Re "not real", my understanding about the concept is that it is simply a
metaphorical and colloquial term that people often use. Not necessarily we
often become serious about it, or do we take it literally. We know what is
real and what is not. You gotta see who says it and what the context is.
Reality of one context not necessarily the reality of another. For students
(e.g., undergraduates), many often think I gotta get a good job; I wanna
live well; therefore, that destination is the "real world" for those
students. This is just one slice of the pie. Another could be that,
students finishing Ph.D. and aiming to work in a university, for them that
university is the "real world" (and in this case it happens to be From a
university To a university). tom
Natasha Artemeva wrote:
> I am a bit late to join the discussion, but still...
>
> I've been quite confused by the repeated claim that writing at school is
> "not real," while writing at work is. My question is: "not real" to
> whom? I bet it's real to the students: they have to work hard to produce
> it, and I bet it's real to the professors, who have to work hard to
> respond to it. So, who is this imaginary person who sees school writing
> as not "authentic"? And why we, for whom school writing is the reality
> of everyday work, insist that it is not quite so "real"?
>
> On the other hand (as I said many times in different contexts), there
> are many cases when workplace writing in not perceived as real either by
> the writers or by the readers (let's say, more than once did I hear that
> some workplace writing is just a "game"; and sometimes, it is).
>
> I do not think that by arguing that some courses are designed to
> encourage "real" writing versus "not so real" writing we can convince
> anybody that school writing is as real as any other type of writing. In
> fact, this argument only supports the claim that the "usual" school
> writing is "not real," and that we need to design special courses that
> would require students to write for outside readers/clients and thus, to
> become engaged in "authentic" writing tasks. While I support this
> approach to course design and use it myself, I think that to understand
> the origin of the claim that school writing is less "real" than
> workplace writing we need to go back to my initial question: who decides
> how real a piece of writing is? Perhaps, classroom writing is not "real"
> to a company manager who expects reports from her employees, but it is
> more than real when situated in a classroom. By the same token, an
> employee report written to a manager of a particular company in the
> context of a particular project is not "real" to a student in a
> classroom: it has no meaning outside of its immediate context.
>
> Perhaps, we could agree that any type of writing is real to the person
> who writes it and to the person who receives it as a reader.
>
> --
> Natasha Artemeva
>
> Assistant Professor
> School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies
> Carleton University
> 1125 Colonel By Drive
> Ottawa, Ontario
> K1S 5B6
>
> Tel.+1 (613) 520-2600 ext.7452
> Fax +1 (613) 520-6641
> E-mail: [log in to unmask]
> http://www.carleton.ca/~nartemev/index.html
>
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