Journal 4

Based on your reading of Gee's article, what keywords do you notice him using? In other words, what terms does he focus on? how does he define these terms? what are the connections among them? What connections do you see between our class discussion about genre, audience, and knowledge and Gee's article on discourse?
Based on Gee's article, I notice that he used discourse as his primary focus of term. Gee describes discourse as an association that use the same language, thinking, and acting who belongs to a group. Gee gives being a linguist as an example of discourse throughout his article, and he states: "Every act of speaking, writing, and behaving a linguist does as a linguist is meaningful... of the while social institution on linguistics." The connection between the two terms is that Gee is describing what a discourse entails of through a linguist. Between class discussion about genre, audience, and knowledge and Gee's article on discourse, I found that the connections includes: 


Next, consider the discourse community that you are interested in researching for project two. What is the discourse community? What "ways of using language, of thinking, and of acting" (Gee p. 29) distinguish this discourse community from others? How does one become a member of this discourse community? What role does writing seem to play in this discourse community?
The discourse community that I am interested in pursing is children's literacy: what do children think when they are writing? The use of language that a child has vastly differs, but between child to child, their "language" is limited, but their thinking is critical. They ask questions to learn, and those same questions may lead adults to wonder as well. The way a child acts varies, but typically they have little self-control. We were all once members of this discourse community of being children, but eventually we grow up. In terms of writing, it is an essential skill to learn for children, and they build their skills by practice. 


Finally, what interests you about this particular discourse community, and how can you use that interest to develop your research project? In other words, think about why you want to become a member of this discourse community and what you need to know and be able to do in order to join it.
I am interested in this particular course because it's a question I haven't considered and I would like to know more about. In addition, I would like to know more about brain development among young people and how to better understand children from their questions and writing. For me to be part of this discourse community, were I talk, think, and act like a child would be highly unlikely to happen, but I can learn from this discourse community by first understand the thinking of a child.