Open Journal of Social Sciences, 2014, 2, 30-45

Published Online October 2014 in SciRes. http://www.scirp.org/journal/jss

http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jss.2014.210005

Initial Academic Literacies/EAP/Genre

Practices: Towards Horizontal and
Participatory Online-Offline Learning
in a Changing World
Nara Hiroko Takaki
Language Course, Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul, Aquidauana, Brazil
Email: [email protected], [email protected]

Received 15 August 2014; revised 30 September 2014; accepted 15 October 2014

Copyright © 2014 by author and Scientific Research Publishing Inc.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY).
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Abstract
This article argues in favor of extended possibilities for under-graduate students’ initial develop-
ment of academic literacies/EAP/genre practices. The description of a particular learner’s initia-
tive and its consequences constitutes the focus of the paper, which is the result of a research
project in a specific context of higher education in Brazil. Qualitative and interpretive aspects
characterize the methodology adopted for this investigation for the researcher and the partici-
pants’ perspectives are considered. It also assumes academic literacy/EAP/genre as situated so-
cial practices. The learning theories support the use of Facebook in English language instruction.
Portability and multitasking, opportunity to structure learning on personal time and schedule,
space for critical authorship and multimodal tasks in collaborative fashion suggest the insepara-
bility between non-dominant forma of literacies and conventional academic literacy/EAP/genre
studies.

Keywords
Academic Literacies/EAP/Genre, Meaning Making, Horizontal Participation, Transformative
Process

1. Introduction
In their article The best of both worlds? Towards an EAP/Academic literacies writing pedagogy, Tribble and
Wingate [1] summarize the idea that text and context are indeed the best of both approaches:

How to cite this paper: Takaki, N.H. (2014) Initial Academic Literacies/EAP/Genre Practices: Towards Horizontal and Parti-
cipatory Online-Offline Learning in a Changing World. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 2, 30-45.
http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jss.2014.210005
 N. H. Takaki

Thus, Johns and Swales (2002) discuss difficulties experienced by undergraduate students and writers of
doctoral dissertations. The authors refer to Lea and Street’s (1999) concern that students are not supported
in understanding the epistemological frameworks of their discipline and propose pedagogical solutions
such as critiquing existing guidelines, making features of academic writing more explicit and raising stu-
dents’ awareness of the fact that knowledge is contestable. Similarly, critical EAP scholars, such as Be-
nesch (2009, 2001) and Canagarajah (2002), stress the needs for attention to the sociopolitical contexts of
writing, the exploration of students’ and teachers’ social identities and the impact of power relations. In-
structional approaches in the Critical EAP tradition include the critical questioning of contextual factors
such as power relations and inequalities (Morgan, 2009), and awareness raising of “competing subject posi-
tions in conflicting discourse communities” (Canagarajah 2004, p. 117). The exploration of and reflection
on contextual features are also seen as fundamental by researchers who use systemic functional linguistics
(Halliday, 1994) as their theoretical framework (for instance Motta-Roth, 2009). Their teaching approach
tries to enable novice writers to analyse how social roles and practices are constructed in texts.
This quote suggests that while there are theoretical and epistemological points of difference within the two
perspectives, and the concern of the social and contextual issues is in common. If this is accepted, meaning
makers across a wider range of disciplines at higher education, native and non-native speakers of English alike,
might capitalize on their potential and resources that they bring to the academy [2] and, thus, gaining a broader
understanding of communication as social practices embedded in political local forces as stated by Canagarajah,
[3] and transnational ones, according to Brydon [4].
If the text, the writer’s context and the reader’s context form the basis for analysis and interpretation in globa-
lized society, then another factor might be brought to the fore: it has been observed how learners themselves
create conditions under which they take initiative (as a form of agency) to produce complex and multimodal
knowledge and influence others’ agency through the digital space [5] [6].
It is the aim of this paper, therefore, to briefly account for the two perspectives, that is, the academic literacy
project and the genre practices, and suggest how blended learning [7] on Facebook can foster fluency in writing
towards Academic literacies/EAP/genre practices in critical and creative ways as required by the complex, dy-
namic, knowledge society of present times.
Rather than aspiring to elaborate on a new approach based on certainties and rationalism, this work reiterates
the need to create possibilities considering the social place from which participative and transformative peda-
gogical strategies and practices stem. In this particular study, these strategies are developed through the utiliza-
tion of multimodal resources (digital, gestural, sound, visual, spatial, to name a few). Each of these modalities is
engaged in questions of identity reconstruction and meaning making that have been unmet by conventional
modes such as printing.
Before entering the universe towards preliminary practices and thus, preparation for concrete types of genre in
digital resources, a brief outline of the main claims of Academic literacies/EAP/genre practices merits space to
reinforce the notion that they can all expand views and practices in the enhancement of language curricula and
learner autonomy through dialogues among teacher, educator, student, and institution rather than impositions.
This work is based on the premise that critical researchers consider technologies as never neutral or disembodied
from vested political interests.

2. Academic Literacy/EAP/Genre: What Seems to Be at Stake Now?

Positioning from the institutional context in the UK alongside critical ethnographic research on situated text
production and practice integrated with a larger social context, Street [7] assumes academic literacies as social
practices, that is, as sites where questions of epistemologies and identities flourish rather than mere skills, com-
petences and communication/socialization. This perspective is closely allied to the recent literacies studies [6]
[8]-[11], which assume writing, genres and disciplines as discourses intertwined with contested institutional
power relations.
From this perspective, writing does matter because the different choices around what and how one write and
produces meanings result in different knowledge [12] [13]. In the case of genres, changing meanings and repre-
sentations from one mode (speech) into another mode (writing) involves a different mix of both modes (layout,
semiosis).
Following Tribble, Wingate’s reasoning [1], the ideological model proposed by Street [7] [10] [11] empha-

