"Embracing Digital Literacies: A Study of First-Year Students’ Digital Compositions"

Students' Knowledge of Purpose (cont.)

Ethan and Yahoo Answer Forums

Ethan was the most articulate in discussing his purposes for writing on Yahoo Answer forums. An important purpose for Ethan is to teach fellow chemistry students in a way that will help them truly understand the problem, rather than just providing a quick answer. To accomplish this purpose, Ethan described his process of first “reading the material,” “analyzing where he (the student) [is] at in the course” and finally, “working out the problems and … giving him the response that he needs.” This entire process can sometimes take Ethan several hours. However, another purpose Ethan has in participating in this forum is to test his own understanding. He feels that he has mastered a principle if he can write it up in a way that makes sense to questioners on Yahoo. Ethan explains:

I like to personally prove [to] myself and to others that I actually know what I am doing … Sometimes they fail and I, sometimes I feel devastated. Like recently I answered this guy’s question and he told me he did exactly what I said to him and he still got the wrong answer. So … I know that I didn’t answer this guy’s question correctly and especially since [the] chemistry major [is] a really intense course, the stakes are high for me to actually know the material [and] the feedback is important to me in that sense. If I go answer a person’s question incorrectly, I am going to go back and see exactly what I did wrong and hopefully improve myself for the better … I only have four or five years to actually master the material. So that’s important.

Hence, one of Ethan’s strongest purposes for answering Yahoo questioners is to prepare himself for the current and future Chemistry classes he will take as a Chemistry major. He tests himself on whether he “actually know[s] the material” by his ability to address the needs of his audience.

During one dialogue with a chemistry student, Ethan responded to a question about calculating heat transfer of water to ice. Ethan went through the problem, step by step, and even added a summative comment at the end, recapping the strategy he used to solve the problem:

The way to do these problems is to lower the temperature to reach important points like the heat of fusion, vaporization and then sum them up. Do them a step at a time. If you are going from liquid to freezing, lower down to the freezing point, note the J taken. Do the heat of freezing, note J taken, then lower down to the temperature you want. Then you note the J taken, then sum them all up.

Ethan uses a variety of rhetorical strategies to write an answer that will be understood by his Yahoo audience. The end comment provides a helpful guide to answer these types of questions in the future; additionally he defines and writes out equations so that the questioner can visually see which equations may be drawn upon to complete the problem. The positive responses and high ratings he receives from Yahoo users point to the rhetorical effectiveness of his writing. Ethan’s perception of purpose and the methods he took to achieve his purposes was the most developed out of all participants. He checks back to regulate his writing, to receive feedback, to evaluate himself, and to learn from his experience and apply it to his chemistry studies. Ethan clearly understands his own intentions and possesses an understanding of his audience’s purposes and needs as well.

While students ranged in their ability to discuss the purposes of their writings and the purposes of writings in various digital discourse communities, these participants do indicate varying degrees of awareness of rhetorical purpose. Students’ understanding of purpose in digital contexts is a resource for teachers as they teach purpose in academic contexts. If teachers find that their students recognize their own purposes for writing online, teachers can then discuss identifying academic writers’ purposes. For example, classes might begin by analyzing rhetorical purpose in sample blog posts. Students could next analyze purpose in an academic text, such as a lab report. Students might additionally consider how the medium and design of a text affects rhetorical purpose. Beginning with the digital texts and purposes students are already familiar with before moving to the less familiar academic terrain will help students gain a stronger understanding of rhetorical purpose in many contexts. Students will learn that purpose varies depending on the rhetorical situation and discourse community.