Circumspect Speculation

Reading Response to Chapter 16 of Handbook of Adolescent Literacy Research

In “Preparing Adolescents for the Literacy Demands of the 21^st-Century Workplace” Anne Beaufort writes about the importance of preparing students not only for the academic realm of the classroom but also for life in the workforce.

Too often, students do not see the importance of mastering the art of reading, writing, and analysis because they see no relevance or use of these skills outside the classroom.

When student are not prepared for the workforce they risk becoming caricatures of the woman below: *Disclaimer: This video may contain material that is vulgar, offensive, or racist to some people. If you feel that it may offend your delicate sensibilities, please do not watch.

Illiterate people come off as ignorant. This video illustrates the truth of one of Beaufort’s main points: “The higher one wishes to rise on the job ladder, the more written communication skills are required” (Beaufort 239). Students need to learn that there is a time and place for being colloquial and a time and place for being formal. Part of being successful in the workforce entails being literate—knowing how to present one-self as an eloquent, knowledgeable, capable worker. The woman in the video was obviously not taught well by her teachers. (And she obviously did not have a teacher who was part of the UTeach program.)

Yet a quick, easy fix for making students see the relevance of English in their lives is to bring in real-world applications to the classroom. Holding resume-writing workshops, mock business proposals, mock grant proposals, and work genre writing—such writing formal, short, informative emails—can be fun ways to bring the real world into the classroom.

Another way to prepare students for the workforce is having them observe good practices and good models of literacy and imitate these practices. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and one way that student can become more easily acclimated to the workforce environment: “From the writers’ vantage points, learning to write successfully on the job involved constant observation of others’ language practices (oral and written), finding out the best grammarian to solicit editing help from, and otherwise being apprenticed into the social practices of the setting….The more teachers can help students to become independent learners, and to learn what tools and social dynamics can be used to aid learning, the more likely students will be attuned to ways of learning in new environments. Moreover, imparting to students the reality that they need to be lifelong learners of writing practices can aid their learning processes” (Beaufort 248).