FEATURE ARTICLE

Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 57(6) March 2014 doi :10.1002 /jaal.274 © 2014 International Reading Association (pp. 483– 491)

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“How They Really Talk”T W O S T U D E N T S ’ P E R S P E C T I V E S O N D I G I TA L L I T E R A C I E S I N T H E W R I T I N G C L A S S R O O M

Ann N. Amicucci

Students see potential for the social contexts of their nonacademic digital literacy practices to enhance college writing courses.

“[In] texting you have the slang words and you have the lingo for like ttyl , talk to you later, but I don ’ t think that some English teachers under-stand that…you ’ re more used to doing that then you are [to] writing professional.”—Sarah (personal communication, December 13, 2011)

The field of digital literacies research is alive with ideas for using college students’ non-academic digital literacy practices in the

writing classroom. Teachers are experimenting with multimodal digital composition, writing on blogs and wikis, and communicating with students via social networking platforms.

Bringing such digital tool use into the classroom provides students with opportunities to write in and re-flect critically upon the social, communicative con-texts in which they participate. As indicated by the idea from college student Sarah (all names are pseudonyms), the writ-ing and language use students exercise in digi-tal contexts often differs from the academic writ-ing they are expected to produce in school.

Teachers, though, can help students write in ways that resemble their daily communication by using students’ digital literacies in a writing course, and students themselves may be able to help us understand what such digital literacy practice could look like.

As student ideas in this article show, the digital literacies that many engage in can contribute to learning about writing by providing students with contexts for situated writing practice and opportuni-ties to exercise and recognize code- switching abili-ties. In this article, I address the roles that college students’ nonacademic digital literacies can play in the first- year college writing classroom.

First, I discuss literature addressing the value of students’ nonacademic literacy practices. Next, I dis-cuss two students’ ideas for using digital literacies in the classroom: by situating writing in digital, social contexts and by experimenting with netspeak lan-guage in writing assignments. I conclude the article by suggesting ways that these digital literacy practices can promote learning in writing courses by facilitat-ing students’ critical understanding of the rhetorical contexts of their writing and language use.

The Richness of Nonacademic Digital Literacy Practices In a new literacies framework, scholars have recog-nized that any given literacy practice is shaped by

Ann N. Amicucci is an adjunct faculty member in English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA; e- mail a.n.amicucci@iup.edu .

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its social and historical context (Barton & Hamilton, 1998 ; Gee, 1990 ; Street, 2003 ). As a re-sult, all students’ literacy practices inside and out-side school are shaped by their social and academic communities.

In examining students’ literacy practices outside school, many scholars have obtained a more nuanced understanding of students’ overall literacies, includ-ing those occurring in academic settings (Finders, 1997 ; Heath, 1983 ; Williams, 2005 ). New literacies researchers (Gee, 2003 ; Hull & Schultz, 2001 ; Lankshear & Knobel, 2011 ) have found that studying individuals’ literacy practices outside school can pro-vide valuable insight into their overall literacy devel-opment. Given the value of students’ nonacademic literacies, students’ digital literacy activities outside school may hold rich potential for fostering their de-velopment of school- related literacies.

The complex literacy activity some students par-ticipate in outside school has been shown to inform their learning of critical literacy skills in academic contexts. In writing courses, teachers strive to foster students’ ability to be critical writers who perceive writing as an activity occurring within a social context (Canagarajah, 2002 ). In taking such a “critical orien-tation” toward writing, students come to understand the rhetorical contexts in which writing occurs and the ways such contexts shape language use. In other words, students can develop an understanding of the role of an audience and the position of an author in shaping a written text (Aristotle, 1991 ) as well as the historical, material, and ideological contexts that affect everything we write (Canagarajah, 2002 ).

Research into nonacademic digital literacies has shown that individuals exercise similar critical liter-acy skills through instant message conversation (Haas, Takayoshi, Carr, Hudson, & Pollock, 2011 ) and so-cial networking activity on Facebook (Brand et al., 2011 ; Lankshear & Knobel, 2011 ). In examining lit-eracy activity on Facebook, for example, Lankshear and Knobel ( 2011 ) have demonstrated that users en-gage in a complex array of literacy “moves” that take into consideration the rhetorical situation created by a user ’ s web of connections on the site. Lankshear

and Knobel and others (Maranto & Barton, 2010 ; Turkle, 2011 ) have shown that a social network user makes multiple rhetorical choices in crafting a self- presentation online through posts, pictures, and lik-ing content, whether or not users are aware of these choices as rhetorical.

