• Introduction to Your Course & to This Book
• Why This Book Exists & How You Can Use It
• Metacognitive Questions to Leverage Your Knowledge
• Typical Artifacts to Critique & Create
• Expectations for College Communication: Standard American English
• Why Correctness Matters
• Georgia Tech Communication Center

Welcome to WOVENText. This open educational resource provides support as you communicate in a range of contexts, including but not limited to your English 1101 and English 1102 classes, technical communication classes, senior capstone projects, and future jobs. WOVENText is a guide and supplement to the instruction you will receive in multimodal communication: use it to learn strategies for successful communication and to refresh your memory about conventions for communicating in many modes and media.

This open educational resource provides you with strategies to use various modes in concert with each other. Its eight chapters help you address key questions for becoming an effective communicator. Along the way, you will learn about multimodal communication while being encouraged to question and challenge various communication strategies. You will view images and also access videos and hyperlinks that extend ideas in the book. You can use this textbook as a reference to review conventions and principles and to seek advice about strategies for communicating effectively.

Introduction to Your Course & to This Resource

The mission of Georgia Tech’s Writing and Communication Program is to help students, faculty, and staff across the Institute learn strategies for communicating effectively. The immediate purpose of your course and of this resource is to help you be more successful as a student at Georgia Tech. The long-range purpose is to help you become a more successful communicator in your personal interactions, in your community, and in your professional life. Why does being a good communicator matter? Having excellent communication strategies is often identified as one of the top qualifications for professionals in virtually every field, including architecture, art, business, engineering, humanities, medicine, politics, science, and social science. More broadly, becoming a good communicator makes your life easier, more interesting, and more fulfilling.

As you start your work in the Writing and Communication Program, you should consider these questions:

• Why do I have to take a communication course? The first reason is that it’s the law: Georgia mandates that all students meet the requirements for English 1101 and English 1102, which are sometimes referred to together as “first-year composition.” The second and much more important reason has to do with the correlation between your personal, academic, and professional success and the ability to communicate effectively. Great innovators must also be excellent communicators to persuade others to endorse new and exciting ideas, products, and procedures.
  
• What if I’m already a good communicator? You can always learn more. Successful people are typically eager to learn ways to be more effective and efficient. Communication strategies are honed over time and improve with each new rhetorical situation you encounter.
  
• What if I’m not a very good communicator? This is the place to learn. If you have been accepted to Georgia Tech, you are definitely capable of extending your competencies to include communication.
  
• What kinds of communication can I expect to learn about? In Writing and Communication Program courses, you will learn about communicating in multiple modes and media (written, oral, visual, electronic, and nonverbal) using rhetorical strategies. You’ll use these strategies to think about communication situations and create a variety of artifacts in response to those situations. We use the term “artifact” to designate the full range of multimodal “stuff” you might critique and create: essays and presentations, Web sites and performances, ads and films, and so on. In English 1101 and English 1102, the artifacts you’ll critique and create will be multimodal. In English 1101, most of the artifacts you address will be informational (that is, nonfiction); in English 1102, most of the artifacts you address will be literary and often fictional. You will read books, but you will also use digital media, some of which might include blogs, email, Twitter, wikis, Web sites, and YouTube videos. You might give individual and team presentations. Using any or all of these forms of communication, you will learn to analyze text, speech, images, and nonverbal behaviors. You will develop strategies for making strong arguments and for finding compelling supporting evidence. You will learn communication processes that are transferable to many academic, personal, community, and professional situations. You will learn how to be a stronger, more effective team member and leader. And you will learn to recognize that thinking and communicating are inextricably connected. This textbook acts as a guide to help you develop competence and maturity with the many kinds of communication you encounter in English 1101 and English 1102.

Explain what you hope to learn in your multimodal English composition class this semester. #Understand

Purpose of This Overview

This resource has been especially designed for students at Georgia Tech. English 1101 and English 1102 rely on this textbook, but you should also keep it as a reference for other courses and professional activities. This overview assembles critical information and resources useful not only for your English courses but for virtually all of your other academic courses. In addition, this information should be useful when you are working as an intern or a co-op student, and it should continue to come in handy when you’re a full-time professional.

Why This Resource Exists & How You Can Use It

What is an open educational resource, and what do you get out of this resource? As defined by Affordable Learning Georgia (which supported the production of this resources),

Open educational resources (OER) are any type of educational materials that are either in the public domain, or published under open licenses, like Creative Commons. The materials can be used, reused, adapted, shared and modified according to specific needs.

This OER draws material from faculty members who teach writing and communication at Georgia Tech and from the Georgia Tech Writing and Communication Program’s earlier e-book. It carries a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License.

Why is some information in textboxes? WOVENText has textboxes (signaled by a gold box) that include information you will find interesting and useful to supplement the main ideas in the chapter. The information is put in textboxes to separate it from the regular text and make it easy to find. WOVENText also has two kinds of marginal information in blue boxes: (1) notes and comments about the text’s main ideas and (2) questions you should answer or activities you should complete as you read each chapter to increase your understanding.

