I appreciate Bruech's discussion of the oral/written binary and the primacy of the oral over the written in the composition classroom (seems sort of ironic, doesn't it?). I think she may miss an opportunity to deconstruct another binary in the process though. About "strong-text literacies," she writes, "Harris's and Russell's strong objections [...] suggested that peer tutoring in virtual environments is 'cold' and less 'human' than face-to-face tutoring." Here we see not only a binary valuing oral of written language, we see also a binary valuing live interaction as "warm" and "human" as opposed to virtual or mediated interaction as "cold" and "inhuman." I won't attempt it here, but this is a binary with value-laden terms ripe for deconstruction.
I also want to say that, to my mind, the concept of Literacy as Involvement seems to mimic the peer review activity of professional, especially famous, writers. Professional persons of letters respond to writing with writing, through changes in writing style as well as content, probably more than they do by speaking. This reading and response through writing is a form of peer review amongst thinkers who may be divided miles of land or many more miles of ocean, or even by divisions of time, if one author is responding to another who is dead. Such authors didn't need digital technology to respond to each other. The publication industry worked well enough as they actively engaged with each other's thoughts, ideas, and writing. Historically, as much active peer review amongst professional authors has occurred by conversation through letter (and probably occurs today through digital technology) as had occurred through live face-to-face interaction.
My point is that professional authors themselves more than likely engage in a written peer review process, rather than an oral peer review process, when developing their own writing and responding to each other's. It may be that imitating this pattern established by those who write for their profession could be in some ways more fruitful for our students that oral peer review.
About Me
- J. Edwin Paschke-Johannes
- n. ('jA-'ed-w&n-pash-kE-jO-'han-es) 1. A male homosapien of U.S. citizenship, w/ diffused hereditary origins from the Polish, Swiss, German, Lithuanian, Nebraska white trash, and Minnesota backwoods missionary. 2. Name of said male homosapien. 3. One of few individuals, if not the only one existent, to be credited, on public records and various publicly distributed documents, with a Bachelor of Arts in English Education from Midland Lutheran College and a Master of Arts in English, specializing in Creative Writing (Fiction), from Iowa State University, and enrolled in a doctoral program in English, specializing in Rhetoric and Composition, at Ball State University. 4. One of a married couple that have adopted two children, a precocious female and winsome male, from Ethiopia, thus constructing a nuclear family known as “multicultural,” or specifically “transracial,” and grafting onto the couple’s mutual/individual family tree a branch that, to America's racial psyche, is considered radically divergent.
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