Much recent scholarship that describes practices for bringing digital literacies into writing classrooms has emphasized the potential for fostering students’ critical literacy skills through the use of digital tools, such as Purdy ’ s ( 2010 ) analytical class discussions of Wikipedia; Sweeny ’ s ( 2010 ) use of online chatting for students’ discussion of writing ideas; and Dubisar and Palmeri ’ s ( 2010 ) assigning students to create digital, remixed political videos, all assignments that situate students’ learning within rhetorical contexts online.

As Lankshear and Knobel ( 2011 ) have explained, “The efficacy of social learning is predicated on the fact that it immerses learners in processes of induction into the ‘ways’ of becoming ‘full practitioners’…[and] getting hands- on practice with their mental and mate-rial tools within authentic contexts” appropriate to the meaning- making in which students are engaged (p. 220). Thus, as students learn to become academic or professional writers within a writing course, the ex-isting rhetorical situations availed by digital spaces create opportunities for students’ work to be situated in relation to audiences outside the classroom.

Furthermore, teachers have reported asking stu-dents to reflect on their relationships with technol-ogy, which encourages students to analyze the digital messages they receive and the choices they make in using digital technologies (Kitalong, Bridgeford, Moore, & Selfe, 2003 ; Pigg, 2010 ). When such situ-ated literacy activity is used or reflected upon in the classroom, students are given the opportunity to un-derstand how their writing and use of language func-tions within a social context.

Methods of Data Collection and Analysis Digital literacies scholarship has offered many teach-ers’ perspectives on the roles that students’ existing digital literacies can play in a writing classroom, but students’ own perspectives have been largely missing from the literature (Alvermann, 2008 ; Kirtley, 2005 ; Williams, 2005 ). In response to this need for more student voices in digital literacies scholarship, I inter-viewed first- year college students to learn their per-spectives on the subject.

Digital spaces create opportunities

to situate work in relation to

audiences outside the classroom.

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The interviews presented in this article are a por-tion of a data set from a larger study in which I sur-veyed 177 students enrolled in a first- year college writing course at a rural, midsize Midwestern state university, asking about their uses of digital tools for nonacademic reading and writing purposes. None of the study participants were students of mine. Among those surveyed, 38 self- identified and agreed to par-ticipate in follow- up interviews. I contacted these 38 students and was able to secure interviews with eight. In this article, I discuss data from two of these student interviews.

Interviews were conducted one- on- one and fol-lowed an unstructured format in which I facilitated discussion to address the following research questions:

1 . Do students want to enact their nonacademic digital literacy practices in a first-year college writing course? Why or why not?

2 . In what ways do students think these digital lit-eracy practices could be effectively enacted in such a course?

At the time of the interviews, these students had recently completed a writing course with one of four instructors; these courses had not necessarily used digital technologies or incorporated students’ nonaca-demic digital literacies.

I conducted qualitative analysis of interview tran-scripts using an inductive process by allowing mean-ing to emerge from the themes evident in the data, rather than reading data with preconceived expecta-tions (Hood, 2007 ). The data analysis revealed several student ideas for situating writing course activity within digital contexts.

A few interviewees, for example, discussed the possibility of having a course Facebook page, where students could interact with one another and the teacher to ask questions about homework. Many in-terviewees offered ideas for using digital communica-tive contexts for logistical course purposes; these ideas replicated ideas already discussed in recent scholarship.

Yet two students, Craig and Sarah, offered novel perspectives by discussing the potential for their digi-tal literacies to offer contextualized literacy practice within a writing course. I chose to focus on the data collected in these two interviews because these stu-dents’ ideas allowed for examination of digital litera-cies within writing courses in ways that had not yet

been considered from a student perspective in the literature.

The study methods presented limitations in two areas. First, because I offered participants no com-pensation, the interviews likely attracted participants who already had an interest in my inquiry. I did not speak with any individuals who were unwilling to consider the role of digital literacies in a writing course. Students who are less enthusiastic about their writing education than these participants may be resistant to the ideas presented here. Second, by con-ducting unstructured interviews, I allowed conversa-tions to follow students’ ideas, rather than asking all participants to discuss the same ideas. As a result, I was unable to get multiple students’ perspectives on the ideas that individual students offered.