Why is the focus on learning strategies rather than practicing correctness? You may not realize it, but you have been learning about language conventions ever since you were very young, even before you went to school. For example, when you were about two or three, you might have said, “Cookie?” In an effort to teach you more about language, your parents might have taught you to ask, “May I have a cookie, please?” In middle school and high school, you had the opportunity to learn conventions of grammar, mechanics, and spelling. A few of you may have also learned conventions of visual and nonverbal communication. Conventions are common cultural practices that are often treated as rules; strategies tend to focus on heuristics (patterns) and processes. WOVENText focuses on strategic knowledge because knowing the strategies increases the likelihood that you can adapt information to new communication situations.

Why is the emphasis on rhetoric? Rhetoric is an old discipline, dating back to ancient Greece. Over the centuries, the term has sometimes been used in a pejorative way, for example, referring to language used by deceptive politicians in attempts to trick their audiences. However, in Writing and Communication Program courses, you will learn about the widely used classical definition of rhetoric offered by Aristotle in Book I, Chapter 2, of Rhetoric, dating from the 4th century BCE. Aristotle defines rhetoric as “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.” These available means of persuasion include paying keen attention to factors such as context, content, purpose, audience, argument, genre, organization, design, and visuals—whether you are critiquing or creating written, oral, visual, or nonverbal artifacts.

Compare your previous understanding of rhetoric with Aristotle’s definition. #Analyze

What are metacognitive questions, & why are they important? Throughout this book, you will encounter direct and indirect metacognitive questions to help you with active learning. Metacognition is thinking that controls your cognitive processes (that is, your mental or thinking processes) that affect your learning. What are common cognitive activities?

• Remembering: Can you recall and define relevant information? Can you remember the 5Ws (who, what, when, where, why)?
• Understanding: Can you summarize basic concepts? Can you contrast related ideas?
• Applying: Can you plan ways to use information? Can you solve problems?
• Analyzing: Can you differentiate similar concepts? Can you infer relationships?
• Evaluating: Can you interpret and assess data? Can you justify an argument?
• Creating: Can you innovate? Can you create new ideas, processes, and artifacts?

Throughout WOVENText, you will find direct and indirect metacognitive questions to extend your thinking. The questions encourage you to remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create—all critical cognitive activities—as you not only think about facts, concepts, and processes but also consider your own thinking. This reflection is part of what you’ll be asked to do throughout WOVENText.

Metacognitive Questions to Leverage Your Knowledge

This resource provides the categories for metacognitive questions—both direct questions (e.g., What experience affected your decision?) and indirect questions (e.g., Recall an experience that affected your decision). Your goal should be to learn these categories so that you can continue to ask yourself metacognitive questions for the rest of your academic and professional career. Here’s the list of the categories and questions for Chapter 1.

• REMEMBER: Recall a communication experience in which you were particularly effective in writing, speaking, designing, or conveying ideas nonverbally. #Remember
• UNDERSTAND: Based on what you’ve read so far, contrast your high school experience in a composition class with the approach used here at Georgia Tech. #Understand
• APPLY: Identify three artifacts for each mode—written, oral, visual, nonverbal—and then identify the modes you most want to strengthen. For example, essays, newspaper editorials, and poems are all examples of writing. Now think of three more examples for writing and three for each of the other modes, and then prioritize the modes you want or need to improve. #Apply
• ANALYZE: Categorize the aspects of your writing that are strong and effective, and then categorize those that aren’t. Look for patterns among your strengths and among your weaknesses. For example, are all your strengths in your use of conventions and your weaknesses in your use of rhetorical factors such as adapting to the audience? #Analyze
• EVALUATE: Communication enables us to address challenging ideas. Watch the TED talk “Questions no one knows the answers to“ by Chris Anderson. In the video, Anderson poses two big questions: How many universes are there? Why can’t we see evidence of alien life? After viewing/listening to the 12-minute video to see how big questions are discussed, identify one big question of your own about which you’re especially curious. Then explain why it’s both interesting and important. Your ability to express important, abstract thoughts is critical to your academic and professional success. #Evaluate
• CREATE: What are your strengths as a communicator? Compose a short paragraph that discusses your strengths as a communicator, using at least one concrete example. #Create

Making the Transition to Georgia Tech

The transition to college can be exciting and difficult. Students usually live independently and assume more adult responsibilities. Once you turn 18, for example, your parents do not have the legal right to view your grades or have conversations with your professors about your classwork, without your explicit permission. This experience can be simultaneously liberating and daunting. You are now fully responsible for your own performance in your classes, for managing a busy schedule, and for seeking help when you need it. College life is preparation for your professional life, when you—and you alone—will be expected to keep up with your responsibilities and be proactive about handling challenges as they arise.

What’s FERPA? A federal law called the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (known as FERPA) protects the privacy of a student’s education records. Parents have rights to their child’s education records until the child reaches age 18. The rights transfer to the student when he or she reaches the age of 18 or attends a school beyond high school.

In many ways, entering college is like immigrating to a new country, with its own culture and symbols. For example, for most students and alumni, Tech Tower remains the ever-present symbol of Georgia Tech, a place with its own distinctive culture.

