No University Experience So Far

My first experiences in English at Weber State will happen this semester, as I learn to utilize the skills I have in jotting the English language down on paper. By the time I graduated from high school, I had received a passing grade on the AP Language English test. A few weeks before school at Weber State started the next Fall, I was informed that my passing grade had earned me college credit for both English 1010 and English 2010; this would leave me with no English requirements left to fill before graduating with a degree. However, I happen to enjoy writing a lot, and plan to graduate with at least a minor in English, so I still have courses in this subject in my future.
Since I have not really had any experience in an English 1010 or 2010 classroom, I must resort to my experiences in my AP English class in twelfth grade. Though my classmates and I were still in high school, this class seemed to take on a higher stance than the English classes we had been involved with in the past. Instead of passive grading that most of us were used to, our papers were being returned with red marks and opinions smeared over much of the lovely white background. In my school, there was only one teacher who taught the AP Language course; she had been asked several times to grade the test for which she was preparing us, and planned to return to Florida the next summer to continue her AP grading adventures. I think the thing I learned most during the course of her class was how to consider the audience that would be receiving my paper. I had often regressed to a close-minded view that only those residing in the city of Layton, Utah would understand. I soon learned that considering an audience is one of the most important steps in developing the ideas for a great piece of writing. If even one individual misunderstands what is being discussed, the entire purpose of the writing is lost to that one person. This is a tragedy, for you never know how important a role that one person may play in the communication of your idea. I value this technique I gained in twelfth grade English because it taught me to fully explain myself wherever I may be in life. This has led to my teachers knowing how to communicate concepts to me in the most understandable way possible, and it has led to my writing being accepted on a greater level, all of which has led to my success in many areas.
I guess you could say that I came into university life knowing what I know now about writing. I expect my writing to be an infinitely improving and changing process; one that I may use for accomplishing great things in my life.

English 1010 & Murray

My formal composition experience consists solely of English 1010. I used one of the essays I had written in 1010 to test out of 2010. Because of this, my college comp. experience centers on Professor Watanabe’s 1010 class.

In Watanabe’s class our formal writing instruction came from two sources: Watanabe herself, and Donald Murray’s book Write To Learn. At the time, I had no idea who Murray was or what he stood for. I felt that much of his instruction was formulaic, too step-by step, and broken down into unnecessary, small pieces. Murray took away the necessary hard work of creating a dynamic method. The books step-by-step account described writing as it would be executed by an automaton. Also, and this is the worst part, he took a procedure that could be so natural, and dissected it into a million parts—it was like teaching someone to run by having them write a report on the respiratory system.

All the criticisms I and my classmates had for Murray were not enlightening—at least, not from a pedagogical standpoint. From a teaching standpoint, Murray’s methods have proven themselves again and again. However, from my classes perspective, our reactions were justified. What accounts for this discrepancy? After reading Murray’s article “Teach Writing as a Process not Product,” and other related articles from Cross-Talk In Comp. Theory, I have come to a conclusion as to why both reactions, in the end, support Murray’s methods of teaching composition.

Murray tells us, “We [composition teaches] are coaches, encouragers, developers, creators of environments in which our students can experience the writing process for themselves.” A students discovery of the writing process leads “to a potential voice.” From this search for a potential voice, the student begins to change the process he was taught to fit his own needs. “It is an exciting, eventful, evolving process,” Murray emphatically states.

This process is designed to give students with no formal writing methods of their own, a framework on which to create their own individual process. This process works. But what happens when the student already has substantial writing experience and an established composition method that works efficiently and reliably? Myself and several other students in Watanabe’s class were such students. As we read Murray’s textbook, our individual methods grated with Murray’s generic processes. We were resistant to abandon the methods we had spent so much time developing. Our reactions were completely justified.

Murray’s composition methodology has an heuristic aim—to have the student internalize an individual composition model which allows for self-sustained, self-motivated writing development. This is why myself and other students from Watanabe’s 1010 class were justified in feeling a redundancy to Murray’s process—we had already gone through the process, and we possessed an individual model which Murray was trying to get us to develop in the first place.

This does not imply that we needed no further instruction, but simply a recognition that Murray’s process is taught in order that it may become self-sustaining. Because of this, it applies best to beginning writers. The ongoing process as it applies to the development of style, form, etc., is self-evident—a teacher is no longer needed. Yet, clearly, all of us from Watanabe’s class needed further instruction. How does instruction continue if we are taught an entirely self-sustaining process?

