Writing is an extremely difficult subject to teach. I think that students need to have a certain amount of innate ability. I don't think it really matters how much previous experience people have had with writing, as long as they have been exposed to the art of story telling. If someone doesn't know how to tell a story, I don't think they'll be able to write one very easily either.
Getting students to understand writing as a process is a difficult thing to do as well. Mainly because of issues with time; nobody has it. Students write out their first drafts, and think editing means correcting the grammar from that draft. They don't really read it for organization and content: "I organized it while I was writing it." Sometimes they get married to their first drafts and hate to change something they worked so hard to create, especially the opening paragraphs. I try to stress that I am only asking them to reword to clarify the point they are trying to get across, but they think the sentence makes sense. And it should make sense to them, they wrote it. Now I must stress that I am talking about 1/3 of the students I have taught. The rest either don't provide me with feedback, or soak up any suggestion I make about improving their writing.
And I'll try not to lament too long about the horrors of trying to grade students' writing. Not only does it take FOREVER... But it is extremely subjective. Even if the only thing I were to grade were proper citation, there are numerous errors that could be made. And trying to pinpoint a number of points off for not using hanging indents, for example, is it more or less than not alphabetizing their sources, or forgetting page numbers for the in-text citation? I've been getting better this semester with using checklists. Last semester I used rubrics based off of the 6 traits of writing. It was better than nothing, but not as specific as I would have liked.
I just wanted to alert everybody of the link I posted below. It is to a site that, unfortunately, sells (I wish they were all free, but they give you a good sample) of educational songs. Some of them I've heard before, but some of them are quite unusual. The misspelled word rap is particularly enjoyable.
http://www.songsforteaching.com/chantsraps.htm
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
"Sometimes they get married to their first drafts and hate to change something they worked so hard to create, especially the opening paragraphs." I really liked this I think it is same for me too. Sometimes it is really hard for me to change something that I have already written. But let’s think about the writing process let’s imagine. Probably in our imaginary bubble there is a writer who is sitting in a chair in front of a window the sunshine comes through the window into room and he starts to write something fold it throw it into the basket. Then, he tries to concentrate on again but no way. He folds the sheet and throws it into the basket again after some other tries finally the inspiration visit him and he starts to write nonstop. At least this is what I have in my imaginary bubble in terms of writing. The writing cycle is the nature of writing. Without pre-writing, drafting, and revising it is impossible to have a good product at the end. I think a movie about this imaginary situation might be helpful for the students to understand the nature of writing.
ReplyDeleteAh-ha, what a good idea for a graduate project...a movie agout the writing cycle--it will redefine the concept of writing for generations to come! :) I too have the traditional image of authors being inspired and sitting down to write the perfect draft/final copy all rolled into one.
ReplyDelete