For students entering Georgia Tech’s culture from suburban Atlanta, the transition might be straightforward. For first-generation college students from a rural area or for international students, the change may be more challenging. Though the degree of transition varies, all students must adjust to the customary ways of communicating and behaving on a college campus and in the classroom. Your Georgia Tech professors and advisors expect you to complete these four critical actions:

1. Read carefully and abide by the course syllabus.
2. Learn actively.
3. Seek help when you need it.
4. Adapt prior knowledge to your new role.

Use your syllabus. Your course syllabus clarifies—from the very beginning of the semester—what your professor expects from you and what you can expect from the course. After you receive a syllabus, take the time to read it slowly and carefully from beginning to end, marking places where you have questions about the course policies, outcomes, and schedule. Even professors who do not spend class time going over every piece of information in the syllabus expect you to read it and abide by its terms. For example, many students neglect to read their professors’ attendance policies closely. The temptation—now that you’ve entered this new land, free of parental oversight—may be to skip classes.

Estimate how many times during the semester you’ll check your syllabus. Consider that you need to periodically review it to check class policies for things ranging from attendance to deadlines. #Evaluate

Professors view your presence in the class as essential to your learning, which is why most attendance policies allow only a few absences before your grade is negatively affected. If you miss more than the allotted class time during the course of the semester, you will be in for an unpleasant surprise when you receive your final grade. After you have read the course syllabus carefully, be sure to follow up with your professor if you need anything clarified. Again, you are the only one responsible for keeping up with and managing the multiple responsibilities of your own college life. Your professors expect you to do so and may choose not to provide warnings or reminders beyond those in the syllabus.

Be an active learner. Many college professors in the United States believe that optimal student learning is active learning. For this reason, your presence and participation in the classroom are essential to your academic success. While some cultures and fields approach learning as best achieved when professors disseminate information to students, who then memorize it and repeat it back on exams, most of your Georgia Tech professors will also expect you to respond, interrogate, and innovate. In other words, you are expected to think critically. Critical thinking, perhaps the most valuable skill that you will learn in college, is the ability to understand and apply information, develop reasoned and defensible arguments about that information, and offer alternative arguments and solutions.

Imagine your professor has assigned you to write a short paper that creates an argument about the ways in which this poster conveys its message. To illustrate your critical thinking, you must do more in your paper than simply identify this poster as being made in the United States during World War I. You need to articulate and answer a series of questions: Who created the message? Why is the message being given to the audience? The simple answer is that the U.S. government created the message to tap into Americans’ patriotism and to encourage them to support the war effort financially.

This WWI poster would most likely be less effective with a contemporary audience—even though Americans today continue to support the people in the military as well as veterans. How could you use the Statue of Liberty to create a contemporary poster supporting U.S. veterans? #Create

In addition to defining the message, you need to analyze what elements persuade the poster’s viewers to agree with and act on its message. What creative techniques attract the viewers’ attention? For example, you might discuss the color scheme, the use of an iconic image (the Statue of Liberty), her humanized form, her gaze, the use of (what was then) the modern technological innovation of the telephone, the repetition of the word needed, or the use of alliteration (the repeated consonant sound of n). These are all rhetorical strategies used by the poster’s artist (Z. P. Nikolaki) to convey his—and the country’s—message, and it would be your job to explain why. How might different people understand the message differently? What values are reflected in (and omitted from) the message? Some viewers might see the poster as war mongering; others might see it as protecting national interests; and still others might see it as a desecration of the iconic symbol of the Statue of Liberty by representing her as a contemporary woman on the phone rather than holding her up as a historic symbol. How might other historical documents or images compare to this one and inform your stance?

Active learners and strong critical thinkers transform their learning experience by engaging with assigned material through outside research and preparation. To add value to your class participation, try exploring images, historical documents, author biographies, or online videos related to your class readings.

Your professors believe that the classroom is a space for active learning, for the free and well-reasoned exchange of ideas in multiple modes of communication. In addition to completing written assignments and exams (the W in WOVEN), you will also have the opportunity to illustrate your critical thinking skills through class participation and oral presentations (the O and N in WOVEN) and through the use and creation of visuals such as posters, presentation slides, and infographics (the V in WOVEN). The more adept you become at communicating in written, oral, and visual forms, the more successful you will be, not only in college but also in your personal life, your community activities, and in your professional career.

If speaking up in class makes you uncomfortable or is something you need more experience doing, a useful strategy is to plan beforehand what you intend to say: take careful notes when reading assignments, outline your main ideas, and practice communicating your thoughts in low-stakes settings, such as with friends or in the Naugle Communication Center (see later in this chapter for more details).

Seek help. One of the best habits you can develop in college is taking advantage of your professors’ regular office hours. Each week professors set aside time dedicated exclusively to working with students outside of class. Every professor posts office hours (indicated on the syllabus and on the course Canvas site or Web site). You can stop by the office, but making an appointment is usually better. During an office meeting, you can get responses to questions you have about class readings and discussions, ask for help with assignments, or just chat about things of interest in the course. Minimally, you should try to visit your professor during office hours for guidance on each major project in the course.

