New World Of Errors

In Marisa Klages and Elizabeth Clark’s “New Worlds of Errors and Expectations: Basic Writers and Digital Assumptions,” Clark and Klages aim to understand the new experiments and prospects tied with attempting to teach the writing basics in the rapidly evolving digital age. The first step is to fully understand the capabilities of a basic writer and how the literacies involved will be influenced by the ever-changing digital age. The writers have the ability to set the bar for the instruction of multi-modal literacy in the basic writing classroom.

The article went on to describe the current teaching tendencies in basic writing at the LaGuardia Community College, located at CUNY (City University of New York). During the article, Klages and Clark outlined three central principles raised throughout the piece:

1. Klages and Clark explore the factors that contribute to the failure to hone writing skills as a form of method for basic writers who are intrinsically digitally inclined.

2. Klages and Clark explain the exploration of the better writing practices for the instruction of writing basics in the digital age.

3. Klages and Clark go on to discuss the effects of multimodal instruction for basic writers.

Klages and Clark divulge the expectations of the literacies of basic writers in the new digital age. While students in today’s educational climate are well versed in Web 2.0 devices like video sharing sites YouTube and DailyMotion and like informational sharing sites like Wikipedia, the students heavily lack the tools necessary to effectively interact with the digital technology affordances provided to them on a scholastic level.

Competence with new technology is commonly, but should not be mistaken for fluency and aptitude in language use. Klages and Clark believe that it is far too common that fundamental writers are well versed in technological procedure of new-fangled websites and the new hardware capabilities of new modern devices but they fail to go beyond the surface when trying to evaluate the deeper purpose and intricacies of the Web 2.0 products and new media tools being used everyday. The disconnect that basic writers face, as Klages and Clark identified, would be the fact that as basic writers, lack the critical thinking and rhetorical skills necessary to thrive in college educational setting.

However, I tend to disagree because I feel that even though writers may have been pushed to the wayside in a purely academic setting, with the evolution of information sharing in the new digital age, writers who may not have a strong academic background can easily get their points across rhetorically via social networking websites like FaceBook and Twitter. The writing may or may not be eloquent or meet the grammatical standards of academia, but it is still a true piece of text that can contribute to academic discussion. This, in turn, helps writers release content without being scrutinized.

Due to basic writers lacking the aforementioned critical thinking skills and writing proficiency of more established writers, basic writers feel that the writing they are contributing may not be considered legitimate as it is not placed in an academic setting.  Klages and Clark note that basic writers fail to realize that the creation of writing and the constant usage of the digital media create the possibility for students to ignore the writing process.

I agree with Klages and Clark because I feel that the failure stems from a basic writer’s failure to make the correlation between the work they do outside of class and the work they do within the confines of the classroom that is superficially referred to as collegiate writing. Klages and Clark then suggest the use of the e-portfolio as a tool to teach and increase the effectiveness of basic writing instruction. The e-portfolio builds on the existing portfolio blueprint, but it also incorporates the search and implementation of new digital rhetoric and multi-modal composition.

Klages and Clark believe that utilization of the e-portfolio is one way to fully immerse a student’s technological prowess while also bolstering their writing skills.