Student Ideas for Using Digital Literacies in the Writing Classroom The two students whose interviews I discuss here shared ideas for using the spaces of and language common to their digital communication to situate writing practices in a first- year college writing course. Craig and Sarah depicted ways that the social net-working they use for nonacademic purposes could be used as a context for academic writing and to inform the use of language in writing.

Craig ’ s Perspective: Digital Technologies for Situated Writing Practice In conversation with Craig, I learned about his cur-rent use of social networking for writing practice in Spanish, an experience that led him to suggest that students in a writing course could practice their writ-ing in digital, social spaces to develop writing skills within the context of an existing audience.

Craig, a Spanish major, said he often uses Facebook and text messaging to communicate with friends. He said he started using Facebook as a high school freshman and that he had around 600 friends, many of whom were only casual acquaintances. As a result, Craig said his status updates are infrequent—“probably like once a month if that”—and that if he is going through something difficult in his life, “I ’ ll probably talk to my friends about it rather than just see it out there for the whole world to see” (personal communication, December 15, 2011). Although he said he doesn ’ t use Facebook to share many personal details, Craig attested to using both Facebook and

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text messaging to practice Spanish. He said, “If I just want to practice my Spanish over Facebook…maybe there ’ ll be somebody I know that speaks Spanish or maybe I ’ ll put it as my status.” He explained:

I have some friends that are Hispanic, so…sometimes I ’ ll just say Hola, ¿Cómo estás? and they ’ ll respond and then I ’ ll want to know what they say so if I can ’ t [understand it], like if I can ’ t make [it] out, if I can ’ t read it all from what they say I ’ ll look up the words. I really enjoy doing that.

Craig said his use of digital tools for Spanish conver-sation benefited his language learning. He said this communication helped him to do well on a recent Spanish oral exam on which some of his classmates said they struggled.

Craig explained that the immediacy of digital communication made Facebook and texting appeal to him as Spanish learning tools. He said, “That ’ s a really good practical way to practice I think because I ’ m going to get response, like feedback, right on the spot.” Craig said he has found that practicing Spanish digitally during his first semester of college comple-mented what he was learning in his Spanish course.

Craig ’ s discovery that his learning of Spanish is facilitated by interaction with peers aligns with re-search on second- language acquisition, which has found that communicative interaction often corre-lates positively with an individual ’ s motivation and ability to learn a second language (Flowerdew & Miller, 2008 ; Lantolf & Genung, 2002 ). As Lantolf and Genung ( 2002 ) have specified, the occasion of communicative interaction alone does not facilitate language development; rather, “it is the quality of the social framework and the activity carried out within that framework that determines learning outcomes” (p. 176).

This research rests on the notion of Vygotsky ’ s ( 1978 ) concept of learners’ zones of proximal devel-opment, in which learning occurs when education is targeted at the range of abilities between learners’ ac-tual and potential development levels, a range that can be identified through a learner ’ s “collaboration

with more capable peers” (p. 86). In Craig ’ s case, he found an effective way to practice Spanish within his own zone of proximal development by interacting with peers who knew the language and were willing to speak with him at or just above his level.

In this way, Craig was using what Gee ( 2000 ) has called a “social language” in that his use of Spanish in digital communication was affected by the socially mediated connections he made with friends. The Spanish that Craig used in digital communication was a “sublanguage” of his use of Spanish in general; the same could be said of his use of Spanish in the classroom, which was affected by interactions with his teacher and classmates. Craig did not speak about whether his use of Spanish online differed from the Spanish he used for academic purposes. For Craig, the act of social interaction itself was what he per-ceived to be helpful to him in having become a stron-ger user of the Spanish language.