Though college requires much of you, your professors and the Georgia Tech community want you to succeed. If you are ever confused by course material or assignments, overwhelmed by your workload, or tied up in knots because of a conflicting schedule, take advantage of the many resources available to you to work out these problems. Your professor does not want to see you fail or—worse—give in to the temptation to cheat or plagiarize because you feel overwhelmed. Before the situation becomes dire, visit your professor during their office hours or make an appointment to meet at another time. You should always feel comfortable emailing your professor about class concerns or problems, and expect a response within 24 hours during the workweek. You should not feel that you are intruding; your professors are here to help you do your best work. You can also seek out advice and support from campus services, especially if you find yourself overwhelmed or experiencing a personal emergency. Many students can benefit from seeking support during challenging times throughout their college experience. Georgia Tech is committed to offering students a wide array of services and support.

The Division of Student Life has a rich and strong history of providing the student support services and co-curricular learning opportunities that help our diverse student community acquire and apply life-learning skills. The Division departments and the Office of the Vice President and Dean of Students assist students in the resolution of problems, provide information about, and referral to, campus resources, and promote initiatives that address students’ needs and interests. In addition, the Division provides educational and co-curricular activities and experiences that encourage students to have a positive college experience. Please refer to their website for additional information and resources: http://studentlife.gatech.edu/content/about-division-student-life.

The Center for Mental Health Care and Resources offers a full range of counseling and psychological services to help facilitate lifelong personal development, promote mental health, and assist students in preventing or reducing stress. Counseling Center services include: individual counseling, couples counseling, group counseling, workshops, emergency and crisis services, testing and assessment, and referral services. The Office of Disability Services helps ensure that students with documented disabilities receive the access and accommodations needed for a rich and engaging student experience. Support services include: testing accommodations, note taking assistance, alternative textbook formats, accessible housing, transportation assistance, closed captioned videos, assistive listening devices, interpretation services and more. These offices are available to meet your needs, and you should take advantage of the services they offer if you have concerns about your health and welfare for any reason at Georgia Tech.

Adapt your prior knowledge. Beyond actively using your syllabus, participating in class, and seeking help, you should also consider the following communication-oriented expectations for college writing. Your Georgia Tech faculty members require you to develop new competencies for which you need to adapt your previous knowledge and experience. Specifically, you need to expand the skills you learned in writing five-paragraph essays to college-level writing; attend to correctness and conventions in your grammar, mechanics, and spelling; and build ethos as it relates to your credibility as a communicator.

Writing five-paragraph essays. Many middle school, high school, and college classes assign essays that have an introduction, a three-paragraph body, and a conclusion. Some teachers assign five-paragraph essays as a way for students to answer essay exam questions or briefly describe or analyze topics, but five-paragraph essays are virtually never used in community or workplace communication.

What strategies did you learn in high school to help you write five-paragraph essays? Which strategies do you think will transfer to creating multimodal artifacts in English 1101 and English 1102? #Remember #Analyze

Critics of five-paragraph essays observe that they are formulaic, and the resulting essays are not responsive to important rhetorical factors such as context or audience. You will not be asked to write five-paragraph essays in your English 1101 or English 1102 classes here at Georgia Tech. However, some of the skills you learned while creating five-paragraph essays in junior high school and high school can evolve into strategies useful for multimodal communication at Georgia Tech, in community activities, and in the workplace.

What can you take from your experience learning to write five-paragraph essays? You should carry with you the importance of accurate and well-documented content, global coherence, consistency in tone and voice, and compliance with conventions, such as citing sources correctly. These factors are important, but they’re not the only factors important in being an effective communicator. Carefully consider what you already know about communication and use your English 1101 and English 1102 courses to further develop and add nuance to your communication strategies.

Grammar, Mechanics, and Spelling. You’ll get farther academically and professionally if you have smart, innovative ideas and present them in ways that make strong, logical arguments adapted to a particular audience and that respect conventions, typically considered to be grammar, mechanics, and spelling.

Consider an alternative: What if you have smart ideas and credible arguments, but you don’t take the time to conform to conventions? For example, what if you violate writing conventions by ignoring expectations for grammar, mechanics, and spelling? After all, should you be expected to do all the work for readers? In practice, can’t most readers probably figure out what you mean in spite of occasional typos and other unintentional errors? Wouldn’t your time be better spent focusing on the accuracy and depth of content and the sophistication and coherence of the argument? The answer to this question is no.

Here’s the position that many workplace professionals take: conventions matter. Certainly, conventions aren’t more important than other rhetorical factors, but ignoring conventions may send the message that you are naïve or don’t care about communication. In fact, most professionals believe that inattention to grammar, mechanics, and spelling signals a person’s inattention to detail more generally; if you don’t bother with conventions, what other details have you ignored? Similarly, such inattention signals disrespect for the audience, thinking they’re not worth the concern and time needed to use conventions. Also, inattention to conventions signals general sloppiness, indicating that high-quality work isn’t part of your approach. By showing you can use conventions appropriately, you fulfill your audience’s positive expectations and increase your overall effectiveness. This also allows you to flout certain conventions strategically to create a specific effect; you don’t want your audience to assume your intentional break with convention is a careless mistake because you have errors elsewhere.

