Writing has many forms, styles and genres. Part of the appeal of writing is its varied forms of expression. When teaching writing, one must attempt to expose students to this variety and the capacity for freedom of expression that writing offers us, in addition to the structures of grammar, sentence form and paragraphs. This difficult balance is necessary if teachers hope to cultivate a love of writing in their students.
In my experience, students are eager to participate in writing assignments early in the year when many of the assessments have a personal and creative bend. Yet, as the school year progresses, teachers focus mainly on paragraph structure and grammar which begins to become the sole focus of student writing. This structural focus eventually disengages young writers in the English classroom.
Part of the struggle that surrounds the teaching of writing is the daunting process of grading written work. In reaction to the complaint that the grading of writing is at times subjective and arbitrary, many teachers of writing have adopted rubrics to guide the grading process. Unfortunately, in many classrooms, the rubric based approach to grading leads to the teacher focusing on the easily measurable aspects of writing such as grammar and form. If this is the case, classroom feedback regarding writing leaves students correcting surface errors instead of analyzing style and purpose.
One solution I see to this dilemma is to treat writing as an individual process. Although it is a challenge to manage in a classroom, teachers must strive to treat students as writers with their own style, strengths and weaknesses. In this format, student conferencing and dialogue journals would function to support each student individually. Also, teachers would have to break the habit of relying solely on rubrics as a form of feedback. Students should maintain writing portfolios throughout the year. If used properly, writing portfolios will allow teachers and students to monitor individual growth in their work throughout the year.
In order to teach students to become writers, we must treat them as writers; as individuals expressing ideas. Although form and structure should be taught and individually monitored, teachers cannot afford to cut corners and leave the art of writing behind.
Hi Michelle - thanks for sharing. I think that you raise two really great points – the first about the difficult balance between free writing and the restrictions of grammar, style and form. It is a definite struggle I face all of the time – especially with 9th graders. I find that my students love to write about themselves and can’t separate their own exeriences with those that we reading and learning about in class (I’m not convinced this is always a bad thing.) They want to start every essay off with the phrase “In this essay I am going to show you…” and they want to conclude by stating “In conclusion, I feel…” Adolescents are essentially self-centered and so it seems accurate that they struggle to think outside their own experience and feelings. Tied to this the dilemma of the five-paragraph essay. It seems that we sacrifice so many other lessons in order to drill this one form into our students heads (but, don’t they need form and structure?) They certainly need it to succeed on state exams – an 11th grader would be hard pressed to pass the English Regents without some working knowledge of how to structure an essay the “correct” way.
ReplyDeleteIt seems ironic that I spend so much time teaching and reinforcing this model in 9-11th grade and then in 12th grade I spend a good chunk of time trying to undo the 5 paragraph beast. In a series of lessons I’ve titled “Five paragraph essay damage control,” I try to get my college bound writers to understand that the intro-3 body-conclusion is not the answer to everything. It takes time to break some of them – some of them never believe me.
Your second point about grading writing is another really interesting topic. Rubrics are great, but they are not the answer to everything. They can be very stifling.
I love the idea of writing portfolios, but have never had much success with them – I would love to know how you made them work for you ☺