31
N. H. Takaki

sizes the transformative nature of academic literacies moving away from the normative attitude, which for this
author has prevailed in traditional EAP. For him, traditional EAP identifies academic conventions and explores
how students should become proficient or experts following models of discourse and rhetorical structures and
genres, eliminating the resources that the students bring to the academy [2].
Street [7] concludes that there are hidden features of academic paper writing which is generated by a criterion
based on formulaic lists of things to be covered, usually in terms of structure of the essay (introduction, theory,
methods, data), correct academic writing. Such criterion, according to the cited author, could be intimidating for
students coming from a large range of disciplines within the broader umbrella of education (history, linguistics,
etc.) who would not feel comfortable enough to share their own work, provide their peers with constructive
feedback, engage in collaborative work towards transformative attitude and the development of academic litera-
cies.
Reinforcing this view, Leki [14] and Braine [15] understand that academic literacy goes beyond just know-
ledge of discrete language skills or appropriate language use in context. It needs to be understood holistically
and includes, for example, competence in reading, writing, critical thinking, knowledge of independent learning
processes, tolerance of ambiguity, effective practice of good judgment, and development of a deeper sense of
personal identity.
On the other hand, Tribble, Wingate [1] emphasize that much of the work done by EAP/genre deserves more
attention by the academic literacies theorists. They cite genre-based literacy pedagogy used in Australian uni-
versities which encourages students to deconstruct texts, join reconstruction and independent construction to
acquire knowledge and understanding of the target genre and how to apply that in producing their own individu-
al text. In addition, they mention a new direction of EAP instruction that has redefined the roles of teachers and
students [16]-[18]. Despite the lack of clarity regarding the term genre even among EAP practitioners as pointed
out by Tribble, Wingate [1], a seminal definition of genre by Swales [19] continues to be the one such authors
adopt, that is:
A genre comprises a class of communicative events, the members of which share some set of communica-
tive purpose. These purposes are recognized by the expert members of the parent discourse community and
thereby constitute the rationale of the genre. This rationale shapes the schematic structure of the genre and
influences and constrains choice of content and style. Communicative purpose is both a privileged criterion
and one that operates to keep the scope of a genre as here conceived narrowly focuses on comparable rhe-
torical action.
They proceed by stating that Swales [19] [20] himself and Bhatia [21] have recognized limitations to this de-
finition, although it has greatly influenced academic writing programs for speakers of diverse languages. Also,
Wingate, Tribble [1] presents data from corpus tools, whose analysis suggests that the main focus of EAP/genre
researches and pedagogy have been on texts:
As long higher education assessment regimes retain the written text as the main assessment mechanism, it
is likely that the production of texts in unfamiliar genres constitute the first and foremost problem of the
majority of students; therefore for them the type or text they will have to produce is a good starting point
for instructions.
From this quote, the potential of a pedagogical intervention to address the challenges posed by economy so-
ciety [22] and academic regimes has not received much attention, as academic literacies/EAP/genre have always
been invaluable sources of learning [23], unlearning and relearning to be able to renegotiate meanings through
writing while reclaiming the local [3] [24].

3. Revitalizing the Notion of Learning Space

Due to the intense renegotiation of meanings in contemporary English teaching and learning in non-English-
speaking countries, literacies have become more transnational. One of the touchstones of transnational literacies
is meaningful dialogues to renegotiate knowledge in cross cultural contexts [4] and also through participation
through digital tools and web repositories.
A key point is that learning has become more powerfully participatory with complex thinking outside of
school. Building on lived experience and getting engaged in learning spaces such as Facebook, Twitter, wikis,
blogs, learners are taking control of their lives and influencing others by positioning themselves as text produc-

32
 N. H. Takaki

ers and text analyzers, in accordance with Gee [25], Hoeshsmann, Stuart [5], Kalantzis, Cope [6], Lankshear,
Knobel [8], Monte Mór [26], Morgan [27], just to name a few. This, in turn has changed the configuration of
agency, which in the past, took a vertical model, from teacher to student, instead of a horizontal one, where stu-
dent-student collaborate and co-construct knowledge to be shared, questioned, complemented, recreated, rea-
propriated and applied in new contexts.
Using literacies to engage in active citizenship means being an adept meaning-maker in the new media that is,
being capable of redesigning meanings which are intrinsically multimodal for they combine visual, written, spa-
tial, tactile, gestural, audio and oral modes [5] [6] [28]. Not only that, but also, being able to evaluate informa-
tion, knowledge across different socio-cultural contexts and perceive the consequences of each form of making
meanings for themselves. Such a complex process transforms the meaning maker and other types of meaning
making while he/she navigates through different land-digital-scapes.
Teachers, now, can/should create learning experiences through which learners expand their repertoires, de-
velop knowledge and strategies for unlearning and learning, making the familiar unfamiliar. This openness is
clearly requested by twenty first century social practices to participate more actively in communities and rene-
gotiate meaning within diversity in economy/knowledge society. How to deal with novelties when they cross
into new contexts such as the digital spaces? Such is the responsibility to experimenting with the continuous
process of re-shaping meanings, which has come to be known as re-designed. Kalantzis, Cope [6] clarify what
this notion entails:
But even if no-one is ever touched by a person’s meaning, if no-one hears or sees their message-prompt, it
will still have left the representer transformed: it will have helped them to think things through afresh or to
see things in a new way. Communication may occur immediately or at some later point if and when a per-
son encounters the message-prompt. This is because the redesigned has joined the repertoire of available
designs, so providing openings for new designs. The redesigned—something heard, pictured, written—is
returned to the world, and this return leaves a legacy of transformation. Indeed, for having been through
this process of transformation, neither the designer nor their world will ever be quite the same again.
In accordance with these authors, one’s redesign is the other’s resource, which, in turn, may provoke changes
in the designer, who becomes a designer redesigned. This can be exemplified when one interprets and reinter-
prets meanings for different purposes to be further transformed by particular interests for the other interpreters.
The same happens with critical discursive genres [1] [12] [19] [20] [29]. Here, discourse is seen from a socio-
historical perspective as, hence, an intersubjective phenomenon [30] situated within a specific context. While
dealing with a specific genre, learners are invited to think about elements such as: the social purpose, the au-
dience to be reached, the linguistic composition, structures, different levels of formality, style, structures, lexical
repertoire, phonological and phonetics features (all of them understood as textuality or organization) added by
discursive aspects (interaction), choice of multimodal language (gestures, images, sounds, animations) and con-
siderations related to the possible effects on bilingual and multilingual audience.
Such awareness of what to say, how to say it and where to say it, to whom one speaks, writes, or conveys
meanings in multiple ways using different media has become crucial for the development of under-graduate
students mainly when resources and opportunities seem to be scarce due to historical, social, cultural, economic
and political characteristics. This is the context from which a pedagogical alternative is presented and dealt with
in the following section.