Ethos. In high school, you may have learned about ethos, pathos, and logos. You’ll learn more about these important rhetorical concepts in your English 1101 and English 1102 courses. One concept particularly emphasized in college is ethos, which is not only about the credibility of your sources but also about building your own persona as a communicator. You need to consider that in college you not only write for the professor but also for classmates and even public audiences. For example, if you create a blog post, the professor reads it and so do your classmates; depending on the restrictions of the blog settings, you may also be writing for the public. Another example would be creating a poster to showcase your visual communication competence—to your instructor, to classmates, and also to prospective employers.

Typical Artifacts to Critique & Create

The artifacts you will critique and create in English 1101 and English 1102 reflect all the modes (written, oral, visual, and nonverbal) and both print and digital media. The seven images that follow give you a sense of various categories of artifacts you might critique and create during the semester:

1. Animated video
2. Written document with photos
3. How-to poster
4. Piece of art to invite the public to a discussion
5. Web site celebrating and encouraging sustainability at Georgia Tech
6. 19th-century poem
7. Formal report

In a particular class, you might focus on other modes and media, but these examples represent the range of artifacts you might be asked to critique or create. All English 1101 and English 1102 classes have a topical focus that reflects the disciplinary interests and expertise of the professor. In the following examples, the course focus is on aspects of sustainability.

Identify artifacts that you’re interested in critiquing and in creating. #Apply

(1) This short animated film, “Bridging Art with Science to Protect Salmon Habitat,” is about sustainability. For more information and to view the 3-minute film, visit “Bridging Art with Science to Protect Salmon Habitat”; there you’ll find a link to “Watch the shallow water habitat animation now.” If you were to create a video for your course, you should expect to conduct the research for the project, draft a video treatment (a short document that defines the goals, summarizes the concept, and outlines your approach), create thumbnail sketches of key scenes, write a script (perhaps with collaborators who consider whether you have sufficiently addressed rhetorical factors), and then record and edit the video (again, perhaps with collaborators).

Search the Internet for these abbreviations—or look them up in an online dictionary—to find out what they mean and how to use them, including how to punctuate them in sentences: e.g., i.e., and NB.

(2) ​The following photo is part of an article, “A Deeper Shade of Green: A District Sustainability Plan Encompasses Facilities, Operations, and Instruction.” For more information and to view this photo in context, see the complete article.

If you were to create your own article with illustrations and photos for your course, you should expect to conduct the research for the project, craft a thesis statement, select convincing and credible evidence, write and design two or three (or more) drafts of the article, create and incorporate visuals, revise to consider whether rhetorical factors have been sufficiently addressed, and then edit and proofread.

(3) ​The following public service how-to poster describes a practical way to save water. It appears on a Web site about environmental sustainability as part of the Indian Health Service (IHS), which is responsible for providing federal health services to American Indians and Alaska Natives. For more information and to view this poster in context, visit the HIS website. There, you’ll also have access to other artifacts, such as formal reports, similar to those you might also critique or create in your course. If you were to create a how-to poster for your course, you should expect to conduct the research for the project, determine steps for the process, consider features such as the dimensions of the poster, write and design multiple drafts of the poster, create and incorporate visuals, follow visual conventions, edit to consider whether rhetorical factors have been sufficiently addressed, and then proofread.

(4) ​The following art advertises a discussion panel focusing on art and environmental sustainability. If you look closely at the image, you’ll see it combines the natural environment (trees and sky) and the human-made environment (crocheted webs). This art is part of an invitation to attend a public panel about art and sustainability, an event sponsored by Seattle’s Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs. During your course, you might study art as a way to communicate important ideas. If you were to create a work of art for your course, you should expect to conduct the research for the project, generate an aesthetic vision, sketch the possible variations of your vision, implement the vision, edit to consider whether rhetorical factors have been sufficiently addressed, and then double-check the installation.

(5) ​The Web site for Georgia Tech’s Office for Campus Sustainability is part of the Institute’s long-term commitment to sustainability. If you were to create a Web site for your course, you should expect to conduct the research for the project, design the front (splash) page and the succeeding pages, map the tabs and links, write multiple drafts of the text, create and incorporate visuals, design interactive elements that makes the best use of the affordances of a Web site, revise to consider whether rhetorical factors have been sufficiently addressed, and then edit and proofread.

(6) ​While the preceding examples focus on environmental sustainability in the sense of preservation, a poem by the 19th-century English Romantic poet John Clare focuses on the cycle of nature “to pass away / And come again in blooms revivified”—thus, nature is sustained, everlasting like the sun and the moon. Clare is writing in the same period as other English Romantic poets and, like them, focuses on feelings about nature. If you were to write an analysis of Clare’s poem, you should expect to read the poem carefully several times and to conduct further research for the project, reading other poems by Clare and about his life, as well as about Romantic poetry more broadly. You would need to write multiple drafts of your analysis, create and incorporate visuals if appropriate, edit to consider whether rhetorical factors have been sufficiently addressed, and then proofread. If you were to write a poem about sustainability, you might think about a particular scene or memory that evokes the feelings and ideas that you want to convey and then think about the words portraying that scene or memory, words with the appropriate sound and feeling. Read your drafts aloud to hear if the poem sounds right, considering its rhythm and other sonic effects like rhyme, alliteration, and assonance. Be willing to revise several—maybe even many—times.

