Agenda: Week 2

Week 2: Understanding the term “Discourse Community” (DC)

Class Info

• Dates: Monday, 2/5, Wednesday, 2/7
• Meeting Info: 11:30am-12:30pm in room N602A (Corrected!)

Objectives

• To explore the concepts of discourse communities and code switching through our experiences and through our course texts

Action

• Complete any unfinished work from Week 1, including joining and getting acquainted with our OpenLab site.

For Monday, 2/5

Reading

• Reading/Writing resource Essay “How to Read like a Writer” by Mike Bunn (distributed in class).
• Play: Trifles by Susan Glaspell (distributed in class)
• Classmates’ comments on our site

Writing

• Complete the Introductions discussion, the Noticing discussion before Monday’s class.
• Annotate as you read our course’s texts.
• Contribute to our Noticing Words discussion

In Class, Monday, 2/5

• Performing Trifles

• Considering Trifles
  • What do we notice about noticing in Trifles?
  • What do we notice about discourse communities in Trifles?
• Reflection: what stands out or remains with you from class today? What questions do you have? what do you want to know more about? Answer any or all.

For Wednesday, 2/7:

Reading

• Read the Personal Narrative “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan
• Watch the Video, “What is Code Switching?” by Lisa Beasley and other videos on the same subject that you find.

Writing

• Contribute a resource and explanation to this discussion motivated by Lisa Beasley’s “What is Code Switching” ideally by Tuesday, 2/6 to give everyone a chance to read/watch some of the resources before Wednesday’s class.
• Contribute to our Applying readings to readings discussion about how we can apply some of our texts to understand other texts that we’re reading or writing.

In Class, Wednesday, 2/7

• Highlights from Mike Bunn’s “Reading Like a Writer”: what does Bunn advise us as writers to notice when we’re reading?
  • who is the author?
  • what is the purpose of this text?
  • who is the intended audience?
  • what is the genre?
  • is this published writing?
  • what kind of language does it use? think about tone, diction, style.
• Discussing “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan in the context of our code-switching resources:
  • Read the text and try to answer the questions Bunn suggests we ask as we read. What else do you notice?
  • Discourse communities: immigrant families, Chinese language speaker, creative writers,
  • Different Englishes
  • vernacular, words you don’t know, words you know but don’t understand how they’re being used, words you love, impactful words, highlight things to take notice of, what does this mean about the author or the author’s message, make notes in the margin
  • Amy Tan writes, “Recently, I was made keenly aware of the different Englishes I do use.” What are these different Englishes Tan refers to? When, where and how does she use them? What are Tan’s different communities, and what does the essay illustrate about Tan’s feelings about her different communities and the way she moves between these groups?
  • What resources did we find about code switching, and how do they apply to Amy Tan and to ourselves?
• Project 1 Overview
• Using your phone or other device, come up with a definition for these important terms: How do we define discourse communities? How do we define code switching? Take note of the sources you use. If you can, add your definitions as a comment on this post.
  • discourse community:
  • code switching:
• What discourse communities are we members of? what DCs do we feel excluded from? what DCs do we want to join, and how?
• Writing: What are your goals for this semester? What support do you need to achieve these goals? How to they relate to your goals for college, for your career, for your future?
• Next time:
  • What DCs do we recognize in this text? in the others that we’ve read this week?

Photo Credit:

“writing” by ruminatrix via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0