3/3 (2)

Revised Implications: 

The question I will answer in this article:

What should writing teachers know about the literate lives of adult learners?

Implications:

1. Many adult students, when the enroll in a post-secondary program of education, are already immersed in complex discursive communities of practice in their workplaces, where the writing they produce is often high-stakes and where writing serves as a tool to "get things done." (Jennifer—the bio-ethics paper vs. the debate paper)
   
2. Adult students will have varied relationships to academic literacy instruction and diverse literacy histories. While some of them will bring stories of negative experiences with literacy, some will not. Some, in fact, will have very positive associations with literacy and literacy instruction. In any event, these histories will invariably shape the literacy work one asks such students to do.
   
3. Adult students will likely have considerable experience producing specific genres of professional writing. Because of the frequency with which they produce them, such genres come to have considerable hold over adult students composing imaginations. Adult students may sometimes mistakenly (and unknowingly) draw on their knowledge of these alpha or dominant genres in their academic writing. These genres may or may not serve as useful antecedents for the academic genres writing teachers invite students to produce in composition classrooms. (Tony—problem/solution, John: Project engagement model)
   
4. In their capacity as workers, many adult students are not just writers, but serve as teachers of writing and/or local writing consultants. (Jennifer, Tony, Charlene)
   
5. Some adult students, when they arrive in the classroom, may already been engaged in any number of self-sponsored literate endeavors--these could serve as potential resources for the teaching of writing (John's blog, Charlene’s letters).
   
6. Adult students may carry with them various histories of the (constrained, limited?) pursuit of academic literacy (Jennifer: Her experience illustrates the way in which decisions made during past periods of social and educational inequality continue to reach out into the future and shape the arc of people’s lives and also the way in which social or cultural expectations around schooling, in Jennifer’s day and in our own, shape the practical, day-to-day, educational decisions that individuals make.).
   
7. Paths to and through higher education are diverse and often non-linear.
   
8. Some adult students will bring to the writing classroom their own goals, objective and literate projects. It’s worthwhile to find out what these goals are and to find ways, where possible, to engage them. (“From there, students could pursue projects of their own interest, which, ideally, would emerge from the reflection and insight gained from producing the literacy narrative. John, for example, might focus on the genre of the blog, researching various blogs and their conventions and then working to create and publish his own. Tony might examine various emergency medical publications and their genre conventions with an eye towards producing an article that could be submitted for publication by the end of the term. Jennifer could investigate the relationship between visual imagery and written text in an effort to assemble a rhetorically complex and persuasive compilation of literature to send to prospective FGCC clients. Presumably, some students, like Tony, would want to focus on rhetorical or grammatical aspects of writing which have eluded them.” Michaud, 180)
   
9. Depending on their workplace experiences, adult students will bring a diverse range of experience with communications technologies (Tony and Brad vs. Charlene and Patsy).