through Vershawn Ashanti Young’s eloquent blend of Chicago slang and “standard English,” he challenges most, if not all, of James Gee’s theories introduced in “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics Introduction,” as well as questions the cultures and norms we are prioritizing and shutting out of academic writing.

In his introduction, Gee describes what a “Discourse” is to the reader; essentially the practice of speaking, behaving, valuing, and believing through language, helping language come alive (Gee 7). “These combinations I call “Discourses,” with a capital “D” (“discourse,” with a little “d,” to me, means connected stretches of language that make sense, so “discourse” is part of “Discourse.” (6) According to Gee, there are two kinds of Discourses. The first one is a primary Discourse, the one we inherit from the home and are used to all the time. It’s the one closest to our truest selves. Dominant Discourses are Discourses that society at large will use; this kind of Discourse can grant opportunities and help an individual advance in their careers, achieve in academic institutions, and overall climb the social ladder (Gee 8). Gee wants the reader to associate Discourses regarding college academic writing, think graduate school programs or even upper-level undergraduate classes, with Discourses that can uplift an individual and provide them access to prestigious places. He further emphasizes this point when discussing “middle-class mainstream sorts of Discourses” which can bring “power and prestige” (8). By attaching a class to this term, he continues to allude to mastery of a dominant Discourse as something one should strive for in life if they wish to be successful.

However, as proven time and time again by Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) in the writing field, what we know as million-dollar language has a direct correlation to the delayed admittance of marginalized races and ethnic groups in higher level institutions. Even with classmates in my Africana Studies class, when we mock and scorn the expensive vocabularies of some of the history books we have to read, we refer to these explicitly Black texts as texts littered with “white people talk.” Despite our light-hearted remarks, the proliferation of academic language in all kinds of required literature proves society can only show one way of being “smart.” The primary Discourses of young BIPOC in schools, the one’s they’ve spent their entire lives using, winning arguments against their siblings, defending themselves to their parents, entertaining their friends and classmates, allegedly can’t get them ahead in life. But Young rejects this entirely, and instead blames the narrow-minded lens that the academic world looks through when judging what kind of writing is legitimate. “A whole lot of folk could be writin and speaking real, real smart if Fish and others stopped tryna use one prescriptive, foot long ruler to measure the language of peeps who use a yardstick” (Young 112). Young expresses the limits academic elites put on themselves and on those who attempt to “break into” these spheres. He notices not all students, especially students of color who have grown accustomed to their own rules of speaking and thinking, thrive in academic spaces. Young even suspects their plan is to ostracize them, and therefore keep them from advancing. At least the way Gee thinks, they would be able to ditch their own language and adopt others. But Young would wildly disagree with Gee’s claim that dominant Discourses are the only ones that can bring someone places; Young sees the potential for secondary Discourses in a much more flexible point of view than Gee.

The biggest point of contention I have with Gee’s Discourse argument is the capabilities he claims a primary Discourse possesses. “Primary Discourses… can never really be liberating. For a literacy to be liberating it must contain both the Discourse it is going to critique and a set of meta elements … in terms of which an analysis and criticism can be carried out” (Gee 10). From my understanding, Gee tries to outline what is needed in order for a primary Discourse to be analyzed. No one can fully fathom the extent of their own language were it not for access of another language to borrow terminology from; you have to take a step back in order to see the full picture. I am aware of the technical terms he equipped in order to explain this point; and to a certain degree it does make sense how an individual exposed to only one Discourse can only properly critique itself if it had language completely divorced from its own to truly pick itself apart. However, this argument implies that members of a primary Discourse live in their own vacuum hidden from the real world, which isn’t truly how being a minority in the United States works.

We are exposed to what society considers “standard English” at or around the same time our primary Discourse is established for us, and I would even argue both are developed as we grow older. Articles like Stanley Fish’s defending the sanctity of the written word to whomever in the New York Times comment section is willing to listen follow us at every turn, and even Young’s main motivation for his writing is to offer the students affirmation in their “broken” English. (Yes, Young interspersed English vocabulary words in his monograph to make points about conventions used in others’ writings.) But Gee fails to recognize a liberating literacy can be liberating for the user in their own head. Not having the language to analyze itself only applies to written analyses. When the nation drills into your head that there is only one correct way of thinking, of acting, of speaking, and of believing, it is highly unlikely kids growing up with this rhetoric are not constantly aware of the space they take up and why the country seems to take issue with it. Before BIPOC children can even realize what is an acceptable way of existing, they have been implicitly or explicitly told the way they do it is wrong. And let’s say one of them manages to write out on paper their own critique of their primary Discourse; Gee makes it very clear there is no benefit of fluent dominant Discourse speakers to attempt to gain knowledge about Discourses that won’t grant them any status or accolades. So who is to say these primary Discourse speakers are being properly understood by the “powers that be”?

One of the views that overlap between Gee and Young’s writings is the concept of combined Discourses: what happens when you are introduced to two languages at the same time, and you fail to master both? For Gee, that result is a “mushfake” Discourse; and for Young, that result is code-meshing. The definition of a mushfake Discourse is a way of speaking, writing, thinking, being that is formed as an adaptation to a secondary Discourse in order to get by when a dominant Discourse couldn’t be grappled with (Gee 13). The intermingling of Black New England vernacular with professional office job language, for a job in the city, is an example of this. While for Young; code-meshing is an accurate alternative to the misconstrued concept of code-switching. Code-meshing is the combination of multiple dialects from all parts of an individual’s life that can and should be used at all times (Young 114). It allows for the speaker to articulate themselves in a way that feels natural and right for them while also encouraging the listener to explore a Discourse that’s unfamiliar to them. Young’s entire piece, and the few more he cites, are prime examples of code-meshing at work. Although similar concepts, Gee and Young still have very different ideas on how the two should be used. The definition of a mushfake lends itself to expressing when he thinks they are appropriate to be used: “do with something less when the real thing is not available” (Gee 13). To Gee, to resort to a mushfake Discourse means you have failed to properly adapt to the demands of a dominant Discourse, and you must craft a makeshift one when true acquisition isn’t an option. He then goes on to describe an example of pointing out the rules of the “game” (corporate etiquette one can assume) in a job interview to throw the interviewer of their rhythm and make use of the hyperawareness a Black job candidate fluent in their respective mushfake Discourse has to secure their position (13).

Although useful and clever, the description Gee provides has an air of shiftiness; to combine multiple Discourses from a variety of sources and therefore connotations mean there’s an intention to trick the elites, trick the outsiders. Can it be used for that purpose? Absolutely. Is that its sole purpose? Not according to Young, who argues this shouldn’t be used for the benefit of one party and the detriment of another; code-meshing should be normalized as time goes on and proves to be advantageous to all parties. As language changes and grows over time, so should our attitudes towards them change and grow. Not only does code-meshing allow for “writers and speakers to bridge multiple codes and modes of expression that Fish say be disparate and unmixable” but gives BIPOC the chance to demonstrate the skills they’ve always had access to but never an audience willing to witness (Young 116).

Overall, while analyzing both articles, I saw a myriad of back-talk happening between the two authors that inspired me to explore their debate in these texts. Gee’s writing was not unimportant as it taught me how to have more critical relationships with the language I use and what it says about the groups I am a part of, but Young’s writing reminded me of the very institutions Gee upholds with his Discourse theory. There was a very specific insidious reason why academia can feel so foreign for me and the people in my community, and every day I urge myself to break those rules. I couldn’t help but go back to Gee’s ideas of letting members in and out of Discourses and wonder if any good could come out of it. Although I indulged myself by reading Young’s colloquial-laced work aloud and getting through it twice as fast as I usually would, the discomfort of nonblack people possibly taking this and running with it sat in the back of my head the entire time. I’m not one to believe in gatekeeping, and what I want most of all is to be understood. I am curious to what extent will letting outsiders into our world, a world that bears the product of years of mistreatment and oppression, come back to hurt us. Young’s enthusiasm assuages much more than concerns, but we know all too well the dangers of offering ourselves way more than we have to.

Works Cited

Gee, James Paul. “Literacy, Discourse,and Linguistics: Introduction.” Journal of Education (Boston, Mass.), vol. 171, no. 1, Boston University School of Education, 1989, pp. 5–176.

Young, Vershawn A. “Should Writers Use They Own English?.” Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies 12 (2010): 110-117.

by Michael O’Shaughnessy

Michael is a Chemistry student from Middleboro, Massachusetts, who is very passionate about science and fine arts. He is a talented musician who has played several different instruments since he was six years old. Michael also invests time in drawing and writing. He is in his Junior year, is interested in organic synthesis and pharmaceuticals, and hopes to teach chemistry one day in order to share his passion for science. Michael says that this paper was actually very important to him as he reflected on some of the challenges that he was experiencing in his life at the time. “The essay explored the necessity of ideas that challenge the status quo: something that I was faced with after leaving my hometown for school.” Michael also says that “eventually, through civil discourse with others, and a broader understanding of the world around me, I found I was more accepting of the new ideas I was being exposed to at the university.”

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We live in a society where somebody’s always offended by something, regardless of your background, age, ethnicity, or social status. A lot of people attribute this trait only to younger generations, saying that we’re ‘sheltered’ and ‘overly-sensitive’, but as I said before, age isn’t a factor in how much a person takes offense. The most recent example of this would be the ‘Ok Boomer’ meme that’s been going around the internet. For some background information, for years there have been articles and comics, such as “Millennials are Killing the Diamond Industry” and comics that depict young people as ‘phone zombies,’ that blame younger generations for the world’s problems. Eventually, us young people got tired of putting up with that and responded with ‘Ok Boomer,’ referring to the intolerant and unprogressive mindset that we’ve found a lot of Baby Boomers have. As a note, ‘Ok Boomer’ is not meant to just target anyone older than Millennials, but as a way to let intolerant people know that we’re fed up with business as usual. In response to this meme, the same people writing the articles and making the comics that were attacking younger generations decided that they would play the victim, calling the word ‘Boomer’ an ageist slur. The backlash against the ‘Ok Boomer’ meme demonstrates that it’s not just my generation that is easily offended, but that older generations are just as, if not more, easily offended than we are. 

