Blog 11

The change in literacy today from 100 years ago is as much as change as it was then. In the 19^th century the novel was new, the demand from readers to have novels develop from monthly to a full novel was because of the public and what they wanted. “ The fluctuations of public demand influenced the ways that Dickens and other novelists developed future episodes”. (Yancey, p65)

New forms of writing were starting to emerge, newspapers and novels. Much like today, writing is again changing, when now have emails, text messaging and online chat rooms. There is almost no need to pick up a pen and paper anymore. But Yancy explains that there is a shift in what is considered English, especially in universities, their label has also changed from English to Communications.

As Yancy points out that English degrees are on the decline, they are to 50,000 per as opposed to 100, 000 back in 1966, She also says that were are already digital and because of this, “our own practices suggest that we have already committed to a theory of communication that is both print and digital”. (71)

I feel that many of us are so tied to what is not being considered as the old way or conventional way of writing that it is hard to solely rely on everything digital all of the time. Taking away our English departments in school or renaming them sends a message that the traditional ways of writing are becoming less and less accepted and much more of a communications class.

I think that public demand is changing our classrooms, of course technology is the reason, but as a society we are now use to instant information, most college students never grew up without cell phones or an email address so for the younger generation they do not have a hard time accepting the concepts of the new forms of technology, where many of us that are older are having a more of a difficult time letting go of the traditional ways of writing as a whole.

This all affects the classroom and how we are to taught, curriculum now changes, the way we enroll in school and our classes’ changes.  Students will now have to “consider what the best medium and best delivery for such commination’s might be and then create and share those different communications pieces”. (75)

 I know for many of my classes, I have to chose different media based on a particular assignment and present it to my peers and explain why I chose it, what worked best for the assignment and what did not work as I hoped it would. We have to retrain our brains to grasp these new concepts and move away from traditional essay’s.

There is a lot of media out there and it can be used to replace the conventional methods in so many ways now.  Professors, Universities and students now have perform differently then before. The gatekeeping is perhaps over, the environment has changed greatly, whether it is for the better, time I guess will have to tell but it does not seem like we will ever goes backwards because that would mean failure to many.  The concern I believe is composition it itself, Yancy writes, this new composition includes rhetoric and is about literacy. New composition includes the literacy of print: it adds on to it and brings notions of practice and activity and circulation and media and screen and networking to our conceptual of process”. (83)

It appears that there is now to many new forms of literacy, the definition has now changed to include what has changed; it is a hard concept especially for an English teacher/professor, at least some may think so. I think Yancy discusses the impact of the new forms of media, writing and composition changes that have a grand affect on not just the process of writing and English but also how these changes greatly affect how we socialize, communicate, teach and learn.