I had to actually check the copyright day for
Within and Beyond the Writing Process in the Secondary English Classroom (phew! what a title). All the of the information seemed so common sense to me, yet the authors seemed to pose it as revolutionary. But, as I thought about it, the only time I have ever experienced writing instruction as a process has been in either a college-level creative writing course or one of the U of M's writing intensive courses. In thinking back on those courses, though, they are the ones that have stuck out as courses that have really improved my writing. I am not the type of person who will automatically revise my paper or even think much about how it will look or sound before I write it. You can say that I'm a very lazy writer. I usually procrastinate until the last moment, write it, turn it in and never look at it again. Yikes! However, with workshops, I have actually been proud of my papers and I put a lot more love and dedication into them when I am forced to collaborate and revise. Now if only I could just make that a part of my natural writing habit....
I suppose the point I really want to make is making writing a process instead of a one-chance assignment seems like common sense, but it's not as wide of a practice as we'd like to think. If we add multi-genre papers and student-chosen paper topics, we can argue as to whether those help students become better writers or not. Teaching writing as a process, though, doesn't seem like an argument to me. Plus, it makes grading easier and more enjoyable.
Brittany,
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your thoughts on the reading. Throughout the chapter on teaching writing as a process, I also kept thinking that it was really common sense information. But you're right. Even though it's supposedly common sense information, writing is not commonly taught as a process in middle and high school. I keep thinking about "the writing process" posters that Amy Corrigan had hung above her white board. They listed the steps of the process from pre-writing through publication with little arrows in between each step, pushing the writer on to the next step with no option to repeat steps or go back and redo a step. It makes you wonder why teachers are so eager to boil the "writing process" down into a few easy steps that writers can complete to easily turn out wonderful writing. It's interesting to see how teachers call writing a "process" yet don't treat it as one, still giving students one-change assignments and treating each step in the writing process as tasks that are completed if done once.