This is exactly the point that Brendan O’Neill, a British columnist, makes in the speech he gives in a 2015 debate at the Oxford Union. O’Neill argues that every generation that has gone through Oxford has been faced with offensive ideas, and each person or organization presenting those ideas has lost their platform to speak. O’Neill then presses that these ideas that were once found so offensive are, in actuality, very tame by today’s standards (heliocentric planetary theory, women’s suffrage, gay rights), and that it is our civic and societal duty to be offensive. Now, it seems to me that what O’Neill means by “being offensive” is that we must actively challenge the status quo, but others could construe it as meaning that they can just say whatever they want, regardless of who will be offended by it. I would like to make clear right now that I do not subscribe to the latter definition, and when I say to be offensive, I am referring to challenging pre-established ideas, not seeking to bring harm or distress to any people or groups in society. I believe that if we stick to the definition that I am using, we can move forward and progress as a society by being what I like to call ‘civilly offensive,’ which encourages diversity of thought and the keeping of an open mind. The idea is derived from Henry David Thoreau’s ideas on Civil Disobedience and how “it is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right” (Thoreau 2). This was the basis for the entire concept of civil disobedience, and to summarize, it means that if we find a law to be unjust and morally reprehensive, then it is our civic duty to break that law. And just as it is our duty to break that law, it is also our civic responsibility to push the boundaries of society with challenging or offensive ideas. This will ensure that there is a constant influx of novel ideas into our society, a concept that both O’Neill and I believe is integral to a well-functioning society. 

While I can’t speak for why O’Neill believes diversity of thought is important, I can give background information on why I believe it is necessary. My train of thought comes from my background in biology and genetics. In all cases, the most important trait that contributes to the survivability of a species is that species’ genetic diversity. Without getting too much into the technical parts of it, genetic diversity is basically exactly how it sounds: a large amount of diversity in the traits of an organism encoded in its genes. And according to a video on the subject from the California Academy of Sciences, “the greater the genetic diversity, the higher the chances are that some members of the population will survive, or even flourish, in times of environmental change and challenges” (California Academy of Sciences). This same concept can be applied to the ideas that are constantly run through our society. With a greater diversity of thought, the higher the chances are of useful ideas already having been explored by the time they become necessary. Keeping in the same vein of scientific ideas, this is the whole reason why we have the scientific method. Some ideas, when put to the test, don’t make the cut, which means we have to come up with a better model to fit the things we observe in nature. The same can be said with how we interact with one another. Sometimes, other people do things that we can’t explain, and this boils down to differences in how we were raised, and we believe to be “right.”

Unfortunately, what is “right” for some people, might not be right for others, and that’s where the whole idea of being offended comes in. Fortunately for us, Thoreau himself might have an answer for us: “I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward” (Thoreau 2). In the context of his essay, Thoreau is not only pushing for you to challenge the ideas of your government and the establishment, but this quote also comes in the context of Thoreau’s discussion of protecting the rights of the minority. Thoreau wholeheartedly believed that the majority was prone to trying to silence the voices of the minority and that we, as a society, need to take measures to prevent that from happening. The best way to accomplish this is to ensure that the minority will always have a platform for speech. At the governmental level, this takes the form of the First Amendment, but that can only do so much. This needs to be taken care of on a personal level. Thoreau is pushing us to do this by being empathetic and be decent human beings above all else. He wants us to use our empathy and basic human decency as a compass for what is right and what is wrong. 

This is where another problem arises: what do we do when someone appears to lack empathy or when people disagree on what basic human decency means? Fortunately, most cultures around the world seem to have come to some sort of agreement on the latter issue, even if everyone doesn’t always seem to utilize it. This comes in the form of the Golden Rule, or in other words, treat others how you want to be treated. Now, I don’t know about anyone else, but I generally want to be treated as if I have basic rights, so I think that’s a good place to start. If we give everyone the right to have their voice heard, regardless of who they are and what others think of it, then everything should be fine right? Well, that already exists in the form of the First Amendment, but there still seems to be an issue. That’s because the First Amendment doesn’t tell people how to think, just what they can or can’t do in the eyes of the law. We, as a people, need to come together and keep our minds open to ideas that counter our own. This is the only way that we can progress as a society, by tolerating and accepting that we have no control over what other people think. 

The greatest periods of change in our society are able to happen when there are ideas that contradict the status quo, but these changes could progress a lot more smoothly if we just listened to each other. One of the most prominent examples of this in recent history was the civil rights movement of the 1960s, in which the ideas of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr were the prominent, but contrasting, ideologies of the movement. Malcolm X’s ideologies were largely based around hate, “criticizing most of the civil rights movement as well as its use of nonviolent civil disobedience. He advocated the use of more aggressive techniques, which he asserted were justified self-defense in response to institutionalized violence by white society against blacks” (Stolberg). While Malcolm X’s methods were effective in bringing attention to the civil rights movement and furthering Malcolm X’s own agenda, they didn’t push forward the agenda of the movement itself as white people were afraid of the Black Panthers and if one group is living in fear of another, they cannot live in harmony. Near the end of his life, Malcolm X, a Muslim, made a pilgrimage to Mecca, where he realized that his violent ways of protest were wrong, renounced his old ideologies, and converted to Martin Luther King Jr’s civil rights ideologies. 

These ideologies were largely based on the movement that liberated India from British rule, led by Gandhi. King once wrote “virtually all revolutions had been based on hope and hate. The hope was expressed in the rising expectation of freedom and justice. What was new about Mahatma Gandhi’s movement in India was that he mounted a revolution on hope and love, hope and non-violence” (Butler-Bowdon). King realized that even if the civil rights movement achieved its goals through violence, then it would be harder to get the support of people of different races and it would be nearly impossible for people to live in harmony afterwards because there would always be some leftover resentment from both groups. The only way forward is if we actually took the time to listen to each other and work through society’s problems together. It’s a slow process, but we’re getting there, and it’ll go a lot faster if we got everyone on board with it too. Imagine if everyone just took the time to actually understand where someone else is coming from instead of just saying ‘what you’re suggesting is offensive to me’ and ignoring it and moving on with their lives.

It’s not easy to do this, but since when is anything easy worth doing? Since I started college and moved away from my very conservative, 96% white hometown, I’ve had almost a complete one hundred and eighty degree shift away from who I was in high school. I’ve achieved this because even though I was relatively close-minded politically, there were still some cracks in my ‘armor’ that allowed new ideas to get through. This came in the form of my innate desire to become friends with lots of people and my interest in their stories. Through the people that I listened to and some of my classes as well, I discovered that most of the assumptions that I had based my political ideas on were false, and this led to a gradual shift away from conservativism for me. This shift was so gradual that I didn’t even notice it myself until one of my friends from high school pointed it out to me when I visited him last April. 

None of these changes that occurred in my life would have been able to take place if I hadn’t kept some parts of my mind open to others’ ideas. The same can be said for the civil rights movement and almost every major societal change: if there wasn’t anyone with an open enough mind to listen to the voices of others, then the entirety of the movement would’ve had no platform. This is why it is imperative that we, as a society, keep our minds open to new ideas and new ways of thinking. This is the only way that those with ideas that challenge the status quo can be heard and the only way that we can ensure that a constant diversity of thought flows through our society is by keeping our minds open, listening to the people around us, and by constantly challenging what we see represented in the status quo. 

Works Cited

“Brendan O’Neill | Freedom of Speech and Right to Offend | Proposition.” YouTube, Oxford Union, 25 Aug. 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtWrljX9HRA.

“Genes and Biodiversity.” YouTube, California Academy of Sciences, 30 Dec. 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOxsjdB4-ZQ.

Stolberg, Victor B. “Malcolm X.” The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America: An Encyclopedia. Ed. Wilbur R. Miller. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2012. 1062-1063. SAGE Knowledge. Web. 4 Dec. 2019.

 “The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1998).” 50 Classics Series: 50 Politics Classics, Tom Butler-Bowdon, Nicholas Brealey, 1st edition, 2017. Credo Reference, 

Thoreau, Henry David, and Ebrary, Inc. Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau. Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Tech, 2001. Web.

by Cooper Wilkinson

Cooper is a Biochemistry major and a Cognitive Science minor who moved to Boston from Kansas City, Missouri. Cooper has always loved science, and has recently gained an interest in linguistics and the overlapping subjects of science and language. He wrote this essay during the Spring remote semester, and was proud to be able to “overcome the challenges of remote learning and grow even while the world was at a stand still.” Cooper says that he was grateful to be able to choose his writing topic and to no longer be “forbidden to write in the first person”. In addition, he is excited to prove that academic writing can also be a form of expression where students can take risks, choose interesting topics, and express themselves fully.

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While we sat in silence, brainstorming ideas for the topic of this paper, my mind was completely blank. I was more fixated on the chemistry lecture across the hall than coming up with ideas. It was funny—that same lecturer was across the hall from my math class the semester before, where I would also zone out and listen to him. So, the stars aligned and into my head popped a memory from my first semester of chemistry at UMass Boston. I hadn’t taken a college-level chemistry class in high school, so my first lab report sucked. Most of all, according to the TA who graded it, the language sucked. I failed to adhere to this ridiculous rule buried in the fine print of chemistry standards: reports should be written in the third-person passive voice. My chemistry manual inconspicuously states: “Never write in the first person; third person passive voice is the proper tense… The latter is much more professional” (Lab Report Writing Style Guide, 5). When I asked my chemistry TA to elaborate, he said “that’s just the way it is.” This conflicted with my essay-writing knowledge; that same semester in English I was encouraged to write in the first-person active voice for the sake of “clarity.” I wondered why anyone would want to sacrifice clarity for “professionalism” or some silly tradition. I complied in writing myself out of my lab reports and the memory dissipated, until that fabled afternoon brainstorming where I was reminded of that same burning question: why are lab reports written in the third-person passive voice?!

