Writing Globally Part 2: Blogging

This is the second in a two-part series on teaching writing for a globalized audience. Find the first part here, and read it if you haven’t yet.

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As we discussed in Part 1, teaching blog writing requires both an understanding that students will be writing for a globalized audience and an awareness that there is no standard way to communicate to any one group. Students should instead be made aware of how their language may be interpreted by different audiences and taught to avoid ambiguity.

But now it is important to discuss why this is all so important for blog writing. Why should students, writing largely for the evaluation of their peers and instructor, have to consider how their language will be interpreted by an audience they will never see and likely rarely communicate with. To understand the validity of teaching writing for a globalized audience, I would argue that a teacher should look no further than the spring break plans of their students.

Like this, but not quite

Before my students fled my presence for a week outside my jurisdiction, I asked them all what they’d be doing. Inevitably, many of them told me about their plans to visit sunny beaches and bonfires, but others said they would be going home. However, none of my students came from the same home, any many came from different states, and some came from different countries, and one had parents on two continents. Though my classroom exists in Arizona, it is a cross-section of diverse communities, and arguing that I could communicate to each student in the same way is similar to arguing that there could be a standard way of talking to everyone in the world. Bitzer’s model argues that the audience in a rhetorical situation is any group that can modify the exigence. In this case, my exigence as a teacher is that I want my students to understand that when they write for a global audience, they are writing for different versions of themselves. In teaching students to write for a global audience, teachers can also teach them to write for the diverse communities evident in their classroom.

Each pin represents one student, and each of those students asked me if they had to come the day before break.

I’d like to finally answer the question several of my colleagues have asked me when we compare lesson plans over age-appropriate beverages: why do I teach blog writing to intro composition students? My students haven’t mastered the art of the formal essay, nor have they had much exposure to college writing by the time they find themselves in my classroom, but still I avoid  formal papers or even literal paper, and I teach them to write online. I have two answers to this question. The first is that I have found there is less opportunity to receive cute pictures of cats in formal essays, but some blogs lend themselves to cuteness. And I have found that blog writing teaches the same skills as formal writing with the exception of some elements of form.

Like with our discussion of writing for a global audience, I do not believe there is a way communicating that is universally effective for audiences across cultures. I do not think a formal research paper is any more effective at teaching research than a well-cited blog post. Standardizing form seems as illogical as standardizing speech, and it has the same effect of arguing that any writing outside that form represents lower thought. Muhammad Yunus writes about how to motivate social development using the investment lines and businesses practices already established in the world economy. He poses an idea of “social-objective-driven investors” which would be investors who are driven by personal and social gain, and their efficacy as investors would be measured by the efficacy of the social improvement they cause. I think this model of using the modes already in place to further a different cause can be adapted well to teaching.

Blogging already exists, but it is separate from the negative, stifling connotations of formal academic writing. Blogging also already requires an awareness of a global audience–as discussed in previous post–and that awareness may lend itself well to helping students view their classroom audience as members of a larger global audience. Above all, I believe that blog writing can differently engage students with the writing process, that can still teach everything a formal paper can, but it can teach it without letting them know they’re learning it. In essence, I think the best way to trick students into enjoying critically thinking about a global audience, about research, and about participating in a community, is by asking them to blog.

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Works Cited

Bitzer, Lloyd. “The Rhetorical Situation.” Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader, John Louis Lucaites, Celeste, Michelle Condit, Sally Caudill, Guilford Press. 217-25.

Cameron, Deborah. “Globalization and the teaching of ‘communication skills” Globalization and language teaching (pp. 67-82). London: Routledge.

Discourses and Social Languages.” An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method, by James Paul. Gee, Routledge, 2014, p. 11 – 39.

Yunus, Muhammad. Banker to the Poor. Penguin Books India, 2007.