Academic Literacies

For this week, we are dealing with the issue of academic literacies in higher education setting. I think this is an interesting issue in especially graduate studies. Because when I decided to go for both my MA and PhD level, I would like to contribute, share, and learn about new research studies. It is really interesting to read some geographical related study relating to second language writing because I have never even think about this issue before in my academic career. It is also interesting to see how different research articles frame their definition of academic literacies in different aspects.

As noticed the way I spell the word "literacies", I am intended to spell it this way because we need to go beyond the definition of literacy as reading and writing. We, applied linguists, compositionists, teacher educators, literacies educators need to consider other factors relating to our students' learning processes including social, political, historical, and cultural aspects of students. These factors are playing themselves out in interrelated and multifaceted ways in students' lives. The issue of academic literacies should go beyond the classroom settings into the larger contexts. We need to prepare students to be ready and equipped with "survival tool kits" for them for the big (bad) world.

Also academic literacies in this sense can be defined as the act of learning and professing knowledge in the meaningful ways in order to contribute and further the scholarship where one finds oneself fit into. The activities include attending conferences and presenting research in (in-house, local, regional, national and international) conferences, social networking with scholars, publishing and contributing research to scholarships, learning about different scholarships to professing oneself in the interdisciplinary discourses.

One comment I find interesting is From Braine's article on graduate student publications. I agree with the author that we graduate students need to start voicing ourselves by start publishing our papers, attending and presenting at conferences, joining and engaging conversation in some discussion boards, etc. Though I certainly know some factors involving this process, I think it is a good experience to learn and try now because we are in the "low stake" positions in trial and errors. Life is a journey and full of surprises, especially in the academe.