My greatest fear was that a simple answer lay behind one Google search. Perhaps it simply was tradition, and no answer would ever live up to the internal turmoil and torment this question burdened me with. Much to my relief, after some preliminary research I found that there was plenty of debate and study to keep me occupied. The first major development in my research was my discovery that third-person passive is just one aspect of what many call “technical writing.” This form of writing, according to educational science professors at Uppsala University (Sweden) in their paper “Features and Functions of Scientific Language,” has plenty of features that “every day” language does not. The study conducted found that scientific language contains: ”a more extensive use of complex noun phrases with many modifiers, a specialized vocabulary and the use of the passive form and nominalizations that remove the agent and, subsequently, the need to use personal pronouns” (Persson, et al., 177). Technical writing doesn’t just include the use of the third person passive, but often field-specific vocabulary and highly complex language. This is more than apparent if you’ve ever read a scientific report—their use of massive words and complicated concepts can be like a foreign language, not just a technical one. Bolstered by my new-found understanding of scientific writing, I dug deeper to understand why this language is used in the first place.

But first, I wanted to rule out my TA’s idea that the use of technical writing was simply tradition. My search led me to a book by retired English professor Elizabeth Tebeaux, titled The Flowering of Tradition: Technical Writing in England 1641-1700, Tebeaux articulates that reports are at the heart of technical writing and carry much of its history (Tebeaux, 215). She claims that petitions were one of the earliest forms of the report, and that “petitions were documents that allowed King Edward’s subjects to approach him with their problems, their requests, and recommendations for solutions” (TeBeaux, 215). This parallels the structure of my lab reports, specifically the inclusion of a section for recommendations for solutions. Often in chemistry, further experimentation is required in order to determine concrete results, so this section takes the form of recommendations for future experiments. I was also interested in why reports took this form, and Tebeaux answers. She argues that the need for multiple copies of these old reports to be printed (by hand) meant that they had to be concise. This manifested in reports having the following characteristics: “Statement of purpose of the report at the beginning of the document,” “Conciseness and directness,” and “Page design and formatting to reveal the content” (Tebeaux, 218). While all of these characteristics are still present in my modern lab reports, I found the statement of purpose to be the most interesting. In chemistry, our first task is always to write a paragraph on the purpose of the lab. I enjoyed learning the historical context as to why we are always given this seemingly trivial assignment. While this source helped me to understand the organization of technical writings, I wanted to explore more of the grammatical concepts I mentioned before. So, I kept digging.

I came across the most interesting paper of my research: a study of code-switching between scientific language and casual language in children. Researchers at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland interviewed 539 children from the ages 3-18 to assess their language in describing every-day concepts and scientific ones (Blown and Bryce, 621). These children were asked to describe basic concepts of astronomy, like how the moon revolves around the Earth and the position of the sun in the sky. What they found was that children relied on personification and animism (highly visual concepts) when discussing these scientific concepts. To expand on this discovery, researchers asked the children to describe how the Earth revolves around the sun along with play-dough models. According to the findings, “it was not uncommon for children to change the shape of their models of the shape of the Earth from disc-shaped to ball-shaped as a result of Socratic dialogue” (Blown and Bryce, 645 ). In my head I thought, this is HUGE—it means that children’s visual and spatial perceptions shift alongside the switch from casual to scientific speech. I began to wonder if technical writing was just the manifestation of a much deeper psychological mindset. In other words, maybe the origin of this voice isn’t just from tradition, but how we subconsciously choose our words when thinking scientifically. But if technical speech and writing is inherent to scientific thought, should it still be enforced in curricula?

I found an article by chemistry professor Reuben Hudson that asks this very question. His paper “The Struggle with Voice in Scientific Writing” was a rebuttal of another paper written by his colleague Jeremy Carr titled: “Using a Collaborative Critiquing Technique to Develop Chemistry Students’ Technical Writing Skills” which proposed technical writing to be a powerful device to be used universally within the sciences (Carr, 751). In Hudson’s own words: “If we tell young chemists to write in the technical voice, they may interpret that the scientific community allows for only one homogeneous voice” (Hudson, 1580). He proposes that professors should allow their students to present scientific findings in ways that best fit their audience, regardless of whether or not that method involves the technical voice (Hudson 1580). I hadn’t thought of the scientific community as anything but one homogenous community until I read Hudson’s piece. I realized that some fields benefit from the technical voice while some might suffer. For example, as described earlier, astronomy is a highly spatial science. If the technical voice does correlate to spatial thinking as previously postulated, it makes sense that research conducted in that field would be presented technically. However, perhaps, a field like psychology that relies on intangible concepts would benefit from its own method of presentation. So maybe technical writing shouldn’t be enforced in less spatial sciences, but I wasn’t satisfied with just that. I still wanted to know if it should be enforced in my science in question: chemistry. Chemistry is a highly spatial science. Concepts such as the shape of electron orbitals and arrangements of molecules lie at its core, so it makes sense that the technical voice would be used to describe them.

It seemed as though my question had been answered, yet I wasn’t satisfied. Perhaps I’m just stubborn, but I felt that there was something wrong about this top-down enforcement of language. I wasn’t going to let my TA or my professor win so easily, so I kept thinking. I looked back at studies I had ruled out in my preliminary research and found one titled “Investigation of Passive Voice Occurrence in Scientific Writing” by professors at the University of Jambi in Indonesia. The researchers compiled scientific papers written by students and simply counted how many times they used the passive or active voice. They found that the active voice was actually used much more in students’ scientific papers (Subagio, et al., 64). Initially, I wasn’t sure how to account for this contradiction of my own experience (which is why I ruled it out) and chalked it up to the fact that this study was conducted in Indonesia, where the first language isn’t English. I have come to realize that this concept of English as a second language wasn’t a conflating factor, but the key to what I had been missing. Perhaps the reason that the active voice was used more by students in Indonesia was that the technical voice was especially difficult to learn for non-native speakers.

English has become not only the dominant language of science, but of the world. If scientists wish to be heard or peer-reviewed on a large scale, it is in their best interest to present their ideas in English. Given that English is already one of the most difficult languages to learn, the technical voice (that I and countless other native speakers struggle with) is exceptionally difficult to use correctly. This makes sense intuitively, but its best explained by Dr. Danica Salazar in her book Lexical Bundles in Native and Non-native Scientific Writing where she claims: “A large number of non-native scientists in many parts of the world are situated in this complex, English-dominated context, and many of them find their written production in this language falling short of academic expectations when measured against expert-writer models” (Salazar, 65). Scientists in various countries are marginalized and disadvantaged by the fact that English isn’t their first language. The specific struggles they face in technical writing were determined in a corpus-based study of non-native speakers’ scientific writings. In other words, Dr. Salazar and her team compiled papers already written and examined them. What she found was that non-native speakers especially struggled with “lexical bundles,” or short, commonly used phrases. Specifically in the sciences, these might be “in the presence of,” “in the absence of,” “in response to,” et cetera. According to the study: “One of the most important findings revealed by corpus-based language studies is the fact that, instead of constantly making new combinations of individual words, native speakers often depend on a stock of prefabricated, semi-automatic word chunks” (Salazar 65). These lexical bundles are used so effortlessly and fluently by native speakers that their misuse by non-native speakers stick out like sore thumbs. This allows for native speakers to unfairly determine the merit of a scientific paper’s argument simply by looking at grammar and word choice.

At least from my own experience, I’m less likely to read a piece if there are grammatical errors. The enforcement of the technical voice pushes non-native speakers to write in an non-intuitive way, which makes these errors more likely. Jeremy Carr’s words from before remain relevant in this new light: “use of the [the technical voice] paints a bleak picture of scientific writing in which individuals have no room for personal style, only one homogeneous voice” (Carr, 751). Allowing for native and non-native speakers alike to transmit their work in their own voice would allow for a wonderful diversification of thought. While initially I was preoccupied by my own struggles in using the technical voice, I have discovered that the real issue lies where I hadn’t thought to look before. I think that the same selfish mindset I had while early in my research process is what fuels this homogenization of the sciences. At long last, I was satisfied with my discoveries. What began as a simple question transformed into a deep inquiry that has granted me with real-world insight.

Works Cited
Blown, Eric, and J. Bryce. “Switching Between Everyday and Scientific Language.” Research in Science Education 47.3 (2017): 621-53.

Carr, Jeremy M. “Using a Collaborative Critiquing Technique to Develop Chemistry Students’ Technical Writing Skills.” Journal of Chemical Education 90.6 (2013): 751-754.

Hudson, Reuben. “The Struggle with Voice in Scientific Writing.” Journal of Chemical Education 90.12 (2013): 1580-1580.

“Lab Report Writing Style Guide.” Chemistry 117, University of Massachusetts Boston, pp. 5–7.

Salazar, Danica. “Lexical Bundles in Native and Non-native Scientific Writing : Applying a Corpus-based Study to Language Teaching / Danica Salazar,” University of Oxford. 2014. Studies in Corpus Linguistics ; v. 65.

Tebeaux, Elizabeth. The Flowering of a Tradition : Technical Writing in England, 1641-1700 / by Elizabeth Tebeaux, Texas A&M University. 2014. Baywood’s Technical Communications Series.

Persson, Tomas, Åsa Af Geijerstam, and Caroline Liberg. “Features and Functions of Scientific Language(s) in TIMSS 2011.” Nordina: Nordic Studies in Science Education 12.2 (2016): 176-196.