Eternity of Nature
All nature has a feeling: woods, fields, brooks
Are life eternal: and in silence they
Speak happiness beyond the reach of books;
There’s nothing mortal in them; their decay
Is the green life of change; to pass away
And come again in blooms revivified.
Its birth was heaven, eternal is its stay,
And with the sun and moon shall still abide
Beneath their day and night and heaven wide.

John Clare (1793–1864)

(From The Poems of John Clare. Edited with an Introd. by J. W. Tibble. London: Dent, 1935. Print.)

(7) ​The following formal report, Fathers’ Involvement With Their Children: United States, 2006–2010, focuses on societal and familial sustainability. Here you see the first page of this 21-page report, written by experts at the National Center for Health Statistics, a part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is itself part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. If you visit Fathers’ Involvement With Their Children on the HHS Web site, you’ll find a link to the full report. You’ll see this example includes many features you’d include in any formal report: title and subtitle, abstract, key words, page numbers, a running head (at the top of each page), an introduction, level-1 and level-2 headings (sometimes called subheadings), bulleted lists, tables, graphs (called figures in the report, a common convention), a conclusion, internal citations, references, appendices, and acknowledgments. If you were to write a formal report for your course, you should expect to conduct the research for the project, create an abstract (and sometimes a table of contents), write multiple drafts, create and incorporate visuals, edit to consider whether rhetorical factors have been sufficiently addressed, and then proofread.

Expectations for College Communication: Standard American English

Australian English, Indian English, African American English, Chicano, Tok Pisin—these are some among the several dialects of English spoken in the United States and all around the world. Chances are, even if you speak only English, you speak multiple varieties of it. For instance, the way you speak to your family members at home is likely to be different from the way you speak in front of a school assembly. Consciously or automatically, most of us tend to vary our vocabulary, pace, accent, and degree of formality according to the occasion. The ability to adjust how you speak —by shifting ​between different languages, accents, or registers—is referred to as code-switching. Code-switching is a useful skill, which allows you to communicate effectively, depending on the audience and the situation.

Standard American English (SAE) refers to the formal and most common variety of English used in the U.S. in professional situations and institutions of higher learning. Native speakers of English, too, acquire SAE through formal education, since they may not speak it at home or in informal settings. Once you learn SAE, you can draw on it as a linguistic resource while communicating with a large and diverse audience. A good grasp of SAE will help you excel in WOVEN communication by optimizing the legibility of your speech or writing, across a variety of rhetorical situations.

The “standard” in Standard American English does not mean SAE is either a more correct or an inherently “superior” variety of English. In fact, Tom McArthur’s model of world Englishes (1987) argues for the existence of multiple standard varieties of English all over the world (British Standard English, Australian Standard English, Indian Standard English, et cetera). For instance, in countries like Jamaica and Nigeria where many people speak English creoles, a standard variety of English may exist in tandem with the region’s creole. SAE, however, is considered a prestige dialect of English that originates in the U.S. and is utilized by many people in business; industry; schools; government, nonprofit, and community organizations; and even in Hollywood. Georgia-born actress Julia Roberts, for example, took speech training early in her acting career to develop competence in SAE, despite being a native speaker of the southern U.S. dialect.

At the university level, your goal should be to gain competence in using SAE and switching to it effortlessly whenever you need to. The goal is not to conform to the conventions of SAE all the time, but to ensure that you can use it when appropriate.

To follow conventions is to establish yourself as a credible, responsible communicator. In other words, your message—whether you’re selling a product, convincing someone to fund your research, or asking for a raise—will likely be better received by your audience if you abide by agreed-upon conventions. Throughout WOVENText, we introduce you to many of these conventions. Your job as a skillful communicator is to analyze a particular context, purpose, and audience in order to determine how best to convey your message.

Explain what contributes to your ability to speak dialects other than SAE. #Evaluate

Does your family speak one way at home and another way in public settings? Infer the possible reasons. #Analyze

For example, if you are speaking with a group of peers in a very casual setting and want to emphasize how little you saw (or deny that you saw something), saying “I didn’t see nothing” might be acceptable. Technically, this construction is referred to as a double negative and is considered nonstandard English. In some contemporary dialects of English, such as Appalachian English or African American English, however, double negatives are acceptable syntactical features, serving to reinforce a point. How did double negatives become unacceptable in SAE? In the 18th century, certain British grammarians who were especially fond of logic and language decided that two negatives equal a positive. They then declared that double negatives in English are grammatically incorrect, though they had been perfectly acceptable prior to this declaration. Chaucer’s classic Canterbury Tales, for example, is rife with them. Since double negatives are now nonstandard, however, you must be familiar with this convention in order to wield it appropriately.

