Writing Module Reflections

This overlaps with some of what I wrote in my last post.

The writing module was a little disappointing to me when I consider the excitement with which I approached it in the beginning. I don’t know what I expected, but it seemed that the process writing explanation was formulaic. I don’t mean to say it’s not useful, because it is not only useful: I believe it will be essential in teaching, and has years of implementation behind it. But I felt the exercises and discussion were dry and unimaginative. Instead of leaving me with the thought, “These are great tools. Now I can make them my own, and apply my own imagination,” I had a sense of, “Oh. Writing teaching is pretty boring.”

It began with the presentation of the Raimes chart, I think, whose model of writing process steps we used as central to the analysis of the teaching process. I didn’t like the Raimes chart. I didn’t agree with its distinctions in the writing process Again, I’m not (of course) saying it’s wrong, because she’s the expert and certainly all the elements she describes are integral facets of writing. Maybe it’s just because my mind isn’t analytical and I don’t like seeing writing chopped up like that. Maybe what bothered me most is that there must be other writing models we could have at least been introduced to, that conceptualize the writing process/phases/skills differently, even if only slightly differently. I resent being told: “You’ll be using this model for this whole unit.” It’s a frustration with this program, that I feel I don’t have enough context for what I’m learning. If there isn’t another writing expert with a different system of parsing the writing skills, then I’d like to know that. Even if the analysis came from someone outside the field, that would have helped, and there are scores of writers who have explored this process. I’ve been around too long to want to gobble up what I’m told without knowing where it’s positioned relative to other thinking in the field. Perhaps if I’d been inspired by her model, I wouldn’t even have noticed.

I’m only saying that using only Raimes’ conception of the elements that go into writing (writer’s process, mechanics, grammar, syntax, word choice, etc.; I can’t find the chart) was monofocal. (I think I just made up that word.)

I disliked the exercise in class that demonstrated the process approach. First, I was not engaged by the idea: to write about “our favorite object.” To the contrary, I rebelled against it. In part it was my state of mind. I was feeling private. In part it was, I guess, because I have attitude about writing. And last, I thought it was a totally predictable, unimaginative idea. So out the gate, I was not engaged. It is interesting to note, regarding subject matter, that if a teacher introduces an exercise that doesn’t engage the student — or worse, alienates him/her — they run the risk of losing that student’s attention for the whole exercise. That’s what happened with me. I thought it was a stupid idea, and my attitude got bad. I did go through all the steps, and engaged as thoroughly as I could. But I had this rotten feeling inside the whole time: “I don’t want to be here. This is stupid.”

What could a teacher do under those circumstances? How do they know if a student is interested or not, engaged or not? At SIT they keep telling us to “play the believing game” which I hear sometimes as “suspend disbelief” and other times as “just quit your whining and do it.” That’s too easy. The average student might not buy that. So how does a teacher handle that? Actually, I don’t know, and I’d like to ask one of our experts. Can one present a choice of two or three topics instead of just one? That might help. The fact that a student is given choice is symbolically helpful, even if they don’t like any of the ideas. And with more choices, they’re more likely to find a better fit. The other option that comes to mind is to ask the students to generate a topic, but that’s harder, and too broad, and someone will feel left out.  Maybe an experienced teacher could pull that off.

So I wasn’t engaged but was duly doing the task. I wrote about my “favorite thing.” Then I had to discuss it in pairs with several different people. I didn’t want to talk about my scrapbook (my classroom scribbling is included below), and I wasn’t particularly interested in other people’s favorite objects. I think the latter was because, possibly, other people weren’t into the idea so their topics bored me. One said her favorite object was her iPod. I forget the others. Except Natalia, whose favorite object is the ring she wears, and it does have a real story and significance to her. I’m sure I was just as boring to the others as they were to me, because it was all I could do to force myself through this talking phase. I didn’t have the motivation.

Then we broke into new pairs for peer review. I was with an international student who wrote about a watch her brother had given her. That, too, was meaningful for her and I appreciated her story. Her written English has many errors per sentence, so it was hard for me to read it and know what to say. Our first editorial pass, cleverly, is to look at content, and I though that was a great idea. We underlined two sections we thought were particularly notable and explained why, asked for clarification on what we didn’t understand, and suggested additional detail that would be helpful. That part was nice and concrete. Still hard to do with a topic that hadn’t inspired passion in some.

Less satisfying was the critique I got of my work. “It’s perfect.” Now, had she said anything else, I would have been cranky because a) I thought it was decent for the scope of the project and b) I’ve done a lot of writing so I don’t want advice from someone who hasn’t (which is very arrogant of me) and c) I didn’t want to revise something I didn’t care about. So I got to wondering — and asked in class — about what one does when Ss are very different levels. Because I felt that I was doing all the work and reaping none of the writerly rewards. Had I been tutoring her, it would have been fine. But since this was designed as an exercise to benefit both parties, it was frustrating. I think it’s good for a more seasoned writer to mentor a less-seasoned one. But I think the success of that is predicated on a mutually interesting writing assignment, and on the less-experienced reader’s comments relating not to style but only to what they, as a reader, feel. As it was, I was feeling resentful about the whole exercise which seemed like a waste of time. I’m not sugar-coating; I’m admitting this as my own flaw as well as a possible shortcoming in the lesson. And I think my problem stemmed, again, from my lack of engagement in the topic. Since I’m an SIT student, I did it anyway; not all students might be so willing.

By the time we got to the second peer review, I was exasperated, though I hope I hid it. Again, I spent time with my international student, correcting her grammar. It was hard to know where to begin. I believe we have an error-correction session coming up and I look forward to that. When there are so many errors, where does one begin? Just single out one type of error? Go through sentence by sentence? One thing that I’d heard about, but hadn’t witnessed, is how intermediate and advanced speakers of English can often self-correct when they read aloud.

I had to get up and come to class in the middle of this, so I’ve lost my stream of thought.

I still want to make writing an interesting experience and, from this experience, think that it’s essential that everyone be interested in the topic. Also I think it may be good to pair students of similar abilities, unless the exercise has a different focus whereby it’s specifically for a stronger writer to help a weaker one.

Class has begun.