Subagio, Urip, J. A. Prayogo, and Emalia Iragiliati. “Investigation of Passive Voice Occurrence in Scientific Writing.” International Journal of Language Teaching and Education 3.1 (2019): 61-66.

by Whitney Posada

Whitney is a Psychology major who lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. Whitney enjoys translating her thoughts into her writing and working through the writing process to overcome boundaries and convey her message properly. While writing this paper she reflected on her own experiences, just one year before, as she sat down to write her college admissions essay. She says that while writing her admission essay there were “overwhelming emotions and confusion that I felt at that moment” and that her “anxiety could have been relieved if I had read James Warren’s essay back then.” Whitney says that her family has the greatest impact on her life and that they inspire her to move forward. She is the oldest of four siblings, and is the first in her family to attend college. Whitney also says that making her Salvadorian family proud “is something that pushes me to do my best on a daily basis.”

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The college essay is one of the multiple elements that make up the college application process; it is known as the part where students can show colleges a different, less academic side of themself, that is not technically shown by the other parts of your application. The prompts allow students to speak about different topics they might experience throughout their lifetime, such as the influence a person has had on their life, failures they have learned from, personal growth, challenging a belief, or if none of the specific prompts satisfy them, they may write about the topic of their choice.

College essays can be stressful and intimidating, but also mysterious for the rising senior. Students do not know how much weight the college essay carries, and this can either cause students to stress about the essay or feel confident about their application based solely on their stats. I know I definitely leaned towards feeling stressed and intimidated when it came time to write my essay, but it could have gone differently had I known more regarding the college essay.

In his essay, “The Rhetoric of College Application Essays: Removing Obstacles for Low Income and Minority Students,” James Warren tackles an issue he finds in the college application process, specifically what he considers “misleading” college application essay prompts, which he argues fail to actually ask what graders are truly looking for, and therefore create a disadvantage for low-income and minority students.

Warren’s curiosity regarding the college essay prompt leads him to the few research studies surrounding the topic of the college application essay. Warren investigates the studies Early and DeCosta Smith, Paley and Vidali conducted, and although he does give some praise to them each for conducting vital research which has contributed to the academic conversation about the college essay, he finds flaws in all three studies. He points out Paley and Vidali’s participant pool seems to be already marked for success and that the results of Early and DeCosta Smith’s study are slightly mitigated because their essay evaluators have no experience grading as college admissions counselors (45). Warren’s question is whether rhetorical awareness, or the cognizance of what your purpose is and who your audience is, which is implicit in college application essay prompts, affects students’ writing. Being that neither of these three studies fully satisfied the factors and outcomes he was looking for and answered his question, Warren decides to conduct a research study of his own, focusing on tying up the loose ends he found in other studies and conducting a better experiment that could answer his question and lead to expanding the academic conversation.

Warren conducted his experiment in a “low performing, urban high school” in Dallas, TX (46). The participant pool consisted of four classrooms: two classes were the control group, and the other two classes were the experimental group. Both groups consisted of high school seniors preparing to write their college application essays. As per usual, both groups of students were taught the assigned unit on the college essay which is included in their curriculum. This consisted of two weeks’ worth of information meant to guide and inform the students on the college essay. The experimental group, however, would replace four class days of the assigned instruction with seminars conducted by Warren himself.

These four class days were crucial to Warren’s experiment because these instruction days would emphasize the importance of rhetorical awareness, or being cognizant of your purpose and audience. Rhetorical awareness focuses on knowing your purpose, knowing why you are writing and what you are trying to convey through your writing; and knowing your audience, who they are and what they are expecting. Warren emphasizes that one of the key factors, if not the most important factor when writing the college application essay is being rhetorically aware. It is knowing who is going to read your essay, what the reader is expecting or looking for, and knowing how to write an efficient essay that conveys a mix of what you are trying to say and what the reader is looking for.

And so Warren taught rhetorical awareness to the experimental group who focused on using it to plan their college application essays. They then wrote their college application essays having rhetorical awareness in mind, had them peer-reviewed and then received further feedback from Warren on the strengths and weaknesses of their drafts. After the experimental groups did their final revision, both groups’ essays were then assessed and compared by two college admissions officers from the University of Texas- Austin. The essays were rated on a 4 point scale (48). The results showed that the students belonging to the experimental group who received the four-day training from Warren averaged better scores (2.43) than the control group (1.98) (49).

For clarification, all the students participating in this experiment responded to the following prompt: “Write an essay in which you tell us about someone who has made an impact on your life and explain how and why this person is important to you” (46). Warren consulted with one of the admissions counselors to have a breakdown of the students’ results, including what the students did well and what was ineffective in their writing. During this sit down, the admissions counselor confirmed Warren’s initial suspicion that “the college essay is a persuasive argument masquerading as personal narrative” (49), meaning that colleges are not looking for you to write a story about your life, but rather prove that you have what it takes to attend their institution. The admissions counselor admits to being trained to look for “effective rhetoric, reasoning, [and] argumentation,” and shows Warren examples of where students excelled and failed to provide the rhetoric they were looking for. For example, some students wrote detailed essays about their loved ones and their importance to their lives, but as the college admissions advisor emphasized, “[the essay] had better be about the impact and not the person making the impact” (50) meaning that even though they are asking to write about someone else who has impacted your life, the main focus of the essay should still be you and should show how you are qualified for college.

Based on the results of this study Warren suggests that there is a positive correlation between students instructed on the rhetorical situation with regards to the college essay and the “score” given to their essay after having learned these writing techniques. Warren states that those students who simply followed the instructions of the prompt, without knowing the true intentions behind the prompt did not write essays that included the skills or characteristics the admissions counselor was looking for.

Warren’s essay gives me a different perspective on the college application essay than I had during my senior year in high school. As Warren claims, “most prompts ask applicants for personal narratives, but the essays actually function as arguments that make a case for the applicant’s potential as a college student” (44). When I selected my prompt, I did believe that the essay was an opportunity for colleges to know me outside of the academic field, to know a personal side of me that has impacted my life and who I am today. What I was unable to understand, probably because of the lack of instruction, was the “academic game” behind the prompt. Although the prompt I chose said, “Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others,” I didn’t understand that the underlying purpose, or the academic game, was to demonstrate how I was qualified to attend the universities I was applying to.

In my college essay, I wrote about the moment when I saw my father get taken away from me for deportation and the impact his deportation had on me as a young girl. I focused on how I learned to cherish his words of advice as a way of holding on to him, but not how this experience made me a good fit for college. I wrote about the lessons my father taught me before he left and how his words gave me motivation, but not about how I used those lessons and that those lessons will translate to my success in college. I thought I had written a beautiful, heartfelt essay that would touch the admissions counselors’ hearts, and I was probably right about that. But Warren’s essay enabled me to see the flaw of my college application essay: I wrote a narrative and failed to make an argument. I see my essay as a mix of two students of the control group of Warren’s experiment: Morgan and Peter, who used their essays to talk about their grandfather and mother, respectively.

When writing my essay, I spent the first half page describing the morning of my father’s deportation and the last few moments I had with him, which although are very dear to me, do not help colleges understand why I am a good match for their school. This is similar to Morgan’s essay where he describes miniscule details of his grandfather who is the main subject of his essay. Although the counselor applauds how vivid the description was, he states “I don’t care what he looks like. Make an argument that he impacted you”(49). If I reflect on my essay from the perspective of that same counselor, I think they would say, “It does not matter how the morning before your dad got deported went, focus on his actual deportation and how his absence impacted you.” I then go on to describe how my father is this selfless person who has always put myself before him, how he has worked sedulously to give me a better future than he could ever have. But as the admissions counselor says regarding Peter’s essay, a student who wrote about his mother, “the writer doesn’t say enough about himself” and instead focuses too much on his mother and forgets that this essay is about him, not his mother. I think the counselor would say, “The sacrifices your dad made are touching, but what kind of person are you as a result of his sacrifices?”

As much as I would like to, I cannot use Warren’s essay to go back into the past and rewrite my essay. As a first-generation college student, much of my journey senior year was trying to figure out how to do the whole college application process on my own. While my parents were there for moral support, there was not much advice they could give me regarding the actual “how-to” of the process: how to write the college app essay, how to apply for financial aid, how to write supplementaries, or even how to look for scholarships. I was able to seek help and find people willing to guide me through the process, yet no one taught me about this academic game that Warren speaks about in his essay. Although Warren’s essay is eye-opening and full of information, I read it too late for my benefit. Warren’s essay is limited for me in that I am unable to edit my essay and hope for a higher “score.” Had I read this last year, I would have possibly written an essay more aligned with the expectations and qualities the admissions counselors were looking for, possibly resulting in being accepted to more schools.

Although Warren’s essay is unable to help me, I can use it to help my siblings in the future. I can use Warren’s essay and apply it to my siblings’ essays when the time comes for them to apply to college. I will be able to show them Warren’s essay and help explain to them what rhetorical awareness is and the part it plays in the college application essay. I can teach them the importance of knowing your purpose and knowing who your audience is and what they are expecting. I can use the student examples in Warren’s essay to show my siblings what mistakes they should avoid making, and take it a step further by showing them the mistakes I made when I wrote my essay and explaining how I now understand what I could have improved. Basically, I can use Warren’s essay to help my siblings play the “academic game” that students who Warren calls “more traditionally qualified” and who I assume come from more affluent families than me have been playing for years (54).

Not only can I use Warren’s essay to help my siblings during their college application process, but I could spread this knowledge to someone who can make it accessible to more students. I could start by talking to previous teachers from my old high school and suggest adding the instruction on rhetorical awareness into the college essay unit, and explain the positive outcomes it would result in. This could start by simply just making each student read Warren’s essay, which would allow them to read about the mistakes other students made so they’re aware of what to avoid. By beginning to implement the instruction of the rhetorical situation into the curriculum of high school students, schools can begin to prepare students for the moment in senior year when the college essay is introduced. The earlier the rhetorical situation is introduced and implemented into the high school curriculum, the easier it will become to write college application essays.