4. Critical Engagement in an Under-Graduate Language Public Course in Brazil:

Towards Academic Literacies/EAP/Genre Practices
While I project an image to initiate the discussion on some conceptions such as contingency, uncertainty and
possibility, which seem to prevail in twenty first identity, meaning making, teaching, learning, methodology, re-
search, society, human agency, planet, learners seem to have compelling reasons to focus on multimodal shift as
they go backwards and forwards among talking about a future conference, taking notes (about the titles and au-
thors of the books I bring into classroom and which are, now, being circulated), miming while greeting a late-
comer, formulating ideas of and reading the image projected, touching the screen of their mobile phones,
changing from one desk to another to be able to see the image better, all this shows that their physical location
influences their perspective from which image reading is to be co-constructed. This is the spirit and engagement
with which learners start building a lesson through blended learning environment, which combines the physical

33
N. H. Takaki

and the online to promote academic literacies/EAP/genre practice, respecting the learners’ linguistic and soci-
ocultural context from which he/she addresses the readers, in a regular language course at University (this is ex-
plained on later pages).
Those who have access to a mobile phone (the minority of them with access to Internet, which indicates that it
is a priority to improve mobile, computer access and to make broadband more affordable to learners under simi-
lar conditions) prove to be expert in searching for information, images, and other productions to complement the
material of the lesson. This already shows how significant learners’ initiative, engagement and micro-agency in
action are.
Mobile communication is a global phenomenon [31] [32]. The use of mobile phones has been recognized as a
powerful mode of multimodal pedagogy promoting learning from one mode then to another. In the case of this
group (I reserve its contextualization for a subsequent section), learners create meanings about meanings (meta-
representation), reading and posting message and sources of knowledge on Facebook characterizing literacies in
the plural. Learners do not have to be at their houses or frequent Lan Houses, to access Facebook to share what
happened in the class. They do so while practicing literacies/EAP/genre “live” in collective and collaborative
ways. One can even say that they are now interfering and intervening in the professor’s choice of material,
themes and resources, challenging his/her epistemological and methodological orientations, a contingent and
important form of agency in classroom.
I have been witnessing literacies practice intertwined with other literacies practice simultaneously (the former
refer to the actual happening in class, whereas the latter represents each time the learners access Google, Face-
book, WhatsApp, etc. to interact with others who are not necessarily in the classroom). This means a change in
hierarchy as learners build a horizontal scale of relations and scaffolding: they orchestrate the professors’ per-
formance of tasks, conceptualization of activities, explanation of conceptions; they assist their peers’ learning
processes by complementing with information, details of a particular issue being discussed at a particular mo-
ment in class; they search for images to illustrate specific points and share them by having their mobile phones
circulated in the classroom.
More interestingly, they do not have to wait for the director’s or government to provide the institution with
technical resources, such as ICT laboratory or other media related equipment. In other words, they enhance their
existence, contribute to the others (including mine) life-long learning and agency; they bring the outside world
into the classroom and virtual space and real space become practically one, an essential aspect in transnational
media literacies.
Such learners grow in an environment in which they make use of conceptual meanings of their narratives,
identities, cultures, social practices and of the others from various ever-present and always-needed sources, at
least in this community of social practices. The new configuration requires them to fill meanings in a multiplici-
ty of modes, monitor their own thinking self-questioning ways of creating meanings and “being in language” in
relation to the others’ meanings and other ways of “being in language”. Full capacity to interpret and analyse
texts and discourses by interrogating the interests of the participants in the process with a view to expanding
their own linguistic, cultural, historical repertoires (Portuguese, Spanish, English languages; inter-trans-cultu-
ralities; inter-trans-disciplines) using a broader range of pedagogical resources and possible multiple knowledge
processes interconnected with local, regional, national, transnational, virtual-real, individual-collective, private-
public issues and spaces.
While navigating the Net, they experience the known and the unfamiliar and exploit the affordances of the
Facebook to make new meanings and apply creatively and critically what they have learned in new contexts, in a
single lesson. They are immersed in pluralized literacies and are exposed to possibilities to redesign the direction
of the lesson, its content and methodology. Therefore, such redesign influences the knowledge outputs as they
become authors/producers of innovative theories-practices. Theories help them understand their social practices
and these, in turn, inform them in relation to what, how their theories can/should be transformed to adjust to new
contexts and contingent demands.

5. After All, What Context Is This?

The project described here is part of a broader ongoing project1. This local Project, New literacies, multiliteracies
1
National Project of teacher education, critical education, new literacies, multiliteracies developed by diverse Brazilian universities with a
partnership including The University of Manitoba (Dr. Diana Brydon) and Glendon College (York University, with Dr. Ian Martin and Dr.
Brian Morgan), under the coordination of Dr. Lynn Mario Trindade Menezes de Souza and Dr. Walkyria Monte Mór, both from USP).

34
 N. H. Takaki

in the teaching of English in Letras: resignifying in global times, assumes the qualitative and interpretive nature of
methodology, which means that all the participants’ views, attitude, initiative, as well as the researcher’s pers-
pectives and theoretical background are included. In addition, contingencies and the possibility to count on ex-
ploratory approaches [33] are also relevant. So far data collection has been based on what the learners have
produced online.
In this context of research the language course takes place at one of the eleven campuses of the Federal Uni-
versity of Mato Grosso do Sul (in the extreme West of Brazil), located in Aquidauana, a small, historical town
with nearly 50 thousand inhabitants. It lasts four years and permits students to choose to hold a teaching certificate
either in Portuguese/English languages or Portuguese/Spanish languages or Portuguese/literatures of Portuguese
languages.
The vast majority of the students come from public elementary/secondary and high schools, which means too
much work is expected from the professors and from the students alike to compensate for: 1) insufficient profi-
ciency for higher education level in the foreign languages, sometimes even in their mother tongue, Portuguese; 2)
lack of awareness of what powerful people can do to others when they are users of a powerful tool like the English
language; 3) insufficient practices involving academic literacy/EAP/genre, to name a few issues.
A considerable number of such learners are granted two monthly scholarships (in Portuguese, Bolsa per-
manência and Bolsa alimentação) from the Federal Government. The former is meant to prevent learners from
dropping out and abandoning their studies, whereas the latter is intended to assist them in terms of food provision.
In return, they are supposed to work for twelve hours a week, participating in projects coordinated by a tutor/
professor. Few of them are in the process of doing research (Scientific Initiation) either as scholarship holders
receiving the grant from a Brazilian Research Funding Agency or as volunteers. The great majority of them are
family breadwinners or young learners who work during the day and go to university at night, which means they
make the most of themselves in class.
Although such students are offered free English and Spanish on campus, that is, free courses run/taught by
colleagues and more capable peers, including lessons on Saturdays, a considerable number of students work
during the day, frequent university at night and on weekends prefer to dedicate their time to their families. My
colleagues and I have been discussing what and how we can do together to change this apparent crystalized situ-
ation. I have promoted participatory workshops by selecting recent theories related to critical literacies, new li-
teracies and multiliteracies [5] [8] [9]; and official documents launched by the Brazilian Ministry of Education,
the OCEM-LE2 [34] with teachers of English from public schools, stuff from the local Municipal Secretariat of
Education, under-graduate students and other colleagues from different institutions.
In spite of our efforts, what has been emerging in terms of results is how I make use of the little time dedicated
to the English lessons in the graduate course, which is limited to three to five hours per week, each term, during the
whole course. The objective of the disciplines ranging from English Language I (first term) to English language
VIII (last term) is to develop multiple capacities other than the four skill (listening, speaking, reading and writing)
in order to prepare the students to renegotiate meanings in varied contexts permeated by unequal relations of
power and knowledge.
The collaborative nature of the course is a challenge and strength in the sense that students have become more
aware of what is expected from them in contemporary globalized and digital society. In other words, multiple
capacities to take initiative, to produce and share knowledge in different media, to perform in local-regional-
transnational situations in life, to renegotiate meanings in diverse cross-cultural contexts usually within unequal
power distribution and collaboratively redefine their roles and actions for the benefit of society. Such learners
come from diverse background, from the interior of the State, from rural and urban areas, from the frontiers be-
tween Mato Grosso do Sul, Bolivia and Paraguay. Indigenous communities, migrants from the other Brazilian
States provide the readers with an idea of the heterogeneity and complexity with which professors, coordinators,
directors, students and community members have to grapple with to enhance learning from/with one another
without erasing such heterogeneity.
The current state of affairs in my own context of teaching may be considered virtually the same (in terms of
proficiency or sufficiency in the English language) as in the other Brazilian contexts, since researchers from
more than twenty universities in the four corners of Brazil have been publishing, in accordance with the out-
comes of their local research (according to data from publications of situated researches from the previously
cited National Project). To move on from this situation, the disciplines I have been teaching with this particular
2
OCEM-LE refers to Curriculum Guidelines for the teaching of English at High School, 2009.

