1. I believe that good writing always includes good thinking and analysis and organization are key parts of this;
2. I believe that universal errors should be focused on in teaching instead of every mistake; and
3. I believe that students' writing should be more formal but still present their own unique voice.
I found it very difficult to summarize all of my beliefs about teaching and writing. I have many ideas that are not here; however, I think these are the most important ones. My first belief is important because if a student is not thinking their writing is not worth my time to read. In addition, they will only get something out of the assignment if they are thinking about it. For me, all this thinking can be summarized in the word "analysis." In addition, I put a lot of value in organization because communication is extremely difficult without it. A paper may be well written in every other way, but if it is not organized the audience will not receive the message. For this reason, I think it is still very important to teach the "5 part essay" to beginning writers. My second belief was formulated for two reasons. Firstly, if the student is graded on every single grammatical mistake they make, they are likely to become extremely discouraged and give up on writing. In addition, when teaching, it is practically impossible to have enough time in class to go over every single mistake every student made. Therefore, I believe that while grading, teachers should come up with a top 20 most common errors for that particular class and then go over them together. Finally, I think it is important that students learn how to write with a balance between formality and their own voice so that they can avoid engfish. Without formality, the paper will have slang and abbreviations that are not appropriate for the assignment. However, students must also learn to write with their own voice so that they can engage the reader. In addition, having their voice in their writing assures that all the students' papers will be unique.
Our lists are so similar! I like that we both value some of the same things.
ReplyDeleteI like your ideas about how to handle the universal error in a classroom. It reminds me of one of my English teachers in high school, who, after grading a set of essays, would make a list of the top 5 errors the class made. She'd take almost an entire class period explaining things sometimes, but I feel like that was far more effective than some of my other teachers who would mark errors on everyone's papers, but never talk about them with students.
So, you want to have pieces of formalism that remain but disagree with counting every error to derive the students scores. I like that, I think that there has to be components of form which relate into organization and the like.
ReplyDeleteWriting and thinking--Bruffee picks up on that, clearly, too. You can deconstruct the concept of the universal error in sophisticated ways, methinks, thinking about ways people learn, what is important in writing and reading, discourse communities, etc.
ReplyDeleteI like your post, Hannah. I remember it how difficult it was, initially, to balance formalism and my own voice, but I had an amazing freshman comp teacher who helped immensely! She is the primary reason I value personal interaction in the composition classroom.
ReplyDeleteI agree students need to think about their writing for it to really mean anything. Do you think there should be an emphasis on letting students write about topics they want to in a classroom, then, so they think about it more? We have discussed how difficult it is for graders to go and read 20 different articles to grade 20 different papers, but students are generally more interested in writing if the topic is something they care about.
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