McCarthy's essay follows a college writer through three of his courses. Her central finding is that her subject Dave's success was deeply connected to the writing context. In particular, she found the following (677-8).
1. Dave found writing for different courses as "totally different" even though she saw it as similar: it was all information based writing, and it moved between summary and analysis.
2. Social factors influenced Dave's success. In particular, the functions of the writing in each setting (686), and the Dave's relationships to teachers, peers, and texts were important social factors (689).
3. Dave resorted to the same kinds of practices & resources to "figure out" what he was "supposed" in all 3 courses (692) - and for the most part - knowledge of these practices and resources remained tacit.
In class - we are going to go through these findings - a little out of order - ending with the first finding. The purpose for this reorganization is so you can use what McCarthy identified as Dave's main stumbling blocks as a basis for workshopping your Analysis of a Discourse Community projects.
No comments:
Post a Comment