35
N. H. Takaki

group, that is from English V to English VIII, are redesigned to meet the students’ needs and interests with various
levels of familiarity and facility towards the English language as a means towards meaning makers in today’s
society.
Consequently, part of my work includes discussions about how different people use language, with what con-
cept of language and their implications in active, responsible, multiple, citizenry and what expectations students
bring to writing and meaning making in general, feedback and instructions so that learners can reedit their pieces
of writing. I also create space for peer’s feedback with productive responses to one another. Some examples
comprise pieces of writing and discussions of a particular issue towards intertextuality and more transnational
dialogues [4] on Facebook and transfer of writing skills to these medium and other contexts.
It should be noticed that grammar is extremely important. Nevertheless, grammar approaches in such discip-
lines are contextualized according to the discursive genre to be worked on, whose focus is primarily on how to
write, for example, a short personal or opinion essay. I reiterate that this is an exercise to introduce learners to
academic genres. Also essential, then, is to develop paragraph unit and/or how to convey meanings via multimodal
medium, which involves asking strategic questions/questionings. Morgan [27] is the one who elaborates on this
strategy: “Good questions, in this respect, can inspire new meanings and new ways of acting on the content of
learning, which ultimately affects and potentially transforms the broader society in whose service learning is os-
tensibly directed.”
In this respect, critical consciencization [35] and critical literacy approaches [36] have a great deal to contribute
with pedagogical strategic questions as students read and produce texts. Some of these questions include:
How are the meanings assigned to a certain figure or events in a text?
How does it attempt to get readers to accept its constructs?
What is the purpose of the text?
Whose interests are served by the dissemination of this text? Whose interests are not served?
What view of the world is put forth by the ideas in this text? What views are not?
What are other possible constructions of the world?
In addition to this, engaging with the work of others in respectful ways, citing the others, writing powerful
positioning [37], reflecting on their consequences in relation to other powerful positioning in more local-global,
transnational ways, definitely constitute complementary means. Whenever necessary, I focus on sentence-level
aspects of writing, including concision, cohesion and coherence, discourse management, fundamental features of
current EAP [38].

6. Facebook Page: Bridging the Gap between Learners’ Experience and the English
Classroom
On a Facebook page, entitled Twenty-first century meaning makers, designed specifically by an under-graduate
student for under-graduate students and, therefore, already confronting issues of power and regulation of mean-
ing that arise from his provocations, Avril (to guard his own identity3) has become particularly interested in de-
veloping English through bridging the gap between a Facebook page and the classroom as focus of investigation
of his TCC4. He has created this page for the whole class to join in to develop academic literacies/EAP/genre
practices as his-our ultimate goal. Nonetheless, Avril believes that he together with his peers might acquire
writing skills starting from what he and they already bring as knowledge, experience, abilities and strategies in
small scales to renegotiate meanings and from there, embark on a collaborative project towards more elaborated
and formal ways to express comments, views, arguments, positioning as ways of exercising agency through spe-
cific academic, discursive genres, as our ultimate goals.
Playing the role of a social actor, Avril’s initiative resonates the concept of agency by Duff [39] “as people
ability to make choices, take control, self-regulate, and thereby pursue their goals as individuals leading poten-
tially to personal or social transformation.” Many times, however, no specific genre is constructed as the vast
majority of the learners have great difficulty in producing meanings in intelligible English (in the broadest sense
of the word) due to the hypotheses already specified on previous pages. At the same time, learners reported
orally, in one of the classes, that they enjoy publishing comments using language or interlanguage in the concept
3
All the names used here refer to nicknames. Avril created this page when he was attending the discipline English language V. The author
preserved the learners’ original versions, what means no correction was made in terms of grammar.
4
TCC means Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso. A rough translation would be End-of-Course Monograph. In his TCC, Avril investigated his
peers meaning making in the light of recent theories of literacies, under my supervision.

