We’ve been talking a lot about what makes good writing in Writing 12, examining mentor texts and analysing the impact our feelings about a book have on whether we classify it as good or not. This examination of writing is not exclusive to our class, however – writers and writing instructors all over have wrestled with the idea of what and how to teach writing.
Read about killing the five-paragraph essay and what makes good writing instruction. Then check out this defense of the five-paragraph essay.
In your experience, what has been the most useful in moving your writing forward? What do you wish all English teachers would purge from their repertoire? What do you think writing instructors don’t do enough of?
Explore the topic of writing instruction in the comments below – or on your blog, with a link back to it in the comments to this post.
School encourages writing for students, but only when topics are of interest from an academic standpoint.when I’m writing, the most useful thing in moving my writing forward is being able to revise and edit my work after the fact. This is why I think that provincial exams shouldn’t exist when it comes to english. Students shouldn’t be judged on how well they can write an essay in the span of forty-five minutes without having any time to edit. I know that my best writing comes out when I have had the most time possible to review and edit it.
I feel like writing teachers also need to focus more on how well information given in a piece resinates with the reader, not on how much information is given. English teachers spend way to much time focusing on how well details are being backed up, rather than how the details help to get the point across.
PS: This whole edublogs like dosent even work for the phone app pretty much.
In the dark lords experience, writing is a skill that requires time to be developed. This can only be done by absorbing other texts, as well as practice. Creativity is something that also helps one hone their writing but is often a natural disposition. Writing simply grows as does an individual, the Witch King of Angmar has great knowledge of this subject, being alive for over 500 years and having a previous life as a human has given him great insight into writing.
English teachers should purge the heresy that is the education ministry’s requirements. The curriculum should be none existent and clearly should revolve around chaos. All of the current things English teachers do is necessarily, due to the darkness that is provincial exams. Teachers are not the problem, the problem is Gondor and the education ministry based out of Minas Tirith (Ottawa)
Writing instructors, likely do not give enough time to write. Writing is truly the best way for one to develop there own writing, a reknown author, Saruman the White has spent many ages writing texts from within Orthanc. This has allowed him to become a great writer, his only teacher was Gandalf the Grey, who spent far to much time trying to tell him what good writing was instead of actually writing. Pity the fool.
My experience as a writer has been a road filled with high and low points, bumps, and curves in the pavement. I first began writing in kindergarten soon after I learned how to read, and it was a freeing experience to be given so much power to write about whatever we wanted to. There were no restrictions or criteria to our journals; our teachers gave us the time to write about whatever in order to just get us to practice the art of writing. As the years went on I had a reputation among my teachers to be the best writer in the class, and a lot of them encouraged me to pursue careers in writing when I was older (despite that being over ten years away). We were taught the basics of good grammar and how to write “scientifically correct”, but the content was completely up to us. The freedom with writing and creativity vanished my first year of grade eight, though, when all of a sudden we were expected to conform to the curriculums of teachers and the pre-determined topics. I remember feeling so limited in what I was going to produce, and my content changed from whatever I wanted to write about to whatever I though was going to get me a good grade. Like a stereotypical middle-aged marriage the passion was gone, and it became a chore rather than something I enjoyed to do both in spare time and for school. I will never forget the rare “free writing” project my class was given in my English 10 class, where I wrote a short story that I was both proud and confident in. It felt like elementary school again, and I was able to muster up the creativity from my younger years to write it. It was the first time in a while I was actually excited to get my work handed back, so you can probably imagine my disappointment when I received a 4.5/6. My teacher told me she loved my story but “would have liked it more if (I) had made it more mysterious” as she had been “in a darker mood lately”. How frustrating as a writer to know that your piece would have been graded higher if you’d given your marker a story that fit their current mood.
Since that experience, I truly believe that writing instruction should be kept to a minimum if instructors wish to see true progress and creativity in their subject’s work. While the basic lessons of how to write structurally correct should be taught so that errors do not impede the meaning of one’s work, I feel that restricting the content of someone’s work will impact the product, too.
In my opinion, English class was and always has been, and probably will continue to be, my personal living hell.
For starters, I don’t agree with the way the English teachers mark pieces (no offence Ms. Smith). Every piece of work that I have handed in to any of my English teachers have all been exponentially lower than I expected, and these pieces I more than likely poured myself into. After a little while, I stopped trying because I realized that there was ideally no way to please my markers, even if I did try to appeal to them. Either they didn’t get the meaning even if (asked by multiple peers) it was as clear as day, or they didn’t understand the ending, didn’t like the ending, the story line, etc, etc.
The second thing that almost even hurts me, is that English teachers (again, no offence Ms. Smith, this is just my personal deduction) preach for us to be one hundred percent creative and true to ourselves when writing. To do what ever we please as long as it counts. And then, after they’ve said all these things that makes me get my hopes up, they but extreme barriers and loops we have to jump through for our papers to even qualify to meet their standards. Yes, I understand that English has to have an educational component, but to this extent is kind of ridiculous when talking about a free form piece. And, when I believe I’ve done an amazing job on my work, following everything to the best of my abilities, I receive my marked paper back and it is at least 40% lower than I expected or wanted it to be. This both breaks my heart and enrages me.
Now, with that said I do understand that we need to learn how to do certain things and change to make them better, but none of the comments on my piece, or talking to the instructor, have brought me back with any information on how exactly to get what they would like to see or for me to improve upon. Nothing.
Should English teachers allow more freedom and creativity when marking and reading our works that we obviously spent a lot of time on, I think students would be a lot happier overall, and maybe even look forward to it.
In my experience, I am able to understand the need for criteria that teachers set for us to pursue. However, many of the rules that we strain ourselves with attempting to follow are broken in the books, poems, and pieces of writing that we read outside of a school setting. And still, those stories have been successful with their readers… From my standpoint, it seems as though the guidelines we are instructed to follow hold us back, more than they let us create.
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