kEllER | WHETHER THE inTERnET mAkES STudEnTS BETTER WRiTERS 175because it is seen as not the college’s responsibility, or
because it seems unnecessary.
“The unstated assumption there is that if you can
write a good essay for your literature professor, you
can write anything,” Mr. Grabill says. “That’s utter
nonsense.”
The writing done outside of class is, in some ways,
the opposite of a traditional academic paper, he says.
Much out-of-class writing, he says, is for a broad
audience instead of a single professor, tries to solve
real-world problems rather than accomplish aca-
demic goals, and resembles a conversation more than
an argument.
rather than being seen as an impoverished, sec-
ondary form, online writing should be seen as “the
new normal,” he says, and treated in the curriculum
as such: “The writing that students do in their lives is
a tremendous resource.”
Ms. yancey, at Florida State, says out-of-class writ-
ing can be used in a classroom setting to help students
draw connections among disparate types of writing.
In one exercise she uses, students are asked to trace
the spread of a claim from an academic journal to less
prestigious forms of media, like magazines and news-
papers, in order to see how arguments are diluted. In
another, students are asked to pursue the answer to
a research question using only blogs, and to create a
map showing how they know if certain information is
trustworthy or not.
The idea, she says, is to avoid creating a “fire wall”
between in-class and out-of-class writing.
“If we don’t invite students to figure out the lessons
they’ve learned from that writing outside of school
and bring those inside of school, what will happen is
only the very bright students” will do it themselves,
Ms. yancey says. “It’s the rest of the population that
we’re worried about.”
Writing in electronic media probably does benefit
struggling students in a rudimentary way, says emo-
ry’s Mr. Bauerlein, because they are at least forced
to string sentences together: “For those kids whoThis seems rather
anecdotal.But does this
occur — avoiding a
“fire wall”?One critic concedes
that writing in
electronic media
can help struggling
writers, but he also25262728293031write to general, public
audience, not just aca-
demic readers (paras.
24–30).07_GRE_5344_Ch7_151_210.indd 175 11/19/14 1:59 PM