36
 N. H. Takaki

of Tarone [40], that is, as a dynamic process in flexible, but responsible and creative ways or languaging [41] as
a tool to articulate thinking, to verbalize and mediate activity/solution to complex problems, and also languaging
as a means of historical and political expressions instead of silencing voices [42]. They report having been more
worried about their own images and have been learning the hard way to pay attention to their writing style as
they are watched by both professor and more capable/proficient peers.
Hoping to have situated the process of preliminary academic literacy/EAP/genre practice of this group of
learners I shall now exemplify this transfer of collaboration in literacy/EAP/genre initial practice of a particular
context to another context in innovative and transformative ways, and also to show how group identity is con-
structed, it might be useful to look at the way Avril shared important strategic questions5 (he had been exposed
to through his readings about literacies to develop his final essay, TCC) to promote discussions among his peers:
Hello friends. The following questions are very relevant for all of us. I would be grateful if you answer them.
Good week for all of you.
a) How did you learn to practice critique and connect ideas with your local reality and with the others’?
b) You know that your general formation is not only for languages… technology is not enough, but accele-
rates… So, how do technologies contribute to your development? Give examples from university, from work
and other places.
c) What have you changed in relation to the way you think, act in relation to planning lessons, teaching
practice at internship, attitude in relation to each other and diversity?
d) What does a teacher need to know in addition to languages and technology itself?
e) What did you learn outside the classroom and learn here on this page? Do you believe in distant learning?
f) Will we need schools (in the future?)
g) How did you start university and how are you finishing it? Why? Give examples.
Peer A: I started college thinking it was the same school, but with the course I realized that we have a criti-
cal sense and be dynamic, not that sameness of the traditional classes, but most classes where students can
participate by expressing their views and opinion, regarding the subject matter in question and also activi-
ties that have to do with the reality of the student and their community. I learned that despite the distance,
we can learn a lot, have knowledge of and interaction, because the Internet is an awesome tool for learning.
As a form of public pedagogy, the subsequent diagram (Figure 1) was posted in order to promote situated
language awareness by connecting with his audience in community engagement, highlighting the components he
felt to be necessary for the learning process:
Avril: These differences among verbal tenses are very important. But we have to contextualize the grammar.
We need to contextualize it in real situations of use. We also need teaching through different kinds of texts
and offer possibilities to students to make meaning in a critical way, perspective. Theories about New lite-
racies, Multiliteracies and post-colonial concerns, theories help too much.
Avril: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=invBjPmY8iE —Simpsons in Brazil6
Peer B: The Brazil despite all the violence that is happening is a beautiful country and wonderful, the vision
of this video is wrong, most of the video only mostrou slums, wildlife, naked women, and children stealing
demonstrated only downside of our country.
Peer C: In this video it is clear what foreigners think of Brazil, the country of football, where everyone
knows playing ball, naked women, on television, wild critters walking around the city, and dangerous and
violent slums, where the bad guys take the opportunity to rob tourists, only points negative, which are
usually presented in the news of the country.
Peer D: This episode shows how it is sold to the Brazilian reality to Americans. This is all a cultural issue,
and we cannot deny that many things shown in the video are real, so clear, some exaggerated, some not.
Avril: People, I read in a newspaper called Mail Online, informations about violence and drugs in Salvador’s
5
All the materials, images, links, discussions come from: https://www.facebook.com/groups/291795480954791/
6
This is part of the thirteenth season of the Simpsons (1001-2002) written by Bob Bendetson and directed by Steven Dean Moore. It was
criticized as it includes clichés and stereotypes about Brazil.

37
N. H. Takaki

Figure 1. Avril published this diagram to show his peers the importance of con-
textualizing grammar teaching instead of only presenting rules as shown in the
above figure. This was published at: https://www.facebook.com/myenglishteachers.

slums. The text is named “Children who carry guns through Salvador’s slums: Shocking images that show
drug gangs’ brutal grip on Brazil streets where hundreds of thousands will travel for next year’s World Cup”.
Please, read and discuss it. What do you think about?
Peer B: Unfortunately, this is the reality of Brazil, in many capitals that will host the World Cup next year.
Drugs and violence predominated in this place, but there are only bandits who live in the slums, but also
humble people who for lack of choice and money are forced to live with the violence that dominates the
slums. Many slum children are delighted with the ease of earning money and power, starting soon during
childhood life in trafficking, and drugs. The lack of investment by the government in education, health, in-
frastructure, safety and jobs is the one responsible for auto index adults and children in the world of drugs and
violence. That is why the population is outraged at the huge expenses of the World Cup, a huge hand sta-
diums that cost fortunes, of slums and other needy communities in need and suffer from a lack of investment
in sectors that are essential for life of the population.
Avril: One more video7. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ6NnGEiucM&feature=youtu.be
Peer D: I really liked the music, it represents the time that the country is living and talks about why the
protests on the violence with which the police dealt with protesters, it is very interesting that people leave
the comfort of their homes and seek their rights.
Peer E: I looooooved this video. Very, very, cool!! It was very creative and real. I can say that it is the
another side of the manifestations, not the media side which shows only the vandals destroying everything.
We see people fighting for something that really needs to be changed and now. Wake up Braziiiiiiiill!
Peer F: Critical reality, true and real. The beginning of the movement was small, but gradually was acquir-
ing large tracts, and at the point of climax, millions of people were in the streets protesting their desire for
change on several issues, such as education, health, transport fares unfair, not the PEC 37, Cup Brazil in
2014, etc. We need to scream and show the government that we can, and we want a revolution worthy. In
demonstrations this year for example, the people who got the PEC 37, who took the power of the prosecu-
tor to investigate crimes committed by politicians, were rejected. Similarly, President Dilma decreed that
one hundred percent of oil royalties will be allocated to education. This is perfect for the beginning of the
collapse of dirty politics that rages for our country. But we still need more.
Hi everyone! (Avril)
Watch this video8 for a discussion and summary on October 1st:
7
This production refers to a video clip presenting a song created during the Brazilian protests in 2013.
8
This video clip is about Sugata Mitra’s work, professor of technology at the school of education, communication and language sciences at
Newcastle University He is presenting his experiment in India showing that in the absence of supervision or formal teaching, children can
teach themselves and each other, if they are motivated by curiosity and peer interest.