The answer to that question has to be extensive and absurd amounts of time devoted to writing, and reflection on what one has written. This is the obvious answer. Perhaps not so obvious, one has to seek new instruction or criticism from a teacher practicing a different process of composition. We can come to the end of what Murray can teach us because we end up teaching ourselves. However, this does not imply that we will be able to teach ourselves everything. Because of this, we must seek a variety of composition theories and models, exploiting their strengths for our own benefit. Out of this, our individual model becomes a synergy of cooperating composition models, each modified to our individual needs, each processed into our own evolving voice.

My Pre-College Writing Experience

My formal education regarding the general form of writing papers began when I was enrolled in my first Honors English class, in the eighth grade. The class was immediately taught what a proper thesis statement looked like, what it was used for, and where to place it in a properly written paper. Another statement in the introduction was also required, explaining how we intended to support our thesis. We were confined to a five-paragraph format: an introduction, a conclusion, and three paragraphs; each of these three paragraphs was to be devoted to one form of evidence used to prove our thesis statement. By the time I had finished ninth grade, I had grown weary of the five paragraph essay, and rejoiced when I found that some papers I wrote required more or less than five paragraphs to complete.
My high school English teachers acknowledged the infamous essay format most students had been taught during their junior high years, but helped us to realize the vast expanse of English that was available to us. We were shown how to make a thesis statement as concise and to-the-point as possible, as well as shown organizational patterns that would most utilize the information and evidence we had gathered through research to persuade our audience. One of the greatest things I realized while writing papers in high school was that the purpose of the essay is what matters most, no matter how many paragraphs it may take to get your message across. A major theme in my Advanced Placement Language class during my senior year of high school was how to state a position and prove that position without losing an audience due to frequent wordiness. We spent much of the course revising each other’s essays and papers, trying to cut-down on unneeded information and explanations. This technique helped me to realize that though some phrases, words, and sentences may have been important to me because I was writing about something I felt strongly about, they may not have been important to the overall idea of the paper.
When looking back on the years I spent in junior high and high school, I believe I was repeatedly taught Murray’s theory of teaching writing as a process and not a product. My teachers seemed to care almost more about the quality of the way I developed my final draft than the quality of the final draft itself. Most of the assignments in my English classes were focused on the process of writing, which affects the way I write even today. My thoughts tend to dwell more on the way my ideas flow together rather than the way my words flow together. This leads me to the conclusion that I was taught the art of writing as a process and not as a product.

Teaching Someone to Write

It is hard for me to say exactly when I learned how to write in college. I am far from a perfect writer, but writing has always, for the most part, been natural to me. Even though I was not born reading and writing when I learned to do these things I do not remember struggling with the process.

The only formal writing class I have had at Weber, before English 3840, has been English 2010. This class was very helpful for me, but I am not sure that we were actually taught exactly how to write. We mostly read different types of essays and articles to see different styles of writing. Then we would write a paper using that certain style or technique.

Technically, I am an English Teaching major. This is my first semester where the majority of my classes are English classes. As exciting as that is, I purposely took certain classes that would help me decide whether or not I really want to go into teaching. The question, can we actually teach writing, has hit close to home for me. Ever since this question was asked a couple of weeks ago in class I have been thinking about it. Looking back on my former education experiences and my tutoring sessions, I would probably have to say that I can not teach some one to write. The main reason I say this is because I have found that I have a hard time articulating what I know to someone who does not understand. I know that two plus two equals four and I know that a noun is a person, place, thing, or idea, but I do not know how to explain that to someone who does not know these things.

Ok, I have confessed that I can not teach some one to write, let alone tutor someone. I do believe that there are people out there who can. What I would like to know is how can you teach someone to write? There are still eleven weeks left of the semester, so I figure that in order to help my tutees I should find out the secrets behind tutoring.

