Activity Theory, as described by Russel and Yanez throughout their essay entitled, ‘Big Picture People Rarely Become Historians’ is the combination of influences impacting classroom dynamics across the country. Russel and Yanez’s activity theory emphasizes textual pathways between parts of an activity system, alienation between professionals and non-professionals, and historical contradictions. Currently there are six main aspects of their suggested activity system; tools, subject, rules, community, division of labor, and motives. Russel and Yanez describe tools as a way to ‘give people working in some activity a useful perspective from which to develop new approaches, new mediational tools (or new ways of using old tools) to transform or "re-mediate" their activity’ (Russel and Yanez 335). In their …show more content…
Rules are outlined as, ‘expectations, conventions for using writing in the university and in the discipline of academic history—genres’ (Russel and Yanez 341). The community within the activity system suggests that, ‘learners are always in contact with the history, values, and social relations of a community—or among communities—as embedded in the shared cultural tools used by that commun[ities] to mediate activity’ (Russel and Yanez 338). Within this community are both the division of labor and motives. The division of labor is suggested by Yanez and Russel to be the cause of alienation amongst experts and non-experts as, ‘the teacher does certain things and the students do other things. One has more power than the others’ (Russel and Yanez 339). All these aspects and their interactions equate to the end result of an activity theory;
The opening of the article is a blunt declaration that the course of FYW is not properly taught in a correct way to provide academic success in writing for students. Stating the studies done by Ackerman, Berkenkotter and Huckin, Carter, Diller and Oates, Kaufer and Young, MacDonald, Petraglia, and Russel “Activity theory” which all intern demonstrated the main goal of FYW; that writing can we universally transferred in any field, is false. Downs & Wardle further state that
When one engages in writing they are able to look upon their lives in a new perspective. One separates from roles and statuses of daily life, community’s, and experiences at particular time and place. This idea of stepping outside or beyond ones recognized community and structure of life presents the opportunity to recreate and voice identity and stories in new ways. In Joseph Harris’ Book A Teaching Subject there is a chapter on this idea of community and composition. Basically, Harris argues against the idea of a coherent, unified academic discourse community. He expresses the difference between the ‘language’ of the university and ‘language’ of students/individuals. This disconnect between them presents difficulty in figuring out and understanding why people would move in between the two. People are members of many communities in their daily lives and this means have many discourse communities. Adding additional ones does n...
In the essay, “Other Voices, Other Rooms” from Inquiry to Academic Writing, Gerald Graff argues that students learn things differently from class to class and are not taught to use information from one class in another. This is a problem especially in higher education today because there is such a large gap from professor to professor. Although the disagreement from one subject to the next may seem like a problem to some, if there were no disagreements, nothing would be worth learning. While these problems may occur, they are essential in the evolvement of education. Without these disagreements there would not be any search for more information to solve the problems. Also, students would not be motivated to continue to learn. The disagreements between the two are what seem to confuse students, but what confuses them more is how the education system is set up. Students must learn to make
Co-author of “They Say/I Say” handbook, Gerald Graff, analyzes in his essay “Hidden Intellectualism” that “street smarts” can be used for more efficient learning and can be a valuable tool to train students to “get hooked on reading and writing” (Graff 204). Graff’s purpose is to portray to his audience that knowing more about cars, TV, fashion, and etc. than “academic work” is not the detriment to the learning process that colleges and schools can see it to be (198). This knowledge can be an important teaching assistant and can facilitate the grasping of new concepts and help to prepare students to expand their interests and write with better quality in the future. Graff clarifies his reasoning by indicating, “Give me the student anytime who writes a sharply argued, sociologically acute analysis of an issue in Source over the student who writes a life-less explication of Hamlet or Socrates’ Apology” (205). Graff adopts a jovial tone to lure in his readers and describe how this overlooked intelligence can spark a passion in students to become interested in formal and academic topics. He uses ethos, pathos, and logos to establish his credibility, appeal emotionally to his readers, and appeal to logic by makes claims, providing evidence, and backing his statements up with reasoning.
There are many definitions to theory. According to Akers (2009) “theories are tentative answers to the commonly asked questions about events and behavior” (Akers, (2009, p. 1). Theory is a set of interconnect statements that explain how two or more things are related in two casual fashions, based upon a confirmed hypotheses and established multiple times by disconnected groups of researchers.
The class’s main goal is to help improve our writing ability and help prepare us for upper level writing. As freshman, most of us have never had to write a huge research paper, some of us have not even had to write a research paper at all. Whenever I began this class I viewed it as a waste of time. I thought that I would never learn anything new and I would just continue writing the boring old papers that I had to write all throughout high school, but I was very wrong. The first paper we wrote was a synthesis of three given authors, all scholars in their specific field. The author’s names were Swales, Gee, and Porter. They all had varying opinions on what a discourse community was to them and how they distinguish one fro...