38
 N. H. Takaki

http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud.html
Sugata Mitra: Build a School in the Cloud|Video on TED.com
Onstage at TED2013, Sugata Mitra makes his bold TED Prize wish: Help me design the School in the Cloud,
a learning lab in India, where children can explore and learn from each other—using resources…
TED|POR SUGATA MITRA
Avril: I think one of the most important things to do is to start thinking how we can contribute to build a
school in the clouds. How we can enable students learn and teach in a collective and individual way? The
students learn alone and teach and learn together. How do we watch it in the classrooms, at society in gen-
eral? We always have to know that the students are meaning makers.
Peer G: Wow, this man is the best! He embraced a challenge and doesn’t give up until he sees what the re-
sults are. And most interesting is that he is correct in all that he speaks and does, he shows us that learning
the way that we transmit and see is getting increasingly outdated. In a world where calculators, computers
of all kinds prevail, we need to equip with new weapons to make learning efficient, and as he said, make it
a pleasure and not a threat or obligation.
The author reiterates that it is not the aim of this particular article to analyze and discuss the learners’ critique
per se as this is planned to be looked at/into more specifically in another article, whose main aim is to present
and discuss the learners’ critical engagement and its implications in contemporary active citizenship and educa-
tion.
The author does not mean to establish any categorization as a way to standardize language practice, on the
contrary, the procedures and activities that I share from now onwards, constitute interesting starting points for an
outline of alternative practices in the light of the combination of conceptions related to academic literacy/EAP/
genre studies. In face of the questions regarding the learners’ lack of or little systemic/linguistic knowledge of
English (for example, the Portuguese speech-like clausal syntax as they are hypothesizing), further practice has
been provided, covering thirty minutes of each of the weekly 150-minute meetings per term. To make language
visible with its particular conventions and variations, a course kit aiming at more guided practice of the language
that was constitutive of the aforementioned interactions was prepared so that learners could apply them in pro-
ducing their own individual texts, observing the sociopolitical context from/to which they wrote. In other words,
it contained explanations and activities in order for the learners to notice language in diverse contexts where si-
tuated semantics (cohesion and coherence mainly) and morphosyntax (how terms such as nouns, verbs, adjective,
adverbs, pronouns function in a particular context of use) have been priorities.
Learners are usually novices with different experiences in writing. Some of them apply knowledge related to
textual production ability from the Portuguese disciplines, such as textual production taught by my colleagues,
in which they are exposed to conceptions and practices of genre. There has also been a need to systematize the
pedagogical procedures9 to make features of academic writing more explicit for the learners and also for them to
notice how they can benefit from language studied as whole texts involving routine, creation and some research
done in their university ITC laboratory during the classes. Some guidelines include these powerful examples:
Choose a theme you would like to read about;
Search for a site or blog related to this theme;
Find some exemplars of comments people usually publish there;
What is the purpose in question?
Is there a particular kind of audience?
Observe and notice how and more specific ideas are expressed;
Notice how the writer argues in favor or against a particular issue or is reluctant to take a stance;
Think about the choices or patterns related to vocabulary and structures;
How are the sentences connected? Find examples of linking words. What do they express in this context?
Notice the level of formality (Formal, semi-formal, informal language?);
Does the writer interact with the reader? How?
Can you recognize signs of intertextuality? How?
Is it possible to make use of some words, clauses, in your future writing?
Do you identify yourself with this writer’s style, “tone of voice”? Why? Why not?
9
Drawn on and adapted from Motta-Roth (2009).

39
N. H. Takaki

What are the advantages of noting language in an activity like this?

Thus far, learners’ feedback on this set of procedures has proved to be constructive. However much they try
to catch up with the expected level of academic proficiency or sufficiency in the English language (in its broader
sense), assisting them in developing academic identity as writers still requires much more time and adjustments
within heterogeneity and contingencies.
This group has been with me for one year and a half and it seems that more importantly has been the devel-
opment of their awareness of reflexivity about the social context and how they can use it as a scaffolding device
to explore texts in ways that are meaningful for them. What is relevant for one week, may not be for another.
Therefore, they reconstruct the syllabus by signaling what content, forms, resources are available for them so
that I can incorporate further practices to develop language awareness and adequate uses in particular moments.
The relationship between text, the author’s context (production) and the learners’ contexts (reception) help them
situate their productions and research (in the case of Avril) in the system of genres within multimodal practices.
Language is presented as a socio-multisemiotic system that constitutes the social practices of specific social
groups competing with other social practices of other social groups. The fact that they try to attribute meanings
to texts [30] shared online mean that they understand that meanings are not ready in such texts, on the contrary
they have to make decisions on what is important for them in certain moments and how they are dealt with the
endless sources of information in order for them to transform information into knowledge that makes sense to
them. This is of utmost importance, that is, the learners’ perception that content is not synonymous with know-
ledge and that knowledge is not pre-given, pre-established, fixed, but rather reconstructed dynamically.
Learners have been associating their context, that is, the social place from which they departure to produce
their pieces of writing or comments, observing the relationship between a particular social practice and a specif-
ic text (image, advert, YouTube video clip) and analyzing discourses and the way they position people and also
the alternatives to deconstruct such mainstream and dominant culture by creating other representations of reality,
considering the inherent power inequality that permeates texts and discourses as historical and political means of
expressions as opposed to silencing [42]. Peers A, B, C, D, E and F are those who in the beginning of the
process most felt insecure probably because of their insufficient proficiency in the language in question and also
as newcomers in the world of EAP, rather than lack of digital literacy. Even though they felt like that, Peer A
signals some discursive transformation in his way of thinking due to the contingency promoted by the classes:
I started college thinking it was the same school, but with the course I realized that we have a critical sense
and be dynamic, not that sameness of the traditional classes, but most classes where students can participate
by expressing their views and opinion, regarding the subject matter in question and also activities that have
to do with the reality of the student and their community. I learned that despite the distance, we can learn a
lot, have knowledge of and interaction, because the Internet is an awesome tool for learning.
Concerning the media coverage of Brazil, in the episode Simpsons in Brazil, Peers C and D question the ste-
reotypes that arise from the video, while Peer D acknowledges the fact that Brazil is not immune to some truths
shown in the video clip, albeit rather exaggerated.
Within the context of escalated climate of fear and violence and the World Cup environment, Peer B takes a
stand through advocating in favor of the humble people who have no choice unless live in slums and through
denouncing the government investment in stadiums to the detriment of education, infra-structure, health, safety,
jobs and adult and children’s involvement in drug trafficking.
Peers D, E and F express their views recognizing the power of change. In order to change the situation, people
need to function in society and “leave the comfort of their homes and seek their rights”, as Peer D affirms. Also,
Peer E brings to discussion positive aspects that the media does not disseminate: the ability to take advantage of
the moment and produce a video clip in creative and realistic ways as a form of embodied public/collective ma-
nifestation. Peer F amplifies the discussion by showing how informed he/she is and invigorates the people’s
reactions against the PC 37 and the President’s discourse as two good results.
There has been recognition that technology enhances learning spaces for children to become more autonom-
ous to foster authorship instead of mere readership, in collaborative modes, which challenges the conventional
ways of teaching-learning, as both Avril and Peer F declare, while constructing meaning regarding Sugata Mi-
tra’s project to build a school in the clouds in India.
More outcomes are expected for the second article I intend to write focusing on learners critique as the con-
tinuation of my research process based on the new tasks have been worked on and proposed, such as the produc-

40
 N. H. Takaki

tion of argumentative essays and a letter to the editor of a local newspaper.

