If I aim to promote digital auxiliary spaces for academic writing as a viable medium for college composition coursework, I better have a firm experiential grasp on the concept.
Basically, auxiliary or supplemental spaces are mediums for academic writing that aren't written in audience-vacuums. Audience-vacuums consist of writing assignments (by student-writers) consciously designed with the teacher in mind as sole reader/evaluator. That is, a student might be asked to "imagine" that they are writing for their peers or their parents or their congress-spokesperson, or some other demographic related to the content of their assignment but in the end the only person reading it--usually for assessment purposes--is their instructor. While in some cases composition teachers promote peer-review to vaguely simulate a reading audience, their tactless design of the process deludes the experience and encourages students to tailor their peerreview-assessments according to a naively contrived "teacherly ideal" thus reinforcing the audience-vacuum status quo. As a result, students' academic writing often reads like it was processed by a thesaurus, like so:
This example of hifalutin jargon resembles the work students think teachers want to read. It's funny; funny because it's "false". False and ironic! Ironic because effective writing instructors frequently emphasize the value of strong ideas & reasoning over lexical pomposity or polished syntax & grammar. Sadly, this emphasis on rhetorical strength & clarity barely shakes the pervasive misnomer that academic writing is about the tedium of grammar.
Next time you get the chance, ask an English teacher: "What kind of responses do you get when you tell people that you teach English?" Undoubtedly, the teacher will sigh and tell you a dozen stories of people brazenly remarking: "Oh, you're an English teacher? I guess I better watch my grammar around you." The unwitting person believes they've said something wholly original but in actuality they've only betrayed their naivety.
Meanwhile, most teachers often assign the type of writing that doesn't provide discursive engagement. Or, if it does, it's one-sided and corresponds with the teacher exclusively. Unlike the traditionally constrained medium of academic writing, online mediums--like this one--provide the potential for student-writers to contemplate their readerly audience and ideally to interact with them.
Now enjoy this bad-grammer pastiche of youtube comments:
Basically, auxiliary or supplemental spaces are mediums for academic writing that aren't written in audience-vacuums. Audience-vacuums consist of writing assignments (by student-writers) consciously designed with the teacher in mind as sole reader/evaluator. That is, a student might be asked to "imagine" that they are writing for their peers or their parents or their congress-spokesperson, or some other demographic related to the content of their assignment but in the end the only person reading it--usually for assessment purposes--is their instructor. While in some cases composition teachers promote peer-review to vaguely simulate a reading audience, their tactless design of the process deludes the experience and encourages students to tailor their peerreview-assessments according to a naively contrived "teacherly ideal" thus reinforcing the audience-vacuum status quo. As a result, students' academic writing often reads like it was processed by a thesaurus, like so:
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Calvin and Hobbes: Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat By Bill Watterson |
Next time you get the chance, ask an English teacher: "What kind of responses do you get when you tell people that you teach English?" Undoubtedly, the teacher will sigh and tell you a dozen stories of people brazenly remarking: "Oh, you're an English teacher? I guess I better watch my grammar around you." The unwitting person believes they've said something wholly original but in actuality they've only betrayed their naivety.
Meanwhile, most teachers often assign the type of writing that doesn't provide discursive engagement. Or, if it does, it's one-sided and corresponds with the teacher exclusively. Unlike the traditionally constrained medium of academic writing, online mediums--like this one--provide the potential for student-writers to contemplate their readerly audience and ideally to interact with them.
Now enjoy this bad-grammer pastiche of youtube comments:
Because nothing says "grammar doesn't matter" than making fun of bad grammar!
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