During my high school years, the formula for a writing assignment was fairly simple and consistent. Teachers assigned essays, students composed, teachers reviewed and returned essays, and students made revisions based off red-pen feedback written on the essay. At that point, a grade was cemented on the writing via a red pen and entered into a gradebook, never to be altered further.
This pattern largely continued on even into my early college years until an Advanced Composition course I took during my sophomore year. What was different about this particular course? The change was quite simple, yet quite profound; the professor in this course stressed the idea of actually talking about our essays. It seems strange to suggest that such a simple idea as conversing about writing was so revolutionary to me at the time; at this point in my career it seems like common sense.
In this class, students were required to meet individually with our professor in both the prewriting and revising stages of the writing process. These meetings offered us a chance to pitch ideas, ask questions, express concerns, and seek the feedback we needed most as we crafted our assigned essays. Additionally, class time was routinely used to seek the counsel of our peers as we were not encouraged, but rather expected to share our current writing endeavor and solicit meaningful feedback from the rest of our classmates.
In light of this experience, it seems apparent that conversation is a crucial component of effective writing instruction.
Thus, it makes total sense that one major contention listed in the NCTE's "Beliefs about the Teaching of Writing" states, "Writing has a complex relationship to talk." Elaborating on this point, the NCTE states that in multiple contexts, "writing exists in a nest of talk," suggesting that writing often springs out of ideas and thoughts that are rehearsed orally and shared in writing conversations with others to elicit feedback.
In my nine years of teaching, it has become quite apparent to me that this conversational aspect of writing instruction is crucial in the development of young writers. Young writers need the opportunity to talk out their ideas and to have trusted individuals (instructors and peers) act as sounding boards in the prewriting process. Additionally, they need to be offered the opportunity to converse about their writing product as they seek to make the most appropriate revisions based on audience and purpose.
However, in the educational world, time is at a premium for instructors. The pace of public school does not afford the luxury of time for nearly as much face-to-face conversation as most writing instructors would like to offer.
Therefore, it is clear that in an age flooded with digital communication, teachers employ tech-driven methods of extending writing conversation beyond the time constraints of the typical school day. Troy Hicks points out in his book The Digital Writing Workshop that when writing teachers confer with students through digital means "the learning doesn't have to stop at the end of workshop time" (Hicks, ch. 3).
Two ways I've attempted to extend writing conversations beyond the classroom through digital means are as follows:
- Google Drive
- Students used a face-to-face, protocol-driven discussion held during class to elicit initial feedback, but were then asked to continue their discussion by commenting twice on each other's writing while also replying to at least one other group member's comment. I also chimed in on the online discussion.
- Before major essays, students were asked to tweet a preview of their thesis statements by finishing the following statement: "I want to say/show/prove that _____." Thesis previews were to also contain the hashtag #ealove21 so that other students could locate and, if they chose, reply to proposals.
Though I cannot say that my incorporation of these two tools into my courses was flawless on the first attempt, I definitely feel that they did allow for numerous writing conversations that, if confined to the typical class period, would not have occurred.
Ultimately, writing instructors cannot undervalue the relationship that writing has to talk. If writing is indeed to exist in a "nest of talk" as the NCTE suggests, writing instructors must look for the best available means to afford students as much conversation as is possible and beneficial.
Hicks, Troy. The Digital Writing Workshop. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2009. Kindle.
"NCTE Beliefs about the Teaching of Writing." NCTE Comprehensive News. National Council of Teachers of English, Aug. 2007. Web. 13 Mar. 2013.
Posted with Blogsy
No comments:
Post a Comment