This implementation of the rhetorical situation into high school students’ curriculum alone isn’t enough; it would not be more useful if students become familiar with the “academic game.” Although Warren’s essay has its uses when it comes to understanding the positive outcomes that result from teaching rhetorical awareness, I disagree with when he infers that colleges are purposely trying to be misleading with their prompts. Warren makes a call for action in his conclusion, stating that “unless postsecondary institutions are more transparent about the criteria they use to score college essays, they may unintentionally continue to favor applicants who are academically socialized over those of similar aptitude who are simply less familiar with academic culture”(55). Warren’s claim limits the reader into thinking that the “misleading” prompt is entirely the colleges’ fault. I think the problem is that high schools are not preparing students adequately. Colleges are not being misleading, they are simply using the academic language that is common and understood by them, which seems to be misleading for the high schooler who is not accustomed to that same system. If we began to educate students during their high school years about the academic game played in college, help them truly become rhetorically aware, and begin to learn how to write in the postsecondary level, college application essays would not appear so misleading anymore.

I think it is important that more research and studies be conducted regarding the college application essay. Warren simply sparked the conversation, but it must be continued to have a change take place. Some high schools will not add rhetorical awareness into the built-in curriculum solely based on one small study, but if more studies surged and there was more evidence to back up the effectiveness of rhetorical awareness, high schools might be more open to incorporating the idea. It is important to continue this conversation and make sure it does not die down.

Works Cited
Warren, James. “The Rhetoric of College Application Essays: Removing Obstacles for Low Income and Minority Students.” American Secondary Education, vol. 42, no. 1, 2013, pp. 43-56, www-jstor-org.ezproxy.lib.umb.edu/stable/43694176?seq=1#metadata_info_tb_contents. Accessed 20 Sep 2019.

by Sarah Dickinson

Sarah is an Early Childhood Education major from Warwick, Rhode Island, and ever since she was little, she knew she wanted to have a job in which she was able to help others. After attending freshman orientation she realized she wanted to pursue a teaching career. Sarah says “I have worked in numerous classrooms over the last few years and have noticed the negative effects that didactic teaching practices have on children’s development, as well as their relationship with learning.” Sarah’s goal with her paper was to bring attention to the ways in which play can be reintroduced into early childhood education classrooms, and she believes that this research shows “how play would be extremely beneficial to young children.” Sarah believes that as an education major, her topic has special importance to her work and studies.

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When it comes to early childhood education, there is a lot of controversy surrounding what material is developmentally appropriate, at what point said material should be introduced, and how it should be presented to students. As an early education major, I have been educated on this topic and therefore am biased in my thinking that play-based learning is the best way to teach young students, especially when it comes to literacy. I am particularly interested in this topic because I have seen first hand how Common Core standards, or what students should know by the end of each grade according to the state, have negatively impacted young students. Most children are presented with a didactic curriculum that is meant to improve their test scores, when in reality, what young children really need is hands on, play-based learning to help them reach developmental milestones and truly understand the material they are being presented. My interest in the topic is why my inquiry is as follows: Why should teachers implement play-based literacy learning in early education classrooms?

Play-based learning, also referred to as dramatic play, teacher-directed play, or simply “play”, is when students engage with new material through hands-on activities and social interaction. When it comes to play in the classroom, there is a difference between free play and play-based learning. Both are beneficial to child development but offer different outcomes. “Free play” is child-directed and has no determined end goal. In other words, the child can play however they wish (e.g. play house, restaurant, etc.) Free play is mainly beneficial to a child’s social development. Students learn to evaluate the behavior of their peers and modify their own behavior in order to follow social guidelines and norms throughout the play process. Play-based learning, on the other hand, is teacher-directed and has the ultimate goal of encouraging students to engage with new material in order to develop a better, more in depth understanding of the topic at hand. Play-based learning, especially in regards to composition, helps a students’ cognitive, social, and linguistic development. Literacy directed play has a direct correlation to, “language advancement, narrative development, emotional regulation, and the development of reasoning skills,” which in turn leads to “decoding, oral reading, fluency, reading comprehension, and writing convention” (Cavanaugh 832). By including teacher-directed play in the classroom, we are providing students with an opportunity to engage with the basics of literacy and to develop a solid foundation which they can build from for the rest of their lives.

While I’ve made it quite clear why play-based learning should be a part of every early childhood classroom, you may be asking yourself how or why these practices work. When explaining play-based learning, it’s best to refer back to the psychologist, Lev Vygotsky, who studied the importance of play for years. Vygotsky believed that play aided in children’s academic development because they had the ability to, “engage in pretend play because they start to separate the visual field (what can be seen) from the field of sense (what can be implied), or meaning” (Hostettler 63). For example, say a teacher sets up a pretend coffee shop in the classroom in order to introduce a composition play-based situation (students can engage in writing down orders, communicating with each other, writing the check, etc). Students then begin to play pretend and utilize the objects around them. This form of dramatic play also helps children understand that language flows back and forth between people (waitress and customers) and that writing can be used to record information (taking down orders). They may say “pretend this book is a plate” or “pretend I’m the waitress and I’m taking your order.” By playing in this way, students begin to act according to their own ideas (e.g. the book is a plate) rather than the concrete situation at hand (the book is in fact just a book). Vygotsky believed that this was, “the first step for the development of higher mental functions and verbal thinking, which becomes important for children during their transition to school” (Hostettler 63). Not only does play help students better grasp new concepts, it ultimately changes the way in which they think and observe the world around them.

Another benefit of play-based literacy practices in the classroom is it creates lasting and meaningful writing experiences for young students. Children become excited to learn and are engaged with subject matter in a way that isn’t possible with traditional didactic methods. In fact, that is the exact reason why play-based learning works: if learning is fun, children are more apt to do it. One particular example that comes to mind when discussing play-based literacy activities is the “Fairy Door Scenario” created and evaluated by Nicola Friedrich, Kristen Wishart, and Shelley Stagg Peterson. In order to complete this activity, teachers set up a small door in the classroom, making it look like a small creature has moved in. When the students come in from recess, the teachers have a brief conversation with each other about the mysterious new door to peak their interests, but refrain from mentioning anything to the students directly, allowing their own curiosity to take over. The students then start discussing amongst themselves what they should do about this new visitor in their classroom. They all agree that they will make a trap to capture the creature the next day. However, when they come into school the next morning, there is a letter that was written by the “fairy” who lives behind the door asking them to please not try to capture her. By writing a letter to the students from the “fairy,” the teachers make literacy a central part of the play scenario. Students naturally begin to ask questions and make assumptions and grab pieces of paper and pencils to write letters to their new friend. Students ask questions and even tell the fairy a little about themselves in the notes that they leave by her door. This scenario corresponds with Vygotsky’s theory considering the fairy doesn’t actually exist but the children are able to utilize their imagination and seperate what can physically be seen and what is being implied. This scenario provides an example of how to help students develop emergent writing skills, or a solid foundation for future literary engagements.

The “Fairy Door Scenario” is considered play-based learning because the students are engaging in dramatic play while communicating with their peers. The students are exercising their problem solving and literary skills by writing letters to help understand and gain information about the “fairy door”. This scenario sets up a perfect opportunity for play-based learning because instead of leading a teacher-guided lesson, the teachers “assisted the children as they directed their own natural/authentic interactions with print, interactions that engaged their interest in sign making” (Frederich et al. 62). When referring to natural/authentic interactions with print, Frederich is simply saying that the students are partaking in a child-directed activity in which they are free to write whatever they want without teacher intervention. Some of the students struggled with writing out their thoughts and questions so they resorted to pictures or symbols. The teachers then took the opportunity to respond to students with literacy activities. This is a perfect example of how literacy can be introduced to young students without having them physically write sentences on their own. Even if the students weren’t writing in complete or correct sentences, they were still illustrating their understanding and emergent literacy skills. This play-based activity allowed the students to engage with a storyline and develop their writing skills by learning how to observe an unfamiliar situation and formulate their thoughts into pictures and symbols and eventually written language.

Another reason why play is extremely important in regards to composition is that it improves children’s cognitive, linguistic development and other important skills. Children are able to be exposed to literacy and new vocabulary in ways that they can more fully understand and apply to their everyday lives. Play-based composition practices help students develop these skills because they, “use their imaginations, negotiation skills, and social interactions to practice and develop linguistic ability. While children play and communicate, they develop an intuitive understanding of how language works, preparing them for written language” (Tsao, cited in Cavanaugh et al. 831). I found this quote incredibly helpful to building the understanding of my inquiry because it helps clarify the fact that learning how to write doesn’t have to include structured written assignments. Children are learning and creating meaningful writing experiences simply by playing and engaging with each other and the learning material. This concept can be related back to the “Fairy Door Scenario” in which many of the children were not able to write complete sentences to the “fairy” so they resorted to drawing pictures or making symbols to represent their thinking. With some guidance provided by their teacher, the children were able to convert their drawings into written language. However, whether the students made the conversion from symbols into words or not, they are still expressing the use of emergent composition skills by communicating their ideas through written expression. They are beginning to understand the back and forth nature of how language and writing work.

While it may seem as though there is no reason to not incorporate play in an early childhood classroom, there are numerous reasons why teachers do not integrate play into their curriculum. For example, Pyle conducted a study in which a variety of Kindergarten teachers were encouraged to implement play in their curriculum, “Although there were differences in play-literacy integration between the groups, all teachers expressed challenges associated with implementing a play-based learning program” (Pyle et al. 117). Pyle added added to my understanding of my inquiry because it offered another perspective that I didn’t originally think about. When I first began researching this topic, I thought teachers that didn’t include literacy based play were either uneducated or uninterested. However, I now realize that most teachers recognize the fact that play-based composition learning is beneficial for students and should be included in the classroom but don’t know how they should include it or they simply don’t have the time or resources. Some teachers on the other hand, recognize the importance of play but only for the students’ social and emotional development, not their literacy or academic skills (Lynch 354, 356). These teachers often incorporate free play throughout the day in which students can play without teacher intervention. However, they don’t mix play with curriculum or lesson topics. Other teachers who want to incorporate play into their curriculum find it difficult to do so while following Common Core guidelines. These teachers want their students to reap the benefits of play-based learning but don’t have the time to do so while also making sure their students meet all the requirements necessary to move onto the next grade (Lynch 358-9) . Basically, teachers have too little time, too many students, and not nearly enough resources or assistance from administrators. In order for play-based learning to become a part of early education curriculum, teachers, administrators and the creators of the Common Core Curriculum need to work together to create a plan that best benefits their students.

