Discourse communities

When we hear the word genre we think of books and music but discourse communities use genre also. The way they use genre depends of the type of community it is and discourse communities have their own language. Each discourse community will use certain words in a way that applies to that group only. This use of language is a type of social behavior. Since each communities has their own way of speaking and writing, you could be considered literate in one community and not literate at all in another community. Since there is no set standard for discourse communities, the term literate can not be easily applied here.

 

Being literate and “good” writing

To be literate, to me, means that a person is able to read and write but they also have to be able to use grammar properly and fully understand what they read. They also have to be able to communicate with others efficiently. When I think of a literate person, I think of someone who is able to properly use grammar, comprehends what they read, and are able to communicate effectively in one language or a few.

Good writing will have a different meaning to everyone but to me good writing is a piece of writing that is able to draw your attention and makes use of the senses. I love reading books and papers that use the senses so that when I am reading the piece I am able to have a clear picture of what is happening in my mind kind of like a movie playing while I am reading. If I’m not draw into a book or paper by the end of the first page I stop reading because I want something that can hold my attention. Most of the required readings for these general education classes we take, I only read because it is required granted that every once and a while there is a piece I like but mostly I do not like them at all. Good writing of course has proper use of grammar and such. I would not consider writing that has more than a few grammar mistakes to be good.

What “grinds my gears” when I’m reading something is when the subject keeps jumping around paragraph to paragraph. It’s like they don’t know how to relate the subjects so they don’t even try and then everything turns up messy. I also hate it when people put too much information or too many details into a paper. I just want the main point and a little background information not the entire history of a subject. I don’t mind writing five to seven page paper but when someone writes a paper that is five to seven pages over the maximum page limit, all I can say is why? No one wants to read a paper that long while you really like reading papers. When I communicate with people, I hate it when they text me every little detail of what they are doing at the moment, if I didn’t ask about it then I don’t want to know about it. I also hate it when I’m talking to my friend and some inserts themselves into the conversation or acts like they know what we are taking about. And when someone tells you something that you didn’t ask about or want to know about their life it just makes the conversation become awkward.

While reading the article “teaching as unteaching” I saw how lucky I was that even though some of my high school English teachers told my class some of the same things they never told us that college used the same guidelines as high school. The teachers that I liked best in high school would give the class guidelines for the length of the paper and then give us free range on what we would write about. I do agree with what the author is saying in the article. It seems that in all subjects we are taught that what we learn will be used in college and it’s not meaning we have to forget about half of what we have learned since it serves no purpose and learn new things.