An important concept that Graff acknowledges is to “not simply expose a student’s ' non-academic interests, but to get them to see those interests through an academic view” (266-267). What this means, is that even though using such non-academic interests to prove points of a discussion, can arise a certain connection between some student’s. The author points out that the development of academic skills relies on the ability of the students to write on their own self-interest in a reflective and analytical way. The most important concept that the author discusses is the fact that when a person shows more “street smarts” they necessary have the intellectual skills to become more assertive in the real world. The reason behind such assertion is that street smarts have knowledge that they can actually apply to real world scenarios and when they have acquired the logical and analytical skills that come with intellectualism, they become more aware of seeing reality and how to adapt to it. Nevertheless, mere intellectuals may possess the most abundant knowledge about the most varied of things but they may not have the ability to apply such knowledge in real world settings, because without the ability to communicate with the reality, they cannot integrate themselves with other
Herbert, Bob. “Hiding From Reality.” They Say I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. Graff, Gerald. Birkenstein, Cathy. New York. London: 2012. 566.
Graff, Gerald, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel K. Durst. "They Say/I Say": The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing: With Readings. Vol. 2e. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2012. Print.
One of the broadest disciplines in academia is Sociology since there are numerous branches that can be studied. The wide range of topics in this field is mainly organized through written work. This allows those in the discourse community to stay connected. In the book titled Discourse Communities: The Rhetoric of Disciplines, Gary D. Schmidt and William J. Vande Kopple, explain that discourse communities are a group of people who share ways in how they present claims, organize, analyze and communicate in their discipline. This is significant to note because each discipline consists of different audiences that can comprehend jargon and methodology differently depending on their discourse community. In most academic disciplines the difference
In “Writing to Learn: Writing across the Disciplines,” Anne J. Herrington finds different sources stating that writing is to be taken serious. Janet Emig says, "writing represents a unique mode of learning-not merely valuable, not merely special, but unique” (1) meaning that writing is far more essential than we ought to make it seem. Anne Herrington wants educators teaching in economics, history, chemistry or any other subject to guide their students into understanding why progressing their writing skills will be more helpful to them. At the end of the day, it all comes down to the educator; whether he/she wants their students to use writing as a way for students to adapt to different disciplines.
Writing for some classes could be a daunting task and challenging at times. Especially when I clearly do not understand the requirements or feel like having nothing valuable to contribute. Writing an essay on a topic that I have neither the knowledge nor the interest to keep me going can be extremely difficult. Ordinarily writing on a foreign topic, first I strive to educate myself and find an angle to make the topic inspiring, relatable and engaging. In some cases, no matter how persistently I attempt, the lack of passion will definitely show on the content of the paper. Consequently, this is where David Bartholomae “Inventing The University” text becomes a common practice among students. “ The students…as though they were members of academy, or historians, or anthropologist or economist; they have to invent the universities by assembling and mimicking its language ”(Bartholomae 403). Assembling and mimicking to unfamiliar voice is never plain
...of Responding to Student Writing; or, Looking for Shortcuts via the Road of Excess.” Across the Disciplines 3 (2006): 21 Jan. 2010 .
In this particular analysis, I will analyze examples of this genre from a graduate seminar, where students are responding not only to the texts but to the ideas and reflections of their peers as well. These examples are all drawn from public blog postings from a single week’s readings, early in the semester, in order to examine the moves made by these students and how, within the framework of a course assignment, they form a discourse community. It should be noted, of course, that one of the samples is my own blog, and that I will therefore be approaching this genre as both a participant a...
Knowledge is gained through a myriad of personal experiences through a variety of ways that shapes a person’s understanding. The knowledge we obtain is the culmination of our experiences as we learn what our brain interprets from our senses. Knowledge is the transmission of information that shapes a person’s understanding on a particular topic using a way of knowing. The language used by others to formulate our own ideas and thoughts produce knowledge. The knowledge obtained can either be objective and subjective. The two areas of knowledge, history and arts, are both typically at fault for being inaccurate or bias. The role of history is to study, interpret and analyse the events of the past and relay these findings through language. Language communicates thoughts and ideas through a verbal or written broadcast, thus allowing knowledge to be conveyed. The arts are a broad area of knowledge that communicate knowledge through the manipulation of our sense perceptions that allow us to experience sensations through any of our five senses. The inaccuracies and biases of these areas of knowledge and ways of knowing is due to the pre-set beliefs and values that affect how an artist or a historian chooses to express a particular message to others. Each historian belongs to a school of historiography that holds the belief that an event was due to a specific set of factors and the language used supports this claim. Similarly, artists utilize our sense perceptions to convey a message through a painting. Arts are a broad area of knowledge to i...