In our discussion, Craig extended this practice of using digital tools to learn Spanish to propose the idea that students’ academic writing practices could be located in digital, social contexts. He explained this idea by saying, “It ’ s one thing to teach something but then it ’ s another thing to see where it ’ s actually applied in life.” When I asked Craig to elaborate, he spoke about activities in the first- year writing course he had just completed. Craig said that in this course:

We…looked at writing through music, so I really enjoyed that cause it really took the stress away from…grammar and things like that and we just got to reflect on the music and write how we feel. I think it really put the enjoyment back in writing for me rather than just looking at the mechanics of it.…In high school it was always just like, oh, this is awkward sentence structure or wrong use of “there.” It was all…just things that [made me think] okay, well can you look at my thought process rather than the grammatics.

Craig remembered a focus on grammar and sentence mechanics in his high school writing courses, but he said that in his college course, the teacher used the topic of music to show students the relevance of writ-ing to their everyday lives.

Craig explained that the teacher “used a lot of music videos and he showed us poetry through mu-sic,” which he cited as an example of showing how writing was “actually applied in life.” Craig cited a similar method that his Spanish teacher used to show examples of language use other than those contained

Practicing Spanish digitally

complemented what Craig was

learning in his Spanish course.

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in a textbook. He said that in Spanish, the class would “watch conversations or music videos” and “liste[n] to…dialects of different [speakers and] the way they talk.” Craig ’ s writing and Spanish teachers showed the class the relevance of their writing and language practice to communicative contexts outside the class-room, and Craig argued that students’ nonacademic digital literacies could be used for similar purposes in a writing course.

Craig had the idea that students’ literacies in Facebook and text messaging could benefit their learning to become better writers in the same way they had benefited his practice of Spanish. He sug-gested that writing activities could be situated in com-municative environments outside the classroom to raise students’ awareness of the reception of their writ-ing by readers. He explained:

I think that if you are conscious about what you ’ re writing you could…practice it well.…You could maybe think more when you ’ re, say if you ’ re sending a text message, maybe you could think of a different way to say something rather than just the basic way of saying it, try to use more vocabulary, more words.

Craig ’ s idea here was that if academic writing activi-ties were created so that students had an existing audi-ence in mind while writing—other than a teacher or classroom peers—students could be prompted to think more closely about how they write.

By using digital writing contexts in this way, teachers can give students the opportunity to situate their writing in relation to an audience outside the classroom. This “real life application” was the aspect of situated learning that Craig identified as a moti-vating factor in his practice of Spanish. He explained:

There are times when I get so frustrated with Spanish that I just want to throw my books, but then…I ’ ll start thinking of things and I ’ ll—or if somebody talks to me, my enjoyment comes back because it ’ s, you know, it ’ s the real life application of it and…I really like responding and thinking and trying to use it.

Craig ’ s belief that similar methods of situating writing practice in relation to an existing digital audience could enhance a student ’ s writing development rested on his positive experiences practicing Spanish via tex-ting and Facebook. He noted, “The best way to learn is when you ’ re not…trying to do it, and through that

I feel like I [am] not trying to learn everything but I ’ m just trying to practice what I know.”

Drawing on Craig ’ s ideas for situated writing practice, teachers can direct students to practice writ-ing in digital spaces on topics related to class work or to reflect on the writing they already produce in such spaces. For example, students who are brainstorming course paper ideas could do so on Facebook and so-licit ideas from friends; in such an activity, following Craig ’ s idea, students may pay more attention to their writing, knowing that it is being received by an audi-ence of their social peers.

Sarah ’ s Perspective: Digital Communication Language in a Writing Course Where Craig discussed ways that writing itself could be socially situated, Sarah discussed ways that writing in a school setting could mimic the writing she did in social contexts. Sarah spoke to me about netspeak—short- form digital communication marked by abbre-viations and acronyms such as u or lol —and the role she thought it could play in students’ academic writing.

Sarah, a pre- pharmacy major, had been using Facebook for about four years and Twitter for about a year at the time of our conversation (personal com-munication, December 13, 2011). She had roughly 800 Facebook friends but only 19 Twitter followers and explained that her narrower audience on Twitter made her feel more comfortable posting information there. She said, “Facebook now, I really only use it to get in touch with people.…And then Twitter is just to update of where you are, what you ’ re doing, and like how you ’ re feeling.” She also said she texted friends daily to “catch up” or “just to get in touch with people.”

