The Web Surfer: What (Literacy) Skills Does It Take To Surf Anyway? - Read online free

Oct 15, 2026

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This article scrutinizes lingering stereotypes in Composition Studies about web surfing and challenges the literacy hierarchy created by comparing online reading and writing practices with students’ academic work. It argues that although definitions of digital composing have evolved, the academy has not fully reassessed the legitimacy of digital reading. The piece also criticizes technology integration efforts through email, Blackboard, or blogging that do not validate students’ dominant literacies and digital lives, urging curricula to support critical digital literacies through feminist composition pedagogy.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages15

Reading Time23 min

AccessFree to download

The Web Surfer: What (Literacy) Skills Does It Take To Surf Anyway?

The Status Quo Thinking on Web Surfing

Revisiting Legitimacy for Digital Reading

Technology Integration and Students’ Dominant Literacies

Composition Forum 21 , Spring 2010 The Web Surfer: What ( Literacy) Skills Does It Take To Surf Anyway? Jessie Blackburn Abstract: This article looks closely at some of the lingering stereotypes that Composition Studies holds toward Web surfing and queries the resulting literacy hierarchy against our students ’ reading and writing practices that take place online. This article claims that while good progress has been made in the way of revising twenty first century definitions of (digital) composing, the academy has yet to fully revisit its boundaries of legitimacy surrounding (digital) reading. Additionally , this article contests the academy ’s use of technology vis à vis email , Blackboard, or blogging as a placating attempt to integrate technology into the classroom without genuinely validating our students ’ dominant literacies or their digital lives . This article leans on the theories of feminist composition pedagogy as it calls for the field to decenter its authority and revise curricula to incorporate critical digital literacies . The Status Quo Thinking on Web Surfing A chief concern of first year composition pedagogues is the perceived notion that our students do not read like theyused to. { 1} This attitude, what David Jolliffe and Allison Harl describe as “the status quo thinking that portrays first year college students as incapable of and uninterested in reading” (607), often leads frustrated pedagogues to the dismissive presumption that today ’s students do not read because of their fast paced, immediately gratifying, mindless consumption of the Web. It is not uncommon to hear academics lamenting the perceived detrimental influence that our students ’ online practices are having on their in school literacy practices . For example, tweeting and text messaging is currently at the center of many anxieties surrounding the academic literacies of today ’s students ,{2} with many professors concerned about the consolidated and abbreviated grammar, which could be seen as nothing less than an economy of style to many texting students . This anxiety , and others similar to it , is indicative of lingering stigmas that still circulate in small pockets of Composition Studies where, as Cynthia Selfe explains , “technology is either boring or frightening to most humanists” who still “believe it should not be allowed to take up valuable scholarly time or the attention that could be best put to use in teaching” (“Technology and Literacy” 94) . Further proof of the field’s reluctance to fully embrace new ways of reading and writing is found in departments where composition faculty simply use and encourage students to use computers as mere word processors instead of“trying to understand and make sense of, to pay attention to, how technology is now inextricably linked to literacy and literacy education in this country” (“Technology and Literacy” 96; emphasis in original) . It is worth mentioning, too, that so many of our first year writing courses are taught by incoming graduate students with little formal training in digital media studies and even less authority to deviate from the traditional composition curriculum that“constructs students as passive readers” (Adler Kassner and Estrem 39) . Jeff Rice, in The Rhetoric of Cool: Composition Studies and New Media, describes the field’s tentative relationship to New Media Studies and the lingering hesitation to move into twenty first century literacies . Rice explains: I feel that we are fostering a status quo, a restriction regarding what terms and definitions become circulated in our disciplinary vocabulary. The consequences of that restriction are ideological as much as they are practical. The very act of restriction controls the field’s perception of itself and ability to represent itself in a variety of ways…the restriction keeps one imaginary element in place (what we imagine ourselves to be doing or what we imagine ourselves to be) and shuts out another (what we

FAQs

What stereotypes does the article address about web surfing in Composition Studies?

The article examines stereotypes that treat web surfing as less legitimate than traditional academic reading and writing, and it questions the literacy hierarchy those views create.

How does the article describe the academy’s response to digital reading?

It argues that while definitions of digital composing have been updated, the academy has not fully revisited the boundaries of legitimacy surrounding digital reading.

Why does the article criticize using tools like email, Blackboard, or blogging in classrooms?

It contends that such integration can placate the incorporation of technology without genuinely validating students’ dominant literacies or digital lives.

Oct 15, 2026

Upload by awa