Over the years, it has been proven that play-based learning is an effective means of introducing and increasing literacy skills for children (Pyle 118-119). Many early childhood teachers use didactic or teacher guided lessons to teach children about reading and writing, despite the established benefits of hands-on, play-based learning (Lynch 354-5). While most of us, myself included, have learned through these old fashioned didactic practices and turned out just fine, there is still the possibility that we are failing our students by sticking to the status quo. A study conducted by Dena Cavanaugh has shown that participating in literacy based “guided play”, activities with little teacher intervention and guidance, for just 15 minutes a day can improve students’ composition test scores (Cavanaugh 836-837). Still, Kindergarten classrooms are seeing less and less play time and more teacher-led lessons. In regards to composition, didactic lessons often consist of repetition, recitation, and the copying of letters and words. If you were to ask any 5 year old if this was a form of learning they enjoyed, I guarantee the answer would be no. This is concerning considering many young students develop their perception of school around the time they are in preschool and kindergarten and, “a school experience that is too challenging or dull may discourage them from engaging fully in school and prevent them from later success” (Stipek, cited in Cavanaugh 832). Children should be presented with fun, developmentally appropriate material to help them establish a positive relationship with learning which will ultimately benefit the remainder of their academic career.

Early education classrooms used to be filled with toys and games but as time goes on, more didactic teaching practices, Common Core guidelines, and statewide testing are forced upon our young students. While I firmly believe that play-based learning is a crucial aspect of early childhood education and should be implemented in preschool and kindergarten curriculum, I am now aware of the difficulties that teachers might face while attempting to include play in their classroom. However, I believe that the benefits of play-based learning, especially in regards to writing and basic literacy skills, outweigh the difficulties of implementing play-based curriculum. If we truly want to make a difference and help our young students, it’s imperative that teachers, administrators, Common Core creators, etc. all work together to create a curriculum that is designed to help students thrive.

Works Cited
Cavanaugh, Dena M., et al. “Kindergarten Scores, Storytelling, Executive Function, and Motivation Improved through Literacy-Rich Guided Play.” Early Childhood Education Journal 45.6 (2017): 831-43. ProQuest. Web. 12 Apr. 2020.

Friedrich, Nicola, Wishart, Kristen, and Stagg Peterson, Shelley. “Supporting Emergent Writers through Guided Play in a Kindergarten Classroom.” Journal of Childhood Studies 43.2 (2018): 58-64. ProQuest. Web. 12 Apr. 2020.

Hostettler Scharer, Janine. “Supporting Young Children’s Learning in a Dramatic Play Environment.” Journal of Childhood Studies 42.3 (2017). Web. 20 Apr. 2020.

Pyle, Angela, Jessica Prioletta, and Daniel Poliszczuk. “The Play-Literacy Interface in Full-Day Kindergarten Classrooms.” Early Childhood Education Journal 46.1 (2018): 117-27. ProQuest. Web. 16 Apr. 2020.

Lynch, Meghan. “More Play, Please: The Perspective of Kindergarten Teachers on Play in the Classroom.” American Journal of Play 7.3 (2015): 347-70. ProQuest. Web. 16 Apr. 2020.

by Adil Shahid

Adil is a Communications major living in Fall River, Massachusetts. Adil enjoys writing and reading, and for a long time he kept a daily journal where he vented about his days to the blank pages. He feels that many students his age have lost touch with writing and reading simply because schoolwork has tainted their views of it. He hopes “that people do not lose sight of their creative outlets and passions and hold on to them dearly.” Adil and his classmates created a survey about student writing habits because they felt it was “important to see where other peers were at in their writing careers.” In addition to reading and writing, Adil is interested in addressing the new problems that college students face in an era of digital distractions.

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From a very young age to adulthood, reading and writing are skills that naturally stick with us. Being that a good portion of our lives are spent in an academic setting, honing these skills is essential to almost every student. From mastering the five-paragraph essay to learning how to sort through database articles in hopes of composing a research paper, as students, our writing has naturally evolved over the course of our academic lives. Eventually one’s writing habits, process, and theories begin to be set in stone whether or not you even enjoy writing in the first place. How often do you find yourself writing for either your own fulfilment or academic purpose? Whether you find yourself working best under pressure days before your assignment is due, or space out the work equally in the week , this all becomes curated into one’s own unique way of writing.

My writing process came to be in a very different way than most. While I certainly can’t lie and say most of my writing process was shaped in highschool through academics, a good chunk of it has come from my own interest in personal writing in my free time. Growing up with very strict Middle Eastern parents I found myself confiding into daily journal entries to express my frustrations. This journal developed into more than an angry thought collection, but rather into a daily check in with myself. Whenever I would write these short pieces I would always sit down at a desk in a well lit room – but not too bright. Most of the time I would require complete silence to the point where I could even hear a pin drop. However, sometimes, a nice calm instrumental beat would be nice to accompany me, especially in the dark hours of the night. These quirks I developed in my own personal writing style carried over when it came to writing an academic piece. The calm state of mind I curated when writing these journals helped me to feel less burdened with the assignment I was doing and approach it from the view of a student doing his best possible work and not from the view of a stressed student who would rather be doing anything else than writing. More importantly, I feel as if my personal writing helped me develop my own voice in my writing. Humbly speaking, a common compliment I have gotten on my writing pieces is that they always sound like me. I genuinely believe that my personal writing helped me to foster my own style and not sound so bland and monotone in my work. Unfortunately in comparison to my peers, I seemed to be the only one who did any sort of personal writing in leisure time. Was this because I was the only one who seemed to enjoy writing for what it is and what it can accomplish? Or perhaps my peers were writing in a different manner other than pencil and paper in a spiral notebook. In this day and age those fingers must be typing away at a keyboard on a laptop or a digital touch screen on a smartphone. But are they typing away in their Google Document or on their Twitter feed?

Analyzing writing processes is nothing new and has in fact been done on a much larger scale than what me and my fellow classmates have been able to do. In “The Writing Lives Of College Students” by Jeff Grabill, Stacey Pigg, et al., they take a closer look at analyzing the writing behaviors and practices inside and outside of the classroom. From the pool of 1366 students many of the authors findings along with the WIDE Research Center are certainly not surprising by any means in today’s standards despite this research being done in 2010. Seeing that the most written genre for students is text messaging goes along with the pattern that there is this wideshift spread of conforming to writing in a digital genre (Grabill, Pigg, et al., 5). Contrast this data with Carol Berkenkotter’s piece “Decisions & Revisions: The Planning Strategies of a Publishing Writer and Response of a Laboratory Rat: Or, Being Protocoled” in which her primary goal was to analyze the literary writing process of only Donald Muray, who was an English Professor at the University of New Hampshire. Through the use of audio tapes and physical observation Berkenkotter was able to piece together Murrays planning, editing and revising process and see how intricate one’s process can really be. When breaking down the transcripts of Muray’s audio of him thinking out loud , Berkenkotter sees how one’s initial writing plan led to multiple different sub plans (Berkenkotter, 161).

With technology advancing almost yearly and social media becoming even more of a time consuming distraction in our lives our writing habits and process have become affected by this whether we want to accept it or not. In this digital age rather than trying to adapt to our new landscape of smartphones and laptops instant access to almost anything we have instead seemed to be consumed by it. Thus, it is important to see how, if anything, has our writing processes and ideologies hold up in this new era when social media and technology is thrown into the mix.

Methodology
In order to complete the task of analyzing current day writing habits by college students I, along with my fellow peers in my professor’s College Composition I course, created a short 10 question survey, titled “Students Writing Habits Survey”, in order to gather data and have the means to fulfill our goal. Many of our questions were influenced by the aforementioned studies. As Grabill & Pigg did with their questions, seeing what genres students are writing and how they are composing them can lead us closer to speculate what mindframe students find themselves in when they sit down to compose a piece. But it is also important to see the process itself and everything in between as Bekenkotter alluded to in her extensive survey process in which she accounted for every single detail and step of Murray’s writing process. Thus, questions that ask students what challenges they face on an assignment or how much time they spend writing a five-page essay can help us piece together what that student’s writing process may look like on the surface. Going further than just looking at one’s process, it is also important to see how students feel about reading and writing as a whole. Questions asking the respondents to rate themselves as a writer, asking what they do the most when writing or even if they enjoy writing are important pieces of data to have in order to see to make correlations between the actual writing process and the respondent themselves. For instance, a pattern I noticed in our own “Students Writing Habits Survey” was if a respondent considers themselves to be an under average writer or if they hate writing it is likely that they will have difficulty with drafting the actual assignment itself. With those two influences in mind along with multiple peers’ inputs a 10 question survey was made through Google Forms on November 25, 2019 and was kept open until December 1, 2019. The “Students Writing Habits Survey” was distributed, via a link to Google Forms, to either first or second year college students that were currently taking a writing intensive course or a composition course. This range meant that we had a realistic view of the age bracket of the respondents being somewhere between 18-20 years old. Other than this, except for asking the respondents what their intended major at the moment was, no personal questions or names were asked in order to be ethical and unbiased. In total there were 102 student respondents giving us a large enough data pool to see distinctions, patterns, and discrepancies in the data we collected.

