I was talking to my father yesterday and mentioned that I was having an interesting time working on writing skills with my students. An earlier post talked about my students' journals. They are a way for us to communicate, since I don't have time to talk to each one individually every week, as well as to develop their writing skills. I started to include tips on how they could improve their writing with my normal response to what they wrote. At first they weren't doing what I asked (i.e. write this paragraph again, it looks like you copied it, or I don't know what this word in Portuguese is that you wrote, use the dictionary and write it in English). They weren't even reading my comments. I brought it to people's attention in class and told them they should be reading what I write, if they don't understand they are to talk to me after class so I can clarify. They understood but had the hardest time understanding why I would want them to look back at old things. What a concept! I think I have been editing my writing since I was in the 5th grade. It is so much of a part of my world, and this includes in Portuguese, Spanish, and Malagasy (the other languages I claim to know). Maybe it is my background in literature where I had to write many papers, but writing is a process for me--it can always be improved and worked on. These students have always handed in work, had it evaluated, got it back, looked at the grade, and never looked at the paper again. I believe that if you can find errors in your own work it shows a high level of linguistic sensitivity and attention to detail. It did take me a long time to get used to this process and I still don't do it perfectly 100% of the time, as you can probably see from my blog. It also shows that you know what is grammatically right and what is considered wrong. Many of the students just aren't there yet, but it is truly fascinating to see them go through the process I went through way back when---coming to know their style, finding new ways to see language (the layout of a poem--not just a vertical column), experimenting with different voices, really using punctuation in a new style (Portuguese seems to use soooooo many commas and hardly any periods), and otherwise discovering this ever changing thing they call call EEEeengleeeeesh.
Tuesday
Editing? What's that?
I was talking to my father yesterday and mentioned that I was having an interesting time working on writing skills with my students. An earlier post talked about my students' journals. They are a way for us to communicate, since I don't have time to talk to each one individually every week, as well as to develop their writing skills. I started to include tips on how they could improve their writing with my normal response to what they wrote. At first they weren't doing what I asked (i.e. write this paragraph again, it looks like you copied it, or I don't know what this word in Portuguese is that you wrote, use the dictionary and write it in English). They weren't even reading my comments. I brought it to people's attention in class and told them they should be reading what I write, if they don't understand they are to talk to me after class so I can clarify. They understood but had the hardest time understanding why I would want them to look back at old things. What a concept! I think I have been editing my writing since I was in the 5th grade. It is so much of a part of my world, and this includes in Portuguese, Spanish, and Malagasy (the other languages I claim to know). Maybe it is my background in literature where I had to write many papers, but writing is a process for me--it can always be improved and worked on. These students have always handed in work, had it evaluated, got it back, looked at the grade, and never looked at the paper again. I believe that if you can find errors in your own work it shows a high level of linguistic sensitivity and attention to detail. It did take me a long time to get used to this process and I still don't do it perfectly 100% of the time, as you can probably see from my blog. It also shows that you know what is grammatically right and what is considered wrong. Many of the students just aren't there yet, but it is truly fascinating to see them go through the process I went through way back when---coming to know their style, finding new ways to see language (the layout of a poem--not just a vertical column), experimenting with different voices, really using punctuation in a new style (Portuguese seems to use soooooo many commas and hardly any periods), and otherwise discovering this ever changing thing they call call EEEeengleeeeesh.
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