I really enjoyed all of the reading for this week. Each piece connected to one another and I appreciated all of the perspectives that I was presented with. Additionally, I am starting to become more comfortable with the idea that every error does not need circled, crossed out, or changed. It's beginning to make sense, especially as I look back on my own experience as a student in middle and high school (and sometimes even college.) I can see that the marks on my papers did not always lead to an epiphany about what I did wrong and how to make it better.
To begin, I was struck by the excerpt from Steven Zemelman and Harvey Daniels' book, A Community of Writers. With the help of this chapter, I realized that the process of evaluation that English teachers put themselves through is ridiculous. I have never been forced to see this concept through such a perspective, as I have spent my life believing that as a student, it was for my own good to see all of my errors highlighted and that as a teacher in the future, it would help my students to correct their mistakes. Zemelman and Daniels write that this process is actually detrimental to students. They state, "In our attempt to be scrupulous, we overload the learner. Imagine yourself trying to learn any new content or skill this way; if your instructor insists on telling you every aspect of everything you did wrong on every attempt you ever make, you will probably feel overwhelmed and unable to sort out the key elements you need to focus on in your next attempt" (5). It seems that the cliche concept, "less is more," is true not only for makeup application and salt seasoning, but that it also is true for paper correcting.
Jeff Anderson, author of Mechanically Inclined, agrees with Zemelman and Daniels. Anderson mentions that students can only do so many things at one time. Therefore, a paper with unlimited markings will not help them to distinguish the patterns of their mistakes. Zemelman and Daniels' piece also connected well with Anderson's writing in how to justify the absence of red marks on students' papers. While Zemelman and Daniels suggest that one would not correct every mistake in the speech patterns of a toddler, Anderson writes similarly that one would also refrain from redrawing and correcting a child's art work. Anderson's example really got through to me as a writer. Writing is a process that I regard as a form of art, and as an aspiring writer, it has historically been painful to be heavily criticized about my work, whether it be about my grammar and mechanics or content. Perhaps if students were allowed to have this kind of personal pride in their work, knowing that it is their creation and not just a spattering of words carefully pasted together to match a certain criteria or rubric, they would care more to perfect it for their own sake.
Harry Noden seems to have many ideas about the connection between writing, grammar, and art. Noden outlines "Five Basic Brush Strokes" that are meant for writers to use in order to create their work. These brush strokes consist of five grammar concepts: the participle, the absolute, the appositive, adjectives shifted out of order, and action verbs. After reading about how each of these "brush strokes" help to intensify images and improve overall writing ability, I became very interested in how this method would be used in a classroom. I think it would be interesting to introduce this idea to students, describing these five steps as their tools for writing well throughout the class. It seems that this process could work well, as students would be taught what each concept is, how to use it, and be guided into putting the new skills into practice.
Anderson's method of teaching grammar in context is equally interesting. Anderson suggests that teachers pull small excerpts from the writing of actual novels, short stories, magazines, etc. These excerpts would be used to highlight how grammar is used in actual literature, rather than misused in erroneous sentences used for Daily Oral Language exercises on the blackboard. Anderson also suggests that teachers use student writing as models for sharing as well. Using good examples versus bad ones seems to be a really powerful concept. Why show students examples of bad writing to correct, when you could show them examples of exemplary writing to model themselves after? I think that it would be great to make a lesson consist of the literature that a class is currently studying and use examples from the text of passages that are well-written. These examples could be immediately used in another connecting exercise in which students do a journal entry about the story or a topic of their own choosing, but also have to use whatever device has been taught.
The combination of these readings with the readings previously used for class suggest that the more a student practices and is exposed to language and grammar within the context of reading and writing, the better they will get at it. I think that in teaching English, it will be vital to encourage students to read and write outside of class as much as they can, not because they have to, but instill a reason for them to want to do these things. Perhaps students could keep journals in class that the teacher does not look at, or at least not correct. The larger question seems to be, however, how do you convince a student that they love to read or write? This was not a difficult conclusion for me to come to, but how did I get there and is it possible to bring other students to that point?
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