4/13/11 Response

I have chosen today to discuss a paragraph out of Gee's article, which is located at the bottom of page 6. This paragraph discusses the use of combinations in communicating, which is of course called Discourses (with a capital D). As the author says, "Discourses are ways of being in the world; they are forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, and social identities as well as gestures, glances, body positions, and clothes." I think this statement is pretty powerful because it really emphasizes how important Discourses are, probably much more than many of us previously thought. By using Discourses properly in almost any form of writing or communicating you can get your topic across much better, which can go a long way in sustaining relationships and making first impressions.

In regards to Cooper's "Ecology of Writing" I have chosen to respond to a passage that appears in the middle of pg. 367, it states, "Just as such research calls for new models of the interpretation of
literature and of language use, so too do the intuitively developed methods we are now be-ginning to use in writing classes and in literacy programs call for a new model of writing. Describing such a model explicitly will lend coherence to these intui-tions by bringing out the assumptions on which they are based, illuminating as-pects of writing that we have perceived but dimly heretofore through the gaps in the cognitive process model. " I feel this passage really speaks to a writer that is around our level of writing, and is very strong in saying that you need to be able to identify assumptions you have developed about writing to better understand why they work and what you can do to make them better.

I think we were suppose to read these articles together because by combining all of their ideas you are able to get a butter understanding of the importance of writing for the context of the situation. By being able to identify the conventions of writing as they apply to certain situations, you can better understand what will help make a given piece of writing best appropriate for that situation.