Indeed, from a critical literacy perspective [10] [36], they show evidence that they are in the process of, for
example, creating a habit to privilege the personal, the social over the commercial or neoliberal. At the same
time, from the perspective of academic literacy/EAP/genre practices, they have some notions of the social pur-
pose of their production, who the audience (peers and the professor, who is also the author of this paper) and the
informal, semi-formal style they are supposed to use added by some appropriate structures and lexical items.
As time went by, they got less inhibited to make a move and heated debates were published. This scenario in-
vited me to develop new conceptual orientation and approach: to ask them to refer back to their written produc-
tions and try, either individually or in groups to reedit them, this time paying more attention to textuality (or-
ganization of content) together with grammatical forms, aspects related to structure, composition, style, lexis,
accuracy and discursive features (interaction), according to the state of readiness of each learner.
The object of study in this phase is not language as an end in itself. The validity of this phase was determined
by the relevance it has been having to classroom practice and, ultimately to learners’ learning processes and
outcomes. Two types of collaboration have been identified: one in which the more capable peers help the others
by reading their written production and providing them with language input/revision to be taken into account
while reediting the original text; the other in which I myself revise linguistic and discursive aspects in class by
showing learners the situated cases that deserve attention/reformulation, collected from their texts. In this case,
they discuss possible alternatives for improvement of such cases and I write them on the board or screen.
Making clear what help is available and how they can seek for clarification in a supportive learning tutor/
professor together with other face-to-face encounters have certainly contributed to avoid retention problems at
this course in this particular context with all the concerns already exposed here.
To sum up, language instruction has been organized in this way, that is, I do not expect instant learning and
immediate accuracy. I have practiced teaching that allows for plenty of recycling and exposing learners to lan-
guage beyond their productive means, so that they have the opportunity to grasp new forms which they are
“ready” for.
The new versions will be published on the Facebook page and they will certainly recruit other peers to com-
ment, suggest and share constructive feedback. As the world of academic literacy/EAP/genre practice is rich,
never uniform and independent of the learner’s socio-historical context, and as it demands time and effort, future
work on modality, composition, discourse (interaction) and some other forms of interventions will have to be
strategically elaborated for handling it in feasible and optimal ways.
Nevertheless, simply becoming familiar with diverse forms of literacy or with a repertoire of literate practices
may not be sufficient to cope with life, work, leisure, community activities, personal growth, social transforma-
tion and active citizenship and education. Therefore, understanding the resources of language (as the strategy of
constant questioning as already presented here), images, digital rhetorics to reconstruct different kinds of mean-
ings has been provided to these learners through exposure to video clips from YouTube, images and other mul-
timodal materials across disciplines that Avril captured due to his “e-initiative” within this blended learning en-
vironment.
These are some of the pedagogical interventions and activity delivery designed to increase learners’ participa-
tion in written debates. This is an ongoing, collaborative endeavor with the great advantage of crossing divides
and it also purports to blend pedagogical procedures of academic literacy/EAP/genre practice through taking
learners’ livid experience and diverse forms of communication across time, space and culture. In such space,
learners constantly define and redefine the writer/author’s self, their selves as interconnected with other selves.
It amplifies their social capabilities, giving rise to creativity, critique and trans-multimodal work which has no
historical parallel and it only became possible also due to Avril’s cyber agency10 to go through his TCC research
embedded in my particular context of teaching-researching., inside and outside the university walls.
It is within this conciliation of academic literacy/EAP/genre preliminary practices together with a combina-
tion of physical, virtual environment, intersubjectivity, subjectification [43] that language course at universities
can meet new social demands. Subjectification refers to educational arrangements that allow the learners be-
come more autonomous and independent in their thinking and acting/inacting within multiple existing and
emerging social orders. Autonomy/agency might be already ingrained in each of these learners everyday life that
generates synergies among a range of oral, written, multimodal, social practices.

10
Term coined by this the author of this paper to mean social action taken in digital space in participatory and transformative fashion.

41
N. H. Takaki

All of these practices indicate that subjectification is also a means to extend their learning outside the school
premises. Being computer literate or academic literate or both do not necessarily ensure criticality, that is, being
political, social, cultural, economically engaged in different modes of thinking, judging and acting/inacting in
confrontation with other modes of thinking, judging, and acting/inacting, which invites educators to revise their
roles in school/university curricula worldwide. In other words, intersecting formalized education with the learn-
ers’ ubiquitous media literacy practices merits further exploration to unfold pedagogical implications of one’s
ever-changing mediated life.
To highlight part of his transformation throughout the course, Avril has published a personal report as a dis-
cursive genre to incentivize his peers to continue participating on the referred Facebook page, practicing reading,
watching, listening, writing while developing critique, creativity and autonomy/agency in customized fashion,
an essential quality to perform in digital society.
Facebook was a great tool/way to improve my English skills. Last year, for instance, when I created a
closed group—21st century meaning makers—to develop my TCC (Course Conclusion Work) research, I
intended to investigate and try to understand how academics (my classmates) of the seventh and eighth
semesters of the Letters/Language Course made meaning/created knowledge through hypermodalities,
mainly, in English; of course, I was one of those participants too. After beginning my research, when my
classmates and I started to share some materials—images, memes, cartoons, video clips, News from news-
papers and from TV, for example, I realized this digital environment/setting is an excellent tool for those
who do not have, at least, good oral English proficiency, because they discussed many important social and
educational themes through the digital writing. Besides that, they could improve their listening and read-
ings skills. During the discussions, I was concerned and aware of emphasizing and contemplating theories
about multiliteracies, new literacies, critical literacy, i.e. the relationship of these concepts with the field of
education, with the English teaching and learning. My classmates read the informations, interpreted them,
re-interpreted them, did cultural translation (Menezes de Souza, 2007), making meaning in their cultural
and social contexts, for example. And these are good contributions to reflections upon the way we “teach”,
learn and understand us in relation to the local and global contexts. Studying, teaching, learning through the
use of Facebook is better, from my standpoint, than to stay and study among four walls in a classroom, us-
ing only pen, pencil, eraser, printed books, notebook to improve writing and aspects of normative grammar.
But digital/virtual Technologies are not all we need and it depends on our specific and general aims, be-
cause you can use laptops, computers, Smartphones, Messenger, Skype, WhatsApp, any kind of social
network and technology and reproduce “the old wine in new bottles” (Lankshear and Knobel, 2003, p. 54)
—i.e. to teach Terena, English, Portuguese, Japanese, Spanish, Russian, any language, in “traditional” ways,
for instance: to teach only grammar through isolated sentences. We can teach grammar in a useful, pleasant
and contextualized way, according to different aims and contexts of use. Still in relation to my TCC, I rea-
lized that at times some classmates produced liberal-humanistic critical reading (Cervetti, Pardales and
Damico, 2001) and at other times, they made meaning in a critical and contextualized way—critical literacy
(Cervetti, Pardales e Damico, 2001, McLaughlin and De Voogd, 2004; Monte Mór, 2013, Street, 1984). So,
I believe to teach and learn a mother tongue and/or any second/foreign language, through a closed group on
Facebook, for example, is a challenge for those who want to promote reflection, action and identity recon-
struction and social transformation (as Paulo Freire teaches us). Transformation in the way we make lesson
plans, observe students, interact and act with them in society, develop/improve strategies, abilities, metho-
dologies, digital and social inclusion and (new-multi-hyper) literacies. I consider the reflection, above, very
important, because nowadays we have to develop and have multiple capacities. Society requires them. We
cannot be good at many things, we must be excellent at a lot of things and each day learn more, otherwise,
you/we are going to be left behind. I am trying to learn every day, because “to teach” is, actually, a com-
plicated word in a complex world.
As one can perceive, Avril seems to have grasped what it means to be critical literate while being meaning-
fully engaged in contemporary spaces, an essential component for active citizenship today. Far from being a free
floating agent, he has also fostered leadership and agency through media literacies. He is the one who created
this page specifically for provoking other peers’ problematization of issues rather than mere exchange of know-
ledge/ideas/experience and also promoted space for learning from/with the others in collaborative and meaning-
ful ways [33] approximating society, transnational literacies [4] and the production of local meanings [3]. One