Good Old WSU

Well I took English 1010 almost four years ago and so it is pretty difficult to remember we did exactly. I think the most beneficial thing that I learned was how to balance sentences. The concept was completely new to me but it improved my writing immensely. I do remember having to read the Hacker pocket handbook. We had a quiz every week and I hated them. I am not sure I really learned anything from them. In any case I finished that class and waited until after my mission to take English 2010.
I’m not sure if it was two extra years of maturity, learning to convey principles in a clear way, or having learned a foreign language but English 2010 was a breeze. We might have read a few essays on writing or even read a little about grammar but mostly we just listened to the teacher talk about how to generate ideas. I got an A on every paper. I can’t say that we were really taught anything. I think that I have learned more in our tutoring class these last few weeks than I learned in my whole semester of 2010.
So I am not really sure what else you want to know. I pretty much explained to you everything there is to know about that. By the way both Bush and Kerry are horrible…..Nader all the way!!!! That for your Layne

Du Duh

As I reach into the extended hole, known as my brain, to find when I learned how to write. I found that my only logical answer is, that I don’t really know how to write. I am a master pretender, fooling myself into believing that I can contribute to the world of literature. I used to think that I was capable of changing lives with my writing. This seems more and more less likely as I continue in my studies. I write like most students do, as you can probably tell, awkwardly trying to manipulate the words on the page to represent me. Or at least the stagnate ideas that are forming in my mind. Honestly I probably should not be a tutor. I should be the tutee. Writing in college is more than most of us realize. Or at least that is what I have experienced.
As I try to wrap my head around the last few readings, I find myself lost in an overwhelming forest of jargon and theory. I write as a release from the world. I advocate the journey of discovering the process of writing. But will we ever reach a finished product, a certainty? A place that we can take students and say, “ this is how you write.” Even if a place such as this exists how do we pass out a map and feel comfortable letting students wade in, in most cases drown.
In college the actual process of writing was never taught to me. The professor required that we just write. If writing was taught in any way it was in trial and error. Papers would come back with red comments scattered throughout, indicating to the students their paper was less than satisfactory. This was not a surprise to most students who expected that their paper will never come back unscathed. I think that one of the main purposes of college is to make us feel inferior so that we will be sufficiently awakened to our need to learn. High school was so easy for most of us that we glided through on little to no effort. Establishing our arrival into life we strangulate the possibility that we don’t know as much as we think do. After becoming motivated it is hard to locate exactly where we should start on our road to completeness. We all need this. We need to become an expert in something. In what is up to us.Being a tutor has helped me to appreciate the position of a teacher. Within every tutoring session that I have, I see a student that has unutilized abilities. Most often tucked in their back pockets, these talents begin to fade into the worn, exasperated life of the student. To me the confusion on how to teach writing is an obvious statement that we are not really sure what we are doing. We simply know that something needs to be done.

Yet Another Question

Reading about all of your experiences learning to write has been utterly fascinating. As I mentioned in class, the question that emerges out of some of the reading we've been doing thus far is simply this: can we actually teach writing? Is such a thing possible?

Now that we're heading out of all of this theory (I promise!), I'd like to see you use this blog to write about your experiences tutoring. You should all have a few sessions under your belt by now. What has the experience been like? I'm specifically interested in hearing you talk about sessions you thought didn't go particularly well, although I'd generally like to see you give voice to whatever questions/concerns you might have about your tutoring experience at this point. Have you had a session that just went horribly wrong? Have you been "adopted" by a student yet? Have you had a resistant student?

College writing

Wow, two posts in just two days. I impress myself. I'm trying to catch up so that I can get my much worried over points for the class.

I never took English 1010. I took 2010, but I read through the class, wrote my paper the way I wanted and got an A. Very useful class, eh? I honestly can’t remember any professor teaching me how to write effectively. I’ve read enough that I recognize the difference between good writing and bad writing. I model my writing after what I consider to be good writing and it works. Perhaps I’m arrogant and not actually a good writer, but I’ve never found anyone to contradict that assumption.

College writing boils down to pleasing the professor, nothing more. Every professor I’ve had has had a particular writing platform. The problem at the beginning of the class is to figure out the professor’s platform and write according to that platform. So, what I learned from one professor is irrelevant when writing for another professor. For instance, I had one professor that was adamantly against using a comma between city and state (don’t ask me why.) Some have outlawed using “I” while others are okay with it. This rule I’ve never heard before about not using contractions is interesting and useful, but when it comes to writing for a different professor, completely irrelevant unless the professor reiterates the rule. Sylvia’s passion for not using commas is certainly not shared with other professors I’ve had who added commas to my papers at an astonishing rate, seemingly at random.

Ooops, I’m heading back to my "jumping through hoops" soapbox. Actually, the jumping through hoops lessons are great for future careers. Bosses like you to jump through hoops, too! I’m so excited! Maybe I’ll get my hair cut to resemble a poodle so that I’ll look like those circus dogs.