Why isn’t flouting of conventions a problem when talking with your friends but it might be when talking to your boss? Infer the possible reasons. #Analyze

Let’s consider one more situation that requires a conscious adjustment of your use of English. The following email might be perfectly fine to send to your friend:

Your friend would get your point and not be put off by the abrupt greeting and typos. However, you would not want to send this email to your professor. College professors expect a certain level of professionalism and respect from their students. For this reason, you ought to abide by appropriate conventions of professional correspondence. The following revised version of the email begins with a subject line that signals the topic: “Absent from ENGL 1102, 1/12.” The writer includes an appropriate salutation: “Dear Professor Blue.” Students transitioning from high school may inadvertently rely on Mr. or Ms. as the standard form of address, but keep in mind that most college professors have earned advanced degrees, so they should be addressed as Professor or Dr. Mary Sue was also sure to write in SAE with no typos or grammatical mistakes and demonstrated respect and responsibility. She included her name at the end, after the complimentary closing of “Sincerely,” along with information about which class she is enrolled in. Finally, she included her email address in her closing to make sure the professor has it. Her professor, who receives many emails over the course of the day, will be much more receptive to Mary Sue’s second message than to the first one.

Writing professional emails is an important part of becoming an audience-centered communicator.

Your ability to determine which conventions should be followed in a given situation is essential for your future success. For example, you may want to determine whether a meme is offering useful criticism in a humorous manner, or whether it is just a jumble of incoherent words and images.

This earlier term has since evolved into the more common understanding of “meme” as a phenomenon particular to Internet culture. As the Wikipedia entry for “Internet meme” states, “[a]n Internet meme may take the form of an image, hyperlink, video, picture, Web site, or hashtag. It may be just a word or phrase, including an intentional misspelling. These small movements tend to spread from person to person via social networks, blogs, direct e-mail, or news sources.”

Choose an Internet meme that you find particularly provocative, and explain why you think others will find it interesting or funny or useful. #Understand #Apply

One of the concerns about using Wikipedia as a source is that the site itself is crowd-sourced and the entries are regularly updated. In fact, some ENGL 1101 or 1102 classes may require you to update entries as part of an assignment. This screenshot was taken on March 8, 2019. If you search for “meme” in Wikipedia today, is the entry the same as what you see here?

Why Correctness Matters

Writing and Communication professors at Georgia Tech are fond of this Internet meme.

Perhaps you have seen it too and have had a good chuckle because, of course, most people would not hear that you want to eat Grandma if you uttered the top line; they would hear that you wanted Grandma to sit down and join you for dinner. But pretend for a moment that you silently read the top line by itself. You might wonder, if only very briefly, who is eating Grandma.

Let’s eat Grandma!

Let’s eat, Grandma!

Complying with communication conventions has consequences. Often, we first meet other people through writing. We make impressions through what we write, and certain audiences judge our competence at communication (as well as a number of other personal attributes) by the way we use conventions. This also is true when we speak, especially when we speak in front of people we may not know. In professional settings and academic settings, a lack of correctness can cause a range of negative reactions. Employers will often discard job applications without reading them if they find just one error in grammar, mechanics, or punctuation.

Consider the case of the Canadian cable company Rogers Communications, where millions of dollars were lost because of a punctuation error. The Canadian telecommunications regulator based its ruling for a lawsuit on a single comma. The dispute centered on the second comma in this sentence:

This agreement shall be effective from the date it is made and shall continue in force for a period of five (5) years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five (5) year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party. ​ ​—Ian Austen, from “The Comma That Costs 1 Million Dollars (Canadian),” New York Times 25 Oct. 2006: C10. Academic Search Complete. Web. 4 Oct. 2014.

The New York Times reported that “Rogers Communications argue[d] that the agreement [ran] for five years and automatically renew[ed] for another five years, unless a telephone company cancel[ed] the agreement before the start of the final 12 months.” The regulator disagreed, ruling that “the comma allowed Bell Aliant to end its five-year agreement with Rogers at any time with notice.”

The consequences for lacking correctness can also be personal. You might have seen the Weird Al Yankovic video for his song “Word Crimes” that circulated in July 2014. Both the song and the video work on the emotional level of shaming people who do not use grammar correctly. Weird Al insinuates that people who do not use correct conventions were “raised in a sewer,” and they need to “get it together.” People who commit “word crimes” are “morons,” “mouth-breathers,” “lost causes,” “incoherent,” “spastic,” clownish, childish, and shouldn’t be allowed to have kids. In short, Weird Al argues that errors in grammar, mechanics, and spelling are crimes worthy of violence and insult. While the song is a parody, the parody works because of the truth it’s based on: conventions matter.

Although most people you encounter are unlikely to throw insults or objects at you if you commit a “word crime,” you may be left out of conversations. All communities, including families, neighborhoods, friendships, and professional and academic communities, use different conventions to converse and to signal membership in that community. Using conventions demonstrates that you belong to that community and that members can trust you. Weird Al’s song privileges SAE. It ignores the deep and amazing variety of language practices in this country, but the song does make something clear: know the code.