In regards to the language she used in her daily communication across these social contexts, Sarah said that although “English is supposed to be proper,” the writing many students do outside the classroom does not resemble formal academic writing. Sarah commented that teachers should maintain an aware-ness of students’ struggle in switching between non-academic and academic forms of language, explaining:

I know some English teachers want [writing to be] professional, but…[in] texting you have the slang words and you have the lingo for like ttyl ,

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talk to you later, but I don ’ t think that some English teachers understand that you have that too, so you ’ re more used to doing that then you are [to] writing professional.

Sarah ’ s identification of the difference between the “lingo” she used in social communication outside school and the “professional” language she was ex-pected to use in school called attention to the code- switching she did on a daily basis between academic and nonacademic contexts.

As Young ( 2004 ) has identified, when teachers expect students to code- switch in school—or to use language differently according to a specific commu-nicative context—students may receive the message that their own ways of using language are devalued within the academy. In forwarding this argument, Young was writing about the expectation for African American students to switch to standard American English in an academic context; the expectation for students to leave behind a primary spoken discourse in the classroom is far more problematic than that of leaving behind netspeak or other social, written lan-guages in academic writing. Yet Young ’ s argument applies to Sarah ’ s experience, in which she was ex-pected to switch out of her daily use of netspeak when writing in an academic setting.

Sarah indicated that teachers could help students by remembering the role, or lack thereof, that formal academic writing plays in students’ lives. She said, “You ’ re not really used to going and writing proper English papers when you ’ re texting, you want to use lingo…or slang words so I think [writing for classes] should be a little more lenient toward that.” In other words, Sarah understood the necessity of writing in a formal manner within an academic setting but said that students would benefit from teachers’ recogniz-ing that such formal writing is removed from the writ-ing students do in their daily lives.

Sarah ’ s discussion of the need to switch between netspeak and formal writing when writing for school called into question her identity as a student. She said that students would have more opportunities to be themselves in the classroom if writing activities

allowed them to draw on nonacademic digital skills. She explained:

It might be cool to give students the chance to do a freewrite in whatever language they wanted…because it ’ d be a cool way to get to know people, like how they really talk…even if it ’ s just a little bit, that ’ d be, it ’ d be a fun way of showing that [classes and teachers are] not really all about writing formally, if that makes any sense, like they ’ re all trying to get to know you too.

Sarah ’ s sentiment echoes Young ’ s ( 2004 ) argument that code- switching expectations in the classroom may require students to leave their out- of- school iden-tities behind and adopt solely academic identities in their place. To avoid this, Sarah called for teachers to meet students halfway—to recognize how students use language in communication outside school and create space for similar language use in the classroom.

As Haas et al. ( 2011 ) have found, individuals’ use of netspeak when writing in digital spaces is a linguis-tically complex way of manipulating language. In studying a corpus of instant message conversations, the researchers characterized instant messaging as a mode of communication through which users make conscious linguistic choices that break down and re-write rules of standard English.

In addition, researchers have found that using netspeak in social communication correlates posi-tively at times with literacy abilities. In a review of 18 studies of the correlation between texting or instant messaging and literacy skills, Verheijen ( 2013 ) found “that many more studies report positive relationships between texting/IMing and literacy than negative re-lationships,” a finding that “would suggest that the popular claim that texting and IMing have a detri-mental effect on literacy skills is actually ungrounded” (p. 596). Verheijen cautioned that causal relation-ships cannot be inferred from the studies considered in this review and that more research is needed to determine the effect of short- form composing prac-tices on literacy abilities. In sum, these studies indi-cate that digital communication often comprises rich literacy activity.

Sarah ’ s discussion suggests that in addition to recognizing students’ existing ways of writing, teach-ers need to acknowledge the difficulty students face in code- switching for academic purposes. Even within a pedagogical approach that allows space for

Teachers need to acknowledge the

difficulty students face in code-

switching for academic purposes.

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students to write in ways that resemble their out- of- school communication, we still need to prepare stu-dents to write for academic purposes, a skill that takes considerable practice to learn. Inviting forms of lan-guage use such as netspeak into classroom writing practices offers students the chance to reflect on and understand the ways they adapt language according to rhetorical context. Teachers then have the oppor-tunity to help students learn how to use language for academic purposes while also encouraging them to value their existing language uses and question how language use differs across rhetorical contexts (Schneider, 2006 ).