Now obviously I haven't written my full 500 words. I suppose I could ramble on about nothing in particular for the rest of the 500 word count, but that would be doing everyone a disservice.

I Do Not Remember

Since this Blog assignment was given I have given a lot of thought about how I learned to write. Truth be known, I really do not (notice how I did not write 'don't, Dr. Rogers taught me that!) remember exactly when, where or how I learned the "process" or mechanics of writing. After reading some of the latest posts, I was reminded of some of the methods my 1010 professor used to help me with my writing. I also was forced to write about whatever was on my mind for five minutes without stopping. I probably wrote about the latest episode of the Simpsons or about how much I hated BYU. I guess it does not (did not use doesn't, see I am still learning to write) matter what I wrote, but what does matter is that I learned that I could write about anything; the universe was the limit and still is for that matter. That is about all I recall from English 1010.
English 2010 was a little different. My professor gave us a list of and tested us on the 10 SENTENCE SINS. I honestly think I have memory problems, because I do not remember a single sin. However, I do remember that when he quizzed us on them I got one of the higher grades in the class......It was a high C I think, I could be wrong, I really don't remember. One thing I do remember is that he said it was next to impossible to get an A in his class; that, I believe, is why I received an A.
I never actually considered myself a good writer until I took a Political Science class and my professor made it a point to tell me how wonderful a writer I was. He backed up this thesis by saying that out of the entire class, my research paper had the least amount of grammatical errors. Believe it or not I do not remember what my research project was on. Anyway, he said I was good and so I believed I was, until I became a writing tutor and had to take this class. So, if I ever do learn to write well, I think I will have to tell people that I learned in English 3840 with Dr. Scott Rogers and Sylvia Newman as my teachers. But even if Dr. Rogers, Sylvia and I succeed and I do learn to write well, no one will get the credit because eventually I am going to forger. I am convinced that I will not remember!

I learned a lot about writing in both my 1010 and 2010 classes.

My 1010 teacher (who gave me an A- despite the fact that I had a 94% in his class- and I’m still a little mad over that, can you tell?) taught writing in many different forms. Because of his method of teaching I realized that I had begun to see prose writing as the only form of writing. He taught me that writing is only one form of communication. He taught me about the wonderful world of ‘subtext’, a principle of communicating and writing that I had never before known. Knowing about subtext has helped me add further depth to plot lines and characters in my stories.

My 1010 professor made us write, meaning we had to write for five minutes without stopping. He wouldn’t allow us to stop and think about what we should write next…it was one continuous span of time where pen did not leave paper. If you didn’t know what to write you would write ‘I don’t know what to write’. We didn’t just write essays. We wrote poems. We made posters.

In 2010, I learned about argument writing. I learned about clear, concise thought and language. I learned that it’s hard to pleas former nuns; that their grading standards are very strict. However, those standards made me a better writer. They forced me to try to get all I could out of every piece, every paragraph, every sentence, and every word.

This professor taught me about claims- that they must be strong. This professor taught me about support- that it must be relevant. This professor taught me about warrants- that they hold the whole argument together. 2010 taught me that argument writing can be the most important, influential writing you can do. This class also taught me that writing a convincing argument is not easy- that there are many pitfalls along the way. Argument writing is where logic, opinion, and scrumdilliumptious grammar grab hands and walk into the sunset.

From 3840, through the readings and responses we must do, I have learned that it is impossible to boil writing down into any succinct elements. There are all sorts of theories about writing- what makes a good writer, what makes a writer good, what makes a good writer bad, and what makes that writer take a .44 to his medulla oblongata (something that I sometimes consider when I read writing theory). However, some of these ‘theorists’ make good points and have insights that are well, insightful. Through this course, though, I have come to firmly believe that not one method is wholly right and not one method is wholly wrong. Take in the good, push out the bad, as Susan Powter (the crazy ‘stop the insanity’ lady) once said. Okay, I don’t think she really said that, but let’s pretend.

Overall, my experience in learning writing has been a positive one. The best part is that I have learned something important in each class. Who knows, maybe if I attend a Weber State English class each semester until the end of my days I’ll actually get my novel published. Isn’t that a novel thought? Pun intended.