Many of us understand that even monolingual people code-switch between different varieties of the same language on the same day and even in the same conversation. Your goal is not to stop using a variety of codes with your friends, family, and peers, but to use the appropriate conventions (the right “code”) in the appropriate context. In college, your work and grades will likely suffer if you submit projects without adhering to SAE conventions. More importantly, you will not be trusted as a full member of the academic community, and you are less likely to succeed.

Explain what dialect you are most comfortable speaking. #Understand

Our conventional rules in academia are predicated on a large and diverse mix of learners. Our conventions form a common bond between participants from different backgrounds. In other words, because members of academia come from a broad range of backgrounds, cultures, and languages, we use a language dependent on the codes of Standard American English. Layered on top of SAE is academic jargon that tends to value inquiry, clarity, specificity, knowledge, formality, and the appearance of objectivity. Using such conventions in your classes will help establish you as a credible member of what is sometimes referred to as the “Burkean Parlor” of academia.

Kenneth Burke, in his book The Philosophy of Literary Form, writes:

Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally’s assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.

By using the appropriate conventions at the appropriate time, you ensure that you can join and continue the conversation. You can, in the words of Burke, “put in your oar.” You can be included and valued in the community, and what you say (and write) can be valued too.

Georgia Tech Communication Center 

Center Contact Information

Location: Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons (CULC 447)

Website: http://communicationcenter.gatech.edu

Located in the Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons (CULC 447), the Communication Center (comprised of the Naugle CommLab and the Rehearsal Rooms) aids student-clients from the Georgia Tech community with communication skills and projects related to their classes, careers, and civic and community lives. As an inclusive resource, the center welcomes students of all identities, languages, and ability levels. This section will describe the services and resources the Communication Center provides, explain the kinds of projects that consultants can help you with, and outline some strategies for taking advantage of the center’s expertise in tutoring and communication.

Georgia Tech students can use the center for any communication-related work you are preparing, whether academic, professional, or personal.

What the Center Can Help You With

Examples of projects you can bring to the Center include, but are not limited to:

• Individual and group presentations
• Blog posts
• Essays and articles
• Poster designs
• Board games
• Lab reports
• Grant proposals
• Resumes/CVs
• Application materials
• Interview preparation
• Senior design reports
• Cover letters
• Personal statements
• Usage of standard academic English

Note that the Communication Center staff can help you with self-editing and learning the rules of standard English grammar, but consultants will not proofread your work.

During your free and confidential visit, a professional or peer tutor can help you identify ways to improve your multimodal projects.

What Happens in Appointments

In the Communication Center, student-clients meet with consultants in collaborative half-hour conferences to address your concerns with a particular communication task or skill (such as how to organize a report, improve the “flow” of an essay, overcome fears of presenting, arrange ideas in a poster, etc.). Consultants will ask about your project and what you want to work on or accomplish in the session. They may also request to see your prompt or supporting materials (if applicable) for a better understanding of the assignment guidelines.

In sessions, student-clients can work with consultants on:

• Developing a plan for how to accomplish a particular task or tackle a larger project;
• Brainstorming with open-ended questions;
• Commenting on a draft you are preparing and suggesting improvements;
• Practicing a presentation or answering practice questions for interviews;
• Etc.

Who Works in the Center

Professional Consultants have PhDs in communication-related fields and experience working with students in one-on-one sessions. Peer Consultants are undergraduates with majors in a wide variety of disciplines who have undergone specialized training to work with you in your sessions.

Center Policies

Sessions are free. Georgia Tech students do not pay for appointments at the Communication Center. However, since we have limited resources for serving many students across campus, if you miss a scheduled appointment without canceling, you will be charged $15.

Sessions are confidential. The Communication Center does not release information about your session to professors or other people. Instructors, academic coaches, and others cannot require that you use the Communication Center.

Visiting the Communication Center

Scheduling an appointment. You can make an appointment online through the Communication Center website (http://communicationcenter.gatech.edu) once per week. Planning ahead and making an appointment means that you can see a consultant at a time that works for you. It can also help you set an internal deadline to finish a draft or part of your project.

Making a walk-in appointment. Sometimes you may need more feedback or practice during a single week. Once per day, you can make walk-in appointments. You just need to approach the front desk and ask the center assistant to fit you in if there are available consultants.

Booking the rehearsal rooms. The Communication Center has four rehearsal rooms available for presentation and interview rehearsals, podcast recordings, filming, and similar practice sessions. Each room is themed after a corporate boardroom, from IBM’s traditional rectangular table to Google’s decentered chairs. Students can book these rooms by speaking in person with the center assistant.

How to Prepare for Your Appointment

Bring your work. Make sure that you have a printed or electronic copy of your project available.

Have a plan for what you want to cover. Develop a list of two or three questions or concerns that you have. Even if your consultant identifies another area that is more crucial to cover, your suggestions will still be used to guide the session.

Take advantage of Communication Center tools. By working with a consultant, you also gain access to any of the tools in the Center. Desktop computers have design and movie editing programs, a plotter printer can be used to print poster drafts, projectors can be used to test visual presentations, and a 3D printer can be used to provide models for more hands-on projects.