In our discussion, Sarah identified freewriting as a potential space in which students could exercise their nonacademic digital writing practices. She also offered a more specific idea for using such practices in the classroom: writing “mystery papers,” creative mystery stories in which students use text- messaging language in inventing a story, particularly in writing dialogue. Sarah said that writing an assignment that allowed students to utilize forms of language they use in daily communication would be a more comfort-able way of practicing writing in school, rather than, in her words, “bringing somebody that I ’ m not” into the classroom. She suggested that such an assignment could draw on the skills she learned in her first- year writing course—she cited writing with details and de-scription as an example of these skills—while also al-lowing students to write in a language in which they feel comfortable. Asking students to reflect on their language use within such an assignment can then prompt students to develop awareness of the rhetori-cal functions of language within a given writing context.

Recognizing Students’ Positions and Promoting Critical Digital Literacies Craig and Sarah both wanted to see writing activities situated within the digital communicative frameworks they employed in daily conversation. By situating writ-ing activities in online social spaces or experimenting with netspeak in academic contexts, students can be given the chance to write for academic purposes in ways that resemble their existing literacy practices. The ideas presented by Craig and Sarah represent ver-sions of “how [students] really talk” (Sarah, personal communication, December 13, 2011) in terms of both digital language use and the location of literacy activity in social spaces outside school.

In drawing on Craig ’ s and Sarah ’ s ideas for bring-ing students’ existing digital literacies into writing courses, teachers must keep two cautions in mind. First, in any given class, students will have varied ac-cess to digital technologies, and some may not wel-come the presence of digital technologies within education, making it pertinent for teachers to acquire knowledge about students’ individual positions as technology users. To best match writing education to students’ life contexts, teachers need to acquire knowledge of students’ actual uses of technology rather than making assumptions about such uses.

The ideas discussed in this article require teach-ers to converse with students to determine and ac-commodate individuals’ access to and relationship with digital technologies. Teachers can gather this information informally through class discussion about students’ technology use or formally by assign-ing students to compose technology literacy autobiog-raphies, in which students write their own histories of using digital technologies.

In addition, using digital technologies necessi-tates facilitating students’ critical engagement with these technologies. As many scholars have indicated (Considine, Horton, & Moorman, 2009 ; Dubisar & Palmeri, 2010 ; Purdy, 2010 ), the presence of digital literacies in the classroom gives teachers the opportu-nity and responsibility to promote students’ critical digital literacies. By bringing students’ nonacademic digital literacies into writing education, teachers can facilitate students’ critical thinking about the tech-nologies they use.

When Facebook is used in class activities, for ex-ample, teachers can prompt students to discuss the construction of Facebook itself; a discussion of Facebook data collection can lead students to be-come more aware of how the site provides informa-tion to advertisers. Students can be asked to reflect on their choices within Facebook, from selecting profile photos to liking content, and the ways such choices affect the advertisements they see and their creation of an online identity. In addition to informal class dis-cussion, students can be asked to keep a one- day or one- week journal to track their activity on a social networking site, then reflect on their reasons for the choices they make in the process of that activity.

In situating writing activity in digital, social con-texts, teachers can prompt students to reflect on how a communicative context—and students’ purpose for writing and audience within it—affects the ways they write. Similarly, by offering opportunities

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to experiment with netspeak, teachers can prompt students to question how they use language differ-ently in different contexts.

Students who reflect on how their writing and language use is shaped by the contexts in which it oc-curs will have the opportunity to learn about the function of writing within rhetorical situations while exercising the ability to write in contexts other than those of print- based academic assignments, both of which are skills that contribute to college students’ success in writing (Council of Writing Program

Administrators, National Council of Teachers of English, & National Writing Project, 2011 ). Situated writing practice and experimental language use can inform learning in writing courses by facilitating stu-dents’ awareness of and critical reflection on the ways that individuals adapt writing and language use de-pending on context, whether that context is social, academic, or both.

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Take ActionS T E P S F O R I M M E D I A T E I M P L E M E N T A T I O N

1 . Ask students to practice class-related writing in a digital, social context in which they already participate. For example, students who use Facebook could post the introduction paragraph of a draft to their Facebook walls and ask friends online for feedback. Students can then reflect on how gaining feedback from peers in a social setting affected their revision process.