By the way, John Kerry looks like Jay Leno and David Letterman had an ugly baby.

blog 4

No one taught me to write. I just write. Funny thing is, I realized I don't really like writing, which is one of the reasons I'm no longer an English major. I'm good at it, but that's just not enough. It comes in handy in the rest of my classes. Since most of my teachers aren't writing teachers, they're easy to impress.

I've known how to read since I was four years old--my brother taught me. That was way back in the olden days when kindergarteners weren't taught to read. We just hung out and finger-painted for half a day so our mothers could relax for a minute. I think all that reading just naturally spawned writing. I can remember writing stories when I was eight. I don't know how good they were, and unfortunately, being a navy brat isn't conducive to collecting childhood memories, so I can't go back and look.

I'm going to whine for a moment. I understand that no one cares.

Am I the only one who tries to read these analyses and has them pass right through my head and fall on the floor? I understand them once we start discussing them in class, but I'm having an awful time focusing on them. I don't speak academese! (I just looked back on this blog, and there are 13 contractions...who knew?) I am trying. I am telling me that even though I may be convinced of my own perfection as a writer, I still need to read and somewhat understand these theories, since I am supposed to be helping other people improve their writing. If I sit all alone in a quiet room with a concentration subliminal in the tape player and read them out loud to myself, I might manage it. That's what I had to do with math.

Okay, all done whining!

I am more comfortable in my position as a tutor now that it has been a few weeks and no one has come in and thrown a tomato at me because they got a bad grade on my advice. I still help too much. I am practicing leaving my pen on the table. It comes more easily than I expected. I get absorbed in it, and then the tutee and I are just working on a paper together. I enjoy it.

Time to sign off and do my job.

BLTN

Better late than never, eh? I'm finally sitting down to write a response to the high school writing question. My mind is rather numb from the repetition of "Tom and Jerry" in the background. My fingers are rather numb from the silicone (no, I did not have finger augmentations) caulk I'm using to "finish" the kitchen. My legs are going numb from a certain little boy that thinks he has to sit on my lap whenever I want to type. So, this should be brilliant! I am comfortably numb (do I have to cite that?)

I missed most of high school. I vaguely remember a few classes and some of the time spent wandering the halls. I think. Maybe that was somewhere else. I, being a bibliophile, perfected the method of reading while walking, "listening" to lectures (I could still comment intelligently on the given subject, which, for some reason, drove my teachers crazy,) eating and most anything else that "had" to be done in high school. I had a harder time reading while writing, since I sometimes ended up transcribing my book rather than filling in the dates for history. I was always in the "advanced" English class since the powers that were thought that if I could write, I could read. I guess I could.

My sister sat down with me when I was in the third grade and explained the glorified five paragraph essay. "First you tell them what you're going to tell them. Then you tell them what you are telling them. Last, you tell them what you told them." She taught me so that I could enter some city essay contest. I didn't win (a blow I have never recovered from. NEVER!)

In Junior High we had the normal "writing process" lessons. The teacher specified the size of note cards we were to use, the process of taking notes, the writing of outlines, the rough drafts and all that. I thought it absolutely silly. I wrote my paper and then went back and wrote my outline. My rough draft wasn’t much different from my finished report. I didn’t get anything out of the exercise (although writing the outline after the paper has come in handy when required.)
In A.P. English I had Mrs. Van Dyke, who was wonderful. I don't remember any specific writing instruction, just many practice essays which were handed back with nothing but a score on top. I’m not sure if I came out of her class a better writer than I went in, but I passed the A.P. test and got my A, which is all that mattered to me.

In school I have always been a task, or product, oriented writer. That’s what I had to do to get by in school, to get the grade– what else matters? That’s still my attitude with most every writing assignment. I don’t see the point in going through the entire "process" when I know that I can research and write an essay in three hours and still get an A. It’s actually become rather boring, on the most part. The whole thing is "jump through the hoop" mentality. Read this, write about it. Read this, write about it. Read this, write about it. Ad nauseam. I don’t think it makes me a better writer, rather, it makes me a sloppy writer.

I’ve been going to college now for ten years off and on (oooh, dang, it’s actually eleven.) I haven’t felt challenged in any class that required writing before (or since) spring semester 2004. Amazingly, I enjoyed the challenge and the writing even though I didn’t get my perfect A. I can see progress in my writing since High School. I’d be surprised if I didn’t. However, I attribute my writing to reading.

