Syntax as a Critical Literacy

Week 4 Syntax: in the Critical Literacies course

The ability to recognize and use forms, grammars, patterns and other structural properties of communication. This would include information literacy and ontology of information

An interesting presentation on this by Jen Hughes and Graham Attwell, which Graham makes a blog post about.  Also a very creative presentation – but the content was difficult for someone not familiar with the intricacies of linguistics and I was wanting a discussion about why a week of this Critical Literacies course has been devoted to syntax.

I have just noted Rita’s post to the course blog which is helpful in putting it all in context – as is Stephen’s presentation which was sent to me by Matthias Melcher when I mentioned to him that I had lost my way and was having difficulty in understanding why the course has been structured into these weeks.

For me it would help to focus less on the what (i.e. that syntax is a critical literacy) and more on the why. Why is syntax particularly relevant for us as learners in the 21st century? It really does not help to be absent in the middle of a course!

Optional Readings/References:

http://www.shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html Shirky on ontology

http://www.adammathes.com/academic/computer-mediated-communication/folksonomies.html folksonomies

http://youtube.com/watch?v=BBwepkVurCI Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe – Reality TV Editing

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/future-of-search.html google blog talking about searching

http://www.slideshare.net/librarianinblack/information-overload-is-the-devil?src=embed Information Overload is the Devil – by a librarian

http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/publications/whitepapers/presidential.cfm USA Presidential Committee on Information Literacy: Final Report

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/advice/media_literacy/ UK ofcom media literacy

http://www.medialit.org/reading_room/article540.html centre for media literacy

http://www.wikihow.com/Understand-and-Use-Basic-Statistics wikihow:statistics