Selber: Systematic Requirements for Change

I found this chapter most useful when Selber discusses his vision for how a composition classroom could incorporate functional, critical, and rhetorical literacy into the curriculum. Selber suggests students join a forum of their interest and study its intricacies on each level (Selber 197). For instance, when looking at the function of the forum, students would note discursive codes and topics discussed; a critical analysis would examine power relations; and finally, a rhetorical read would reveal the context of the forum (where is this discussion taking place, by whom, etc.). I think this could make for an interesting approach when thinking about the kind of awareness students would (hopefully) bring to their work as both readers and writers in learning environments and beyond.

1 thought on “Selber: Systematic Requirements for Change

  1. bkoeppcsusb

    There’s a sense in which the old pre-AOL internet communities used to kind of enforce this reasoned and analytical approach on their new members. It was a different era, so it would be pretty uncommon for new users to be even as young as most college freshmen today. Regardless, these communities were able to impose on their new members a kind of critical/rhetorical/functional awareness that would introduce them to the dynamics of these online communities. They dreaded every September, when Usenet would be flooded with new users logging in for the first time from their college campuses, and the advent of AOL kind of sounded the death knell for this approach to assimilating new members – too many new users, too many immature new users… subtle admonishments and the threat of bans just didn’t have the same effect at that point. But that kind of culture still exists on some relatively niche internet communities; this kind of exercise is still applicable, if you know where to find them.

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