42
 N. H. Takaki

can say that he in tune and largely at ease with the multimediating construction of response to his classroom,
with the social cultural shifts brought about by the global times and the development of new technologies. By
adopting an active and critical stance, he created the Facebook page to provide his peers with access to more
opportunities for literacy/EAP practices in non-threatening environment, in innovative and user-friendly ways.
As regards, for example, the absence of indentation to start the paragraphs, Avril might be aware of such in-
adequacies in the text he produced. When I asked him why he had made such choices, he argued that transpos-
ing models and exemplars from page to screen might distance his peers, for they would feel controlled. A possi-
ble interpretation of his saying would be that outsiders/newcomers of digital space do not have the experiences,
abilities, and resources to draw on in the same way that insiders do [8]. There are different ways of looking at
these concerns depending on whether one comes from the physical space mindset or from the alternative mind-
set associated with understanding communication and socialization, spatial “laws” online, in situated and histor-
ical manner. It seems that he has applied this strategic resource to attract attention and that he knows how to
identify where, how data will be useful to him and to his peers, and how to make use of it to serve his/their/our
purposes (how to live and negotiate attention and meanings and develop new kinds of relationship/alignments
there).
Also, some hints are provided in the sense that Avril may not only know a great deal of academic literacy/
EAP/genre practice, but also how to be sensitive to other peers who might bring different cultural and critical
manners of thinking about such practices in a specific medium to produce some kind of ‘academic literacy/EAP-
related’ outcome.
At the end of the research, he was able to produce a “conversation” in shared space, a piece of writing, which
I consider to be an excellent tool for engaging learners in their academic literacy/EAP/genre practice in the plur-
al sense, for the physical environment may be lonely and limited in terms of who can be reached and what can
be disseminated, produced and reconstructed. Such a complex process of writing reflects Avril’s whole process
of learning, teaching, unlearning and reconstructing his identity and narratives and hopefully the other peers will
be transformed in the near future and/or in the long run. They are not enrolled in a formal online course. On a
voluntary basis, they have realized how they can associate the inter-personal with the online practices towards
academic writing/EAP/genre practice in more horizontal fashion.
At the same time, he develops a more intersubjective approach to re-narrate his story from the perspective of a
learner in a non-English speaking country. Furthermore, owing to the interconnectivity offered by the Internet,
by the social networking (in this case this particular page on Facebook), he was able to bridge the gap between
local and more transnational spaces for meaning making and agency to transform his own epistemologies, ways
of making sense of the world, ways of reading the word and the world [35] and of his peers’ ways of making
sense of the world, ways of reading the word and the world. I shall complement this assumption by adding writ-
ing the world and the world in responsible and collective ways.

7. Conclusions
The partial success of this ongoing process in my research suggests that young learners and adults’ academic li-
teracy/EAP/genre practice are developing rapidly as a result of their passion for Facebook. Contrary to many
people’s judgment, Facebook is not only for sharing news, ideas, links, photos, events, arquives, but mainly for
its significant potential in this field of knowledge and research. Clearly, teachers-professors-researchers could
benefit by knowing more about the way young learners and adults make use of Facebook.
Pedagogical practices built by epistemological basis like the one described here, unlike mere knowledge re-
positories, as they are ideological and more “democratic” forms of literacies [11] represent an alternative know-
ledge network connecting people to people. Paraphrasing [6] such practices operates within diverse voices, ac-
cents, media, scripts, in a space where none of these elements has supremacy over the other(s). It enhances
learners’ engagement in maintaining, transforming their cultural world. As a social event in conjunction with the
learner’s knowledge, values, critique, creativity, ethics, Avril’s social practices will hopefully influence others to
narrate their stories and histories, identities while renegotiating meanings in diverse media.
For this paper, I exemplified this experience by addressing mainly one learner’s process of developing self-
knowledge to understand him better and the other(s) using writing to express, sometimes, a youthful, casual, up
to date identity and mainly to improve his writing skills and manage relationship in the group, as a kind of mon-
itor. Many other learners published many comments and are now, starting to publish their own creative writing.

43
N. H. Takaki

Concentration has increased. They are not missing out educational opportunities despite the drawbacks con-
cerning affordable broadband Internet access. It seems that little attention has been drawn to academic literacies
research involving learners for whom English is a foreign language and, in this sense, this article is preliminary
when proficiency in academic literacy/EAP/genre practice depends very much not only on the mastery of lin-
guistic features, but also on ideological, discursive practices of constructing and renegotiating knowledge in dig-
ital spaces.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the under-graduate students studying English at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do
Sul, from 2010 to 2014, who have supported part of my research which has generated this article. I also thank
two anonymous reviewers for this journal for their most relevant comments and suggestions on preliminary ver-
sions of this paper. The mistakes that remain are my own.

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