HS teaching methods

I don't know if it is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but I don't remember much about my childhood. However vague those memories are, I do remember that teachers were mostly concerned with grammar and punctuation. Structure and content held less weight in the assignments, although meeting criteria for the assignment was essential.

I went to a small high school and there were two english teachers. I had the one that looked like a female member of the SS- not with yellow teeth, or gray teeth, but green. She was a stickler for correct grammar and the relationship between subject and verb. She also had us diagram sentence after sentence- to the point where I felt like I was serving a prison sentence...ha ha, pun intended...but if that wasn't a pun, I apologize.

As I look back, though, writing wasn't stressed as much as english. We perhaps used the five-paragraph essay form- introduction, body, conclusion- but real structure, creativity, etc, were not as important to those teachers.

Another thing I remember is my english literature class which lent itself to appreciation of literature, not learning from literature and making yourself a better writer.

By the way, John Kerry sucks.

The Question:

So here's the question: while considering all this material we've read on writing theory, I'd like to see you all talk about how you learned to write at the university. Did you come here knowing how to do it? Did a teacher teach you? Did you learn from a friend?

Popsicle Stick Method

The first time I learned how to write an essay was in seventh grade. I vividly remember my teacher placing a ziploc bag on each student’s desk. The transparent plastic revealed a combination of colorful popsicle sticks. Listening to my teacher, I dumped the sticks onto my desk. I began to sort the sticks by the different colors. I put the yellow sticks in the upper left hand corner of my desk, the red in the upper right, the blue in the middle, and finally I put the green sticks near the bottom. The different colored sticks represented the introduction statement, thesis, supporting ideas, conclusion, and other tools used in an essay. My teacher would tell the class what color of stick needed to go where to make a correct essay. Throughout my junior high years this method was brought up multiple times. I believe this was a successful teaching tool, but from this way of learning I always believed an essay had only five paragraphs. This was frustrating when I was assigned research papers that were required to be at least five pages. It seems like I had one huge paragraph, that could have been cut into three distinct paragraphs, on each page. Along with formatting the essay I also was taught to brainstorm, create outlines, and revise.

One might think that as soon as I entered college I was corrected of my former wrong doings in essay writing. This wasn’t necessarily the case. My English 1010 class was different from most 1010 classes. Throughout the fifteen-week semester I was required to write four papers. My professor was very vague in the requirements of the paper. Basically, they just wanted us to write our feelings about the things we had discussed in class. I enjoyed the fact that I could write about whatever I wanted to, but this didn’t help me become a better writing. My professor didn’t grade on global or local issues, just whether or not they liked the subject matter. To top it off, during class my professor never taught how to write a college essay, which should be a fundamental concept in a 1010 class.

In my case, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. One of the most dreaded classes on campus is English 2010, but this class helped me in multiple ways. My professor was very blunt in how a college essay is supposed to be written and I learned what weaknesses and strengths I have when it comes to writing. Most important, I learned that writing is a process.

In reading Sam’s response I was struck by the advice he gave his girlfriends brother who is attending Rice: forget everything you know about grammar and punctuation, you utilize them perfectly, so now you can let them go. Focus on making the text come alive.
This is sound advice and worth applying to any of our own writing; however, is this advice able to be given to unskilled writers?

I focus on the idea of the unskilled writer, as the writing of the skilled—in this case, the student at Rice—seems to me a much less problematic pedagogical question. If our writer already utilizes grammar perfectly, the skills we need as tutors to encourage or help him along in finding his own voice are hardly a mystery. The advice you give—make the text come alive—is simply a recognition that what this writer really needs is time and dedication to his writing.

When a skilled writer comes to the writing center, and is both equally skilled in global and local techniques, they are usually there for criticism. This relegates the tutors role to a tertiary level since, as Donald Murray points out, his criticisms are irrelevant. That the student is there in the first place, crafting a written voice, is the important step. The skilled writer already is engaged in writing as a process, and therefore the tutors role becomes: help and encourage with what you can, but most importantly, stay out of the way.

But what advice do you give to those who cannot write complete sentences or are unsure of what separates two paragraphs. Even more perplexing, what about those students who “read in” the missing pieces of their written product? Sondra Perl, in her essay “The Composing Processes of Unskilled College Writers,” finds a case study in the freshman student Tony, who “consistently voiced complete sentences when composing aloud but only transcribed partial sentences…During rereading and editing, Tony supplied the missing endings, words, or phrases and did not seem to ‘see’ what was missing from the text. Thus, when reading his paper, Tony ‘read in’ the meaning he expected to be there.”

