Maybe it is just me, but I found myself digging into other chapters that are assigned later in the course to truly be able to answer this question: Which view of writing described in this chapter corresponds most closely to your experiences? Especially Freeman Ch 2. So you will see reference to ideas that come from that chapter within this post.
Since I am 20 years removed from high school, I know that in many ways I was taught that writing was a learned process. One where the strategies were broken down into logical steps and presented by the teacher. For a mind that was once an Engineer, it makes sense. Occasionally, I would have peer editing, but it was mainly this a situation where the teacher was the "all knowing" while the students had to learn the process to perfection.
As a teacher, I have found myself leaning more toward an acquisition approach to writing. I have discovered working with partial proficient and non-proficient writers that they need a combination of both styles when at the high school level. They need the direct guidelines for how to accomplish longer essays, but also need the freedom to bend and twist the "rules" in order to establish solid explanations of what they are wanting communicated.
The other key point is that they need to become aware of audience. When they are writing for a teacher alone, they do not always produce their best writing. When they are writing for peers and others, they tend to want to show off more and spend more time working to perfect their writing.
I agree with your statement that struggling secondary writers need a combination of approaches. I actually believe that all children struggling or not would benifit from a combination of styles. The direct guidelines are necessary to meet the requirements of the writing assignment, but I agree with the need to be flexible. That flexibility leads to much more creative writing, and sometimes the creativity makes the stories or assignments worth reading.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your insights.
Jennifer
Matt, Interesting observation on audience: when students are writing for a peer audience, they are often more motivated to produce their best work. I wonder how this relates to ELL's; what do you think: are ELL's also more generally motivated to put forth better effort when they have a peer audience?
ReplyDeleteHiedi -
ReplyDeleteFrom what I have seen, I think that ELL's do put forth better effort with a peer audience. My opinion is that they feel more comfortable knowing that their peers are progressing much like they are. For many ELL's, academic teachers appear intimidating and unapproachable due to a variety of cultural reasons. That can be an obstacle that has to be overcome in order to aid ELL's in reaching high success in content area classes.