2 . Ask students to collect examples of their language use outside school that involve different audiences: Students could share a text message exchange with an employer and one with a friend or a Twitter exchange with a significant other and one with a public figure. In class, categorize everyone ’ s examples on a continuum of language formality, then discuss how the level of formality changes depending on audience and communicative context.

3 . Assign an experimental narrative in which students use written language mirroring the language they use in a nonacademic context, such as text messaging. Students can use such language to narrate or to craft dialogue in which characters write to one another using netspeak. Students can reflect on how they use language and which versions of language they prefer to use in various writing contexts.

4 . Learn about students’ relationships with technology by asking them to discuss how they use devices such as tablets or smartphones, social networking sites such as Instagram or Pinterest, and mobile applications such as Snapchat or Vine. Teachers can also reflect by writing down their assumptions about students’ technology use, then evaluating these assump-tions in light of students’ actual uses.

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Kitalong , K. , Bridgeford , T. , Moore , M. , & Selfe , D. ( 2003 ). Variations on a theme: The technology autobiography as a versatile writing assignment . In P. Takayoshi & B. Huot (Eds.), Teaching writing with computers: An introduction (pp. 219 – 233 ). Boston, MA : Houghton Mifflin .

Lankshear , C. , & Knobel , M. ( 2011 ). New literacies: Everyday practices and classroom learning ( 3rd ed. ). New York, NY : McGraw-Hill .

Lantolf , J.P. , & Genung , P.B. ( 2002 ). “I ’ d rather switch than fight”: An activity-theoretic study of power, success, and fail-ure in a foreign language . In C. Kramsch (Ed.), Language acquisition and language socialization: Ecological perspectives (pp. 175 – 196 ). London, UK : Continuum .

Maranto , G. , & Barton , M. ( 2010 ). Paradox and promise: MySpace, Facebook, and the sociopolitics of social network-ing in the writing classroom . Computers and Composition , 27 ( 1 ), 36 – 47 . doi: 10.1016/j.compcom.2009.11.003

Pigg , S. ( 2010 ). Teaching new mediated student bodies . In C.E. Ball & J. Kalmbach (Eds.), RAW: (Reading and writing) new media (pp. 231 – 255 ). Cresskill, NJ : Hampton Press .

Purdy , J.P. ( 2010 ). The changing space of research: Web 2.0 and the integration of research and writing environments . Computers and Composition , 27 ( 1 ), 48 – 58 . doi: 10.1016/j.compcom.2009.12.001

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Sweeny , S.M. ( 2010 ). Writing for the instant messaging and text messaging generation: Using new literacies to support writing instruction . Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy , 54 ( 2 ), 121 – 130 . doi: 10.1598/JAAL.54.2.4

Turkle , S. ( 2011 ). Alone together: Why we expect more from tech-nology and less from each other . New York, NY : Basic Books .

Verheijen , L. ( 2013 ). The effects of text messaging and instant messaging on literacy . English Studies , 94 ( 5 ), 582 – 602 . doi: 10.1080/0013838X.2013.795737

Vygotsky , L.S. ( 1978 ). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes . Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press .

Williams , B.T. ( 2005 ). Leading double lives: Literacy and tech-nology in and out of school . Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy , 48 ( 8 ), 702 – 706 . doi: 10.1598/JAAL.48.8.7

Young , V.A. ( 2004 ). Your average nigga . College Composition and Communication , 55 ( 4 ), 693 – 715 . doi: 10.2307/4140667

More to ExploreC O N N E C T E D C O N T E N T - B A S E D R E S O U R C E S

● Kairos Praxis Wikis on social network use in the classroom:

❍ Developing Critical Literacy and Critical Thinking Through Facebook by David T. Coad http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/praxis/index.php/Developing_Critical_Literacy_and_Critical_Thinking_through_Facebook

❍ MySpace, Facebook, and Multimodal Literacy in the Writing Classroom by Jennifer Swartz http://technorhetoric.com/praxis/index.php/MySpace,_Facebook,_and_Multimodal_Literacy_in_the_Writing_Classroom

● NPR pieces on code-switching: ❍ Code Switching: Are We All Guilty? http://www.

npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122528515

❍ Six Moments Of Code-Switching in Popular Culture http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/03/18/174639342/six-moments-of-code-switching-in-popular-culture