Results
As a first year college student myself, the data my peers and I gathered was not surprising to me in the slightest. Procrastination is a very common habit that students often do when they have a lot to do on their plate in order to temporarily alleviate any feelings of stress. So to see that 56 of the respondents (54.9%) claim that they leave all the work for the assignment the night before the deadline shown by figure one is not shocking. This may also correlate with how 39.2% of respondents claim that the biggest challenge they seem to face when doing their assignment is not getting distracted.

What these two pieces of data show is that students are not able to put in 100% of their efforts and ability into the assignment because of time. As full-time students our plate seems to often be full leaving little room for anything else. The problem is that academic work is not the only thing we as students, and human beings, have to deal with. Working part-time or full-time jobs are often common with students to have pocket money or to pay their tuition/housing bills. Some students may have extracurricular activities, sports or clubs that they participate in after classes in order to be involved in their communities. Like everyone, family obligations such as babysitting or running an errand with a parent takes precedence and only puts back writing that five-page paper farther down on your to-do list. Some students may have to deal with all of the above at the same time, and somehow juggle the academic responsibilities of assignments for five different classes, while just dealing with life. Being a student myself and having to help my dad at his job on just the weekends, this idea of students not having enough time is certainly a reality and is a common theme I found not just in these pairs of data, but throughout the survey. The way we spend our time seems to be directly linked to our writing process and how we feel about writing as a whole.

The way we feel about writing while being influenced by our academic work is certainly not just limited to that influence alone. We are constantly reading and writing on a daily basis a lot more than we realize. The different headlines and articles we see plastered all over our social media platforms, and the hundreds of texts we send our friends, are all a form of reading and writing we do just in a different context. Or at least that is what I had assumed, until I saw the statistic that despite spending a lot of time on their phones 54.9% students do not consider it to be reading or writing as shown in figure two. My best guess for this is that on social media we are not actively engaging with what we are reading and instead just skimming through what we see, hence why not many people seem to consider their time spent on their phones “reading.”

This statistic piqued my interest, other than Netflix or Youtube, surely whatever other online activity done requires some form of reading or writing, just not in an academic sense. But what really got me intrigued is this statistic is in direct conflict with another question previously asked on the survey in which respondents were asked to report what they read the most (Displayed in Figure 3). Again, not shocking to anyone, but social media posts once again ranks the top with 81 students (79.4%), followed by text messaging with 78 (76.5%), with the last being books with 30 (29.4%) of what students read the most. (Survey

Most likely students are doing one of these two things primarily on their smartphones, it is often very rare to see someone go on social media on a laptop over their phone, unless they happen to be distracted in class. Phones seem to be the medium of choice for social media due to how convenient and seamless it is to take out your phone and instantly open an app, rather than take out your bulky laptop wait for it to load up, then load up Google, proceed to type in your desired website of choice, and wait for that to load as well. Despite respondents claiming these are their most read genres, they completely contradict this statement (as shown in Figure 2) when the majority claim that the time spent on their phone is not “reading or “writing”; but as shown here it clearly is. But why is that? It could be for a number of different reasons, but being a student myself, I believe that since the prominent introduction of social media we have classified “reading and writing” to only be concerned with academic work since that is what we are used to doing in the first place. Another reason I found to be plausible is that when we are on social media, primarily, we are not reading, at least in an academic sense. With social media we just read a couple of sentences and then scroll past to the next thing in a matter of seconds. With academic reading we are forced to slow ourselves down and absorb the text and sometimes even to go back and reread certain portions if they don’t make sense. In short, these different nuances in “social media reading” and “academic reading” each have their very own distinct mindsets, to the point that we don’t even consider the other one to even be reading. As an active social media user, I also find myself skimming through sentences and headlines very often. Thus, it is easy to see how we consider this other form of rushed reading to be its own stand-alone thing. But what does this have to do with a student’s writing process? I believe that the mindset we apply to our social media reading is also being applied to our academic work, or is at least interfering with it. Perhaps this is the reason why we as students may struggle with longer forms of academic reading; we have become so accustomed to the skimming we do on social media.

From the survey we have established that students have difficulties finding the time or to even complete their assignments in a timely, efficient manner to produce a quality work, and that students spend a lot of time on their phones (primarily on social media) but do not consider it reading or writing in the context we are most accustomed to. Has the introduction of social media pulled students that far away from reading and writing in the traditional sense? The answer to that is yes, but it might not be our fault. Again, as shown in Figure 3, books and news articles ranked the lowest in the genres read by students. But once again, this contradicts another piece of data in our survey, represented by Figure 4, showing that 53.9% of respondents stated that reading is something they enjoy doing in their free time.

Figure 4 conflicts with Figure 3; if what this piece of data claims is true, then wouldn’t the percentage of books and articles be higher up on the list? Certainly with this question it should be made clear that “reading”, in this context, was meant to refer to books, and not social media posts. However with our findings, respondents do not seem to correlate reading with social media, creating once again another gap in our findings. This pattern is again seen in another set of data in Figure 5, when respondents were asked the type of writings they do. The top result for 80 respondents (78.4%) was texting, in contrast with creative and personal writing being at the bottom with 31 (30.4%). Yet in another question, respondents were asked what they enjoy most about writing, (shown in Figure 6) and the top responses were: getting to be personal/creative and being able to express emotions.

So we see that students enjoy reading, but they do not choose to do so. We see that students enjoy getting to be personal and emotional in their writings, yet creative/personal writing ranks the lowest. Perhaps these contradictions again correlate to the earlier claim that we, as students, do not have enough time to focus on our academic work, nevermind have enough time to partake in our own leisurely reading and writing. But as the previous data shows, we certainly seem to have a lot of time to spend on looking down at our phone screen.

Conclusion
All of the data presented from the “Students Writing Habits Survey” shows a lot of similar patterns, despite seeming to be flawed on the surface in its data, especially towards the end. However, all of the information seems to be pointing in one direction; we as students are slowly becoming disconnected from the joys of reading and writing can bring while being further connected towards our smartphones. This in turn translates into our writing process, as we are becoming less and less distant from the practice of writing itself, we are not bettering ourselves as writers. It seems that we have latched onto social media so much that we have begun to let go of other things that can hold just as much fun and enjoyment. The drop off of physical mediums, such as books and news articles, have all been replaced by social media and Facebook articles, which arguably does not give nearly as much knowledge as the former does. In the end we are all guilty of this, as much as I would love to admit that I read self-help books about mental well being, the time I spend on Twitter and Instagram vastly outweighs the time I spend reading physical print material. Depending on who you ask, some people may find this to be horrific, and others may just see it as the shift into a more technology integrated world. Personally, for me, I think that finding a balance between physical and digital medium is necessary. Especially with technologies such as A.I. developing, who knows if from a decade from now we will be writing our own papers and not some automated program. Technology should be of aid to us, but only to a certain degree in which we are still in control and responsible for the works we produce.

In this day and age everything can be accessed almost instantly through just a few clicks or swipes on our phone. Reading a new book or writing a personal piece, on the other hand, is something that can’t be done instantly. It requires time, which is something that we seem to have very little of these days. The fact that we have become spoiled in this digital ecosystem of almost instantaneous access to everything has spilled over into our everyday lives, both in our academic lives and out. It means that we have become rather impatient and hasty, we want everything now, just like social media will give us instant news updates constantly. Unfortunately, some things can’t be done hastily in order to produce a quality product, and that includes one’s writing process. Every step must be done with a plan and purpose, driving it ultimately towards a final draft.

So how can this data be used to make a statement on a student’s current writing processes based on the data we have gathered? While we didn’t do anything to the extreme like Bekenkotter did, and go record students while they plan and revise their writing pieces, since that would take much more time and effort to do, in the short time frame we did this survey. But the patterns we have been able to see from the data provided by the respondents can certainly be of similar effect. In short, it seems that our writing processes are very rushed and not being brought out to the fullest it could be. Whether this is because of real life distractions or the inability to put down our smartphone screen, it seems that the problem we have is that we are too distracted, primarily by social media. Social media not only seems to be a hindrance in the actual writing process itself, but it also seems to be stripping us away from our roots of reading and writing, not only in the academic context, but also for leisure. Rather than reading a book for fun, we tune to Facebook and skim through the article headlines. Rather than indulge in a personal narrative on our downtime, we would rather spend the time to think of the best Instagram caption for our posts. Not only as students, but as human beings, we need to become better at limiting our time spent mindlessly on social media and more at what truly matters. As our lives are already busy enough with many responsibilities it is important to save time where we can. Cutting down our social media time can easily give us the extra time needed to be more productive and at least not have to rely on all-nighter to finish a big research paper due the next day.

Works Cited
Berkenkotter, Carol and Donald M. Murray.. “Decisions & Revisions: The Planning Strategies of a Publishing Writer, and the Response of a Laboratory Rat: Or, Being Protocoled.” College Composition and Communication, vol 34, no. 2, 1983, pp. 156-172.

Grabill, Jeffrey, et al. “Revisualizing Composition: Mapping the Writing Lives of First-Year College Students.” The Writing In Digital Environments (WIDE) Research Center, 2010, pp. 1-14.

ENGL 101 College Composition, University of Massachusetts, Boston. Prof. Brittanie Weatherbie Greco. “Students Writing Habits Survey.” Google Forms Survey. November 25, 2019 – December 1, 2019.

by an anonymous student writer

This anonymous student writer is a Computer Science major and a Massachusetts resident who describes himself as “interested in everything but passionate about nothing” — except not divulging any personal information. He presently spends his days secluded, enjoying living his ideal lifestyle enshrouded “in the devastating abomination that we all know to be the Internet.” He wrote this paper for a Composition II research assignment in order to rationalize a “terrible memory.” He is currently “overcoming(?) perfectionism after a long 4-year battle.”