What advice or techniques does one start with now? This is certainly not rhetorical, and if anyone has something approximating real advice, I eagerly await it. This is the real issue. The five-paragraph essay or the three-paragraph essay is hardly the issue. Helping an already skilled writer does not inspire a bemused look on my face, especially since the help that a skilled writer needs can only be found when he is alone writing, discovering it for himself. We all know that such conventions as the three-paragraph essay are there for many reasons, none of which are to create inspiring work.

To open up dialogue to an infinitely more pressing and complex issue, how do you help Tony? How do you help an unskilled writer?

High School Writing Experience

My memory of the four years of high school I spent in sunny CDA are quite clear, but anything to do with writing in the classroom I can’t really recall. This most certainly comes from my juvenile conceit I developed in high school: I’m the greatest writer that’s ever been born! Reading some of the papers I have saved from high school, it’s all too clear that that wasn’t the case. But I cherished that conceit in my early school years, and so I can’t rightly say I took the time to notice how we were taught to write in high school.
Most of the classes, if I remember correctly, were made to write a few drafts that the teacher would write comments on, and then go on to revise those drafts into a final paper. The reason I can’t really remember what the requirements were is that a handful of students, including myself, were exempt from that process. We were placed in honors courses that focused exclusively on literature. We would write responses, journals and essays for the literature we read, but the classroom focus never centered on the mechanics of writing unless some glaring mistake needed particular attention. I really don’t know how I was taught to write, and I now know I have much room for improvement, but the art of writing ‘A’ papers for schoolteachers has never been much of a mystery.
I do, however, know where much of my development as a writer took place, and it wasn’t in the classroom. This isn’t a slam against my teachers, but rather a simple statement about my pig-headed inability to use my teachers to my own benefit. My out-of-class experience as a writer came from my fortunate discovery of students from my high school and our neighboring high school who were interested in starting an independent student magazine. The idea was to have everything to do with the magazine—from writing, artwork, layout, to funding—to come from the student body; the finished product then to be distributed free-of-charge during lunch at the end of every month.
Despite all the initial obstacles, the magazine was born. It was titled, “Institution-A-Lies.” Yes, a horribly overblown title, but you must understand that this was born from a bunch of overblown high school students. At its worst, it was a melodramatic flare of righteous indignation, fueled by listening to far too much Rage Against The Machine, reading too much Chomsky, Zinn and Derrida, being obsessed with Che Guevara, and taking bell hooks "Teaching to Transgress" and Paulo Freire’s "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" as cornerstones for attacking our teachers. At its best, it taught me to write news articles, inventive essays, poetry, and above all, to take writing serious as a process in which I am constantly teaching myself to write better than the day before. It taught me basic layout skills, how to use Adobe page maker, and how to be resourceful enough to get the materials to publish the finished product.
Apparently it taught us how to be too resourceful, and we were made to discontinue its publication and distribution after the first year because we had illegally used school supplies to publish it. We had distributed about a thousand copies between the two schools for each issue—each issue being close to 36 pages—and in doing this for the better part of a year, we were accused of stealing thousands of dollars of school supplies in computer software, paper and copy toner. Needless to say, we had no ground to stand on, but neither did the school, and so the magazine soon died. Even though it was short lived, it is certainly my key experience in learning how to write in high school.
In regards to Murray’s essay and my own thinking on how writing should be taught, I’m at a loss. My own personal attitude towards the classroom is that even the best teacher in the best class won’t be able to teach you very much unless you are self-motivated. Eighty percent of what you learn in school will be learned outside the classroom on your own will power. Now with my new job as a tutor, I have to reconcile my feelings of believing that school is mostly an enterprise of self-taught people with how I will attempt to help people in the writing center. I now know that I have to have a different attitude for writing and teaching inside the tutoring center than I do when I’m outside the tutoring center. For example, when something is published, I have no problem tearing it a part if it is poorly written. I owe no writer in the published arena a kind word—they have to earn it. Yet, when someone comes in to the writing center, I have to see that as outside that arena, and give everyone my full attention. I don’t know how my tutoring ideas will change in relation to my ideas as a student over the course of this year, but I’ll have to address those difficulties of reconciliation in another blogger.