For some of us, writing was tortuous
as teachers drilled us with the 5-paragraph format. I remember struggling with
my writing assignments. The only form of writing I ever did in grade school, was the dreaded 5 paragraph essays. I couldn’t grasp the idea of writing to an audience,
when I knew my only audience was my teacher. It was as if I wrote without a
real purpose, which made it extremely tedious. High school was much worse as my English classes were a joke. I did most of my writing in my Chemistry class doing lab reports.
If my teachers would have done more work on the
front end, explained the real-world writing purposes and modeled the thinking
process that goes into writing, as discussed in this week’s readings, my
writing may have been more genuine and thorough. Or even showing me samples of writings
in the different forms, would’ve been beneficial. As the authors have continuously stressed
throughout Chapter 7, the entire process of writing (even reading others’
writings) allows students to become actively involved in the process of
constructing meaning and creating their own text from it.
Maribel, that is exactly how I felt and what I went through during my elementary school when I was learning the basics of writing. Maybe we went to the same school? It sure sounds like it! We would always use the same strategies to get ideas down, webs. Those darn brainstorming webs were what we learned to help us get ideas flowing. But as we learned this week, and have been learning, there are so many other ways that we can get writing; all things you mentioned in your post. The thought of me teaching my students these different ways excites me. If only I was taught this when I was younger I would probably enjoy writing today!
ReplyDeleteNot only would I have benefited form those little fun things but the importance of it. Yes, I was constantly reminded that I NEEDED to write properly. I was also told that I NEEDED to learn how to write, but I was never told exactly why I needed it. If teachers would have explained to us why we needed it and how it would benefit us in the future, it would have felt more worth while. The same goes for every subject. Sometimes it feels like we are just learning things because they could not figure out what else they wanted to teach us.
I'm sure this reminds many of us of our school writing experiences. English was never my favorite subject as I enjoyed it much more for the reading than the writing assignments. And like you, I did a lot of my writing in my sciences classes in the form of lab reports and our teachers never taught us how to connect these two forms to show us that all writing is connected and all writing is beneficial to us.
ReplyDeleteSimilar to you as well was that I didn't understand the idea of writing to an audience, I don't think I ever really gave that concept much thought until this class. But now that I have been thinking about it I realize that it was never taught to me in school either. All the writings I did (besides lab reports) were simple essays with one main argument per paragraph with an intro and conclusion (the horrid 5 paragraph essay). Not until I became a college student did I learn that I could write any way I wanted! I could have uneven lengths in my paragraphs, I could write with more style, and especially, I was finally able to write with some personal voice. But unfortunately for many, we do not learn this until college and for a lot of students college never becomes a reality. For too many, the writing we learn in high school causes students to despise writing from an early age and they never learn the joy and real life applications of having proper writing techniques.