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It’s becoming increasingly harder for me to remember things. When I was younger, I used to remember a lot of things, such as people’s ages, their birthdays, their favorite foods, their favorite colors, their phone numbers, and even their license plates. Unfortunately, that’s all changed. Nowadays, I can barely remember their names without looking through my meticulously crafted stalkery profile of them on my phone. Before I jump to the glaring conclusion that I’ve reached a fairly early case of cognitive decline, I think it’s important to take a step back and think about what has changed since then.

When I was younger, I didn’t have a phone to take note of people’s birthdays or phone numbers or even their names. I just remembered them. I stored all of that information in a seemingly infinite directory that was my brain. What’s changed since then isn’t necessarily that directory, but rather where it’s kept. That phone that I have now, in which I store all of that information – the birthdays and phone numbers and names that I would never be able to remember today – has made it so that there’s not much reason to remember things like that anymore. That directory that once existed in my brain is now my phone.

But if my phone is now that directory, then what of my actual brain? Surely my brain exists and I can still memorize things to a lesser degree and with an increased effort, but how else has this change in location affected my brain? Searching just the terms “internet” and “brain” on the Internet leads to a pretty concentrated array of results, most, if not all, alluding to the many cognitive functions such as memory and attention that are being utterly obliterated by the devastating abomination that we all know to be the Internet. Not something I want to be reading at three o’clock in the morning.

But for the sake of knowledge, and quite possibly for the sake of scaring myself into cutting down the unhealthy amount of Internet I consume each day, I think it’s important that I educate myself on this matter. Matthew Hennessey, author of “The Cost of Our Digital Addictions,” cites psychologists from Columbia, Harvard, and the University of Wisconsin that review four studies testing people’s information recall with access to a computer, concluding that the test subjects performed poorly when they knew that the information was accessible on the computer. (Hennessey) This made enough sense. The Internet provides an abundance of quality information in a very convenient and easily accessible manner. It makes sense to rely on it because of that. The Internet makes it unnecessary for the brain to work so hard. And just like when you stop using your muscles and your muscles become weaker, the brain will perform poorly the less you use it.

Dean Burnett, author of “Is the Internet Killing Our Brains?,” offers some insight as well. His stance on how the Internet may affect our brain provides some relief but feels inconclusive. He declares that damage from information overload is “unlikely” and cites sources both supporting and opposing the notion that Google is destroying memory. For things like attention span deficiency and social media addictions, he shifts the blame to how humans are wired. It makes sense how we’re to blame for our own Internet usage, but it seems as if Burnett’s trying everything to make it seem as if the Internet is not to blame.

Being let down by the seemingly pro-Internet Dean Burnett, and my increasing interest in the connection between social media and memory, I checked out Andrew Gregory’s “How Social Media Is Hurting Your Memory”. He cites a paper published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology that shows how people who shared their experiences via social media often had “less precise” memories of those experiences. In addition, he describes three studies led by Diana Tamir from Princeton University that researched this phenomenon, testing how the memory of experiences are affected by recording them through various external formats such as taking pictures or notes, finding that “those who wrote down, recorded, or shared their experiences performed about 10% worse on memory tests across all experiments.” (Gregory) The researchers concluded that it was the act of “externalizing their experience” that led them to ultimately forget the details of those very same experiences. (Gregory) This also makes sense because when we’ve externalized something, it shouldn’t be necessary for us to keep storing that information in our memory when we can fill that space up with other more important things such as how Grimmsnarl can’t learn the move Snarl, despite being both dark type and having the word “snarl” in its name. Weird, huh?

Being devastated by the sudden realization that my precious cherished memories were being utterly obliterated by the devastating abomination that we all know to be the Internet, I needed some respite that could only be found by reading some reassuring articles on the Internet. As if it was some sort of magical coincidence, I just nearly stumbled across godsend “Good News: Using a Computer Does Not Rot Your Brain” by Alice G. Walton and was met with immediate gratification at just the very sight of the headline. Walton discusses a study by the Mayo Clinic alluding to computer usage having positive effects on the brain. Just as I was getting my hopes up however, I was met with the crushing detail that the test subjects were aged 70-93 and that the study only showed correlation between computer usage and the lack of brain deterioration. (Walton) Just as I should’ve expected from the devastating abomination that we all know to be the Internet.

This was quite honestly the last straw. Being let down by the seemingly exploitative Alice G. Walton and overall disappointed in my pursuit to understand why the Internet was hacking at my already meager cognitive functions, I needed to understand more. What is it about the Internet that makes my brain rot? How does social media factor into that? The only insight I was able to get was from Matthew Hennessy who explained that because the Internet provided reliable and accessible information, the brain would naturally rely on it to make less work for itself and Andrew Gregory who weighed in with how externalizing information is effective in not forgetting the more important things in life. But even so, I was still left with some questions. Why does the brain decide to take the lazy route and why does the brain externalize information?

When it seemed as if all hope was lost, I looked back at Hennessey’s article and did a little digging. I thought that the study he cited on information recall might give me some additional insight on my inquiries so I used my expert sleuthing skills to locate the study, eventually finding Psychology professor Betsy Sparrow and other’s “Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips.” Whilst reading through this study, I came across the term “transactive memory.” They explain this to be a “combination of memory stores held directly by individuals and the memory stores they can access because they know someone who knows that information” (Sparrow, 776). Or to put simply, transactive memory is a term used to describe a system of memory that relies on others to store and retrieve information from. Now how does this relate to Google? Sparrow and others go on to explain that search engines like Google have become our “primary transactive memory.” (Sparrow, 776) This concept could explain why it’s so difficult to remember things that can easily be found with the click of a few buttons. If we treat others as databases of information in which we can store and retrieve information from, then the Internet can be treated as just another one of those databases of information, but a lot more easily and readily accessible, and in a lot of cases, more expert. To create a central location where all information can easily be found through a search engine is much easier to use than the sometimes unreliable experts you may be acquainted with. This seems to be an automatic process and thus it makes perfect sense for the brain to choose the Internet, a place where you can find high-quality and easily accessible information, to rely on as its primary transactive memory.

This answers my question on why we externalize information. In short, it’s just a way for us to store information elsewhere to compensate for our limited memory capacity. But even still, it almost seems as if information received from the Internet is forgotten more than information received elsewhere. Is the Internet responsible for our brains becoming lazier and if so, how? From “Behavioural and brain responses related to Internet search and memory” by Dr. Guangheng Dong and Marc N. Potenza, they studied information recall with “Internet-based or book-based searches” finding that “Internet searching was associated with lower accuracy in recalling information” (Dong and Potenza, 2553). This means that information received from the Internet is in fact forgotten more and that the Internet is in fact responsible for our brains becoming lazier. But I still don’t understand why that’s the case.

To my rescue was mental health researcher Joseph Firth and other’s “The ‘Online Brain’: How the Internet May be Changing Our Cognition.” Whilst reading through this article, I came across “cognitive offloading” a term they describe to be people “implicitly reducing their allocation of cognitive resources towards remembering this information, since they know this will be available for future reference externally” (Firth, et al., 122). To put another way, cognitive offloading is a term used to describe an automatic (unconscious) process of recognizing where to find information for future reference that people use to lessen the “load” of remembering information. (Firth, et al., 122) This concept could explain why it’s so difficult to remember things that can easily be found with the click of a few buttons. If high-quality information is so easily and readily accessible, it doesn’t make sense for our mind to do more than is necessary. The Internet has made our memory so obsolete to the point where it makes more sense to forget something. To create a central location where all information can easily be found through a search engine is much easier to reference than notes you’d have to flip through to find something. And if it’s an automatic process then it makes perfect sense for the brain to take the lazy route. The brain was designed to be lazy and the Internet just puts the laziness on full blast. This is what explains why the Internet makes us forget information received from it. And there’s a cute interplay between cognitive offloading and transactive memory. They work in conjunction with each other. With the Internet being one’s primary transactive memory, people choose to offload their memory onto that primary transactive memory. This is how the act of externalizing information to the Internet creates a more lazier brain as a result of the Internet.

Through this exploration I’ve learned of two new concepts—cognitive offloading and transactive memory—and the cute interplay between them. This interplay helps me better understand why the Internet is eating away at my memory. Before this exploration, I had already kind of guessed that the Internet was responsible for my gradually deteriorating memory but I didn’t know how or what I could do to stop it. The answers I found through this inquiry would have never been found by a simple glossing of the first few articles that showed up on Google and I probably would’ve never remembered the contents of those articles anyway. Unfortunately, what I’m missing is how to utilize my research to prevent my memory’s deterioration. The Internet is an indispensable tool for information acquisition and to be rid of it is near impossible. Heck, all of that research—the information that I acquired in order to write this inquiry-driven essay—was through the aid of the Internet. My findings and my research was all possible because of the Internet; so to step away from that just isn’t practical. But I’m still reluctant to believe that there’s nothing that can be done or that there’s no cognitive function which can benefit from using the Internet. Ultimately, though the Internet is to blame for my lack of information recall, it is not practical for me to stop using it.

Works Cited
Burnett, Dean. “Is the Internet Killing Our Brains?” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 8 Oct. 2016.

Dong, Guangheng, and Marc N. Potenza. “Behavioural and Brain Responses Related to Internet Search and Memory.” European Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 42, no. 8, 6 Aug. 2015, pp. 2546–2554.

Firth, Joseph, et al. “The ‘Online Brain’: How the Internet May Be Changing Our Cognition.” World Psychiatry, vol. 18, no. 2, 5 June 2019, pp. 119–129.

Gregory, Andrew. “How Social Media Is Hurting Your Memory.” Time, 8 May 2018.

Hennessey, Matthew. “The Cost of Our Digital Addictions.” National Review, 4 Sept. 2018

Sparrow, Betsy, et al. “Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips.” Science, vol. 333, no. 6043, 5 Aug. 2011, pp. 776–778.

Walton, Alice G. “Good News: Using a Computer Does Not Rot Your Brain.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 12 June 2012.