Week 1
Of all the texts assigned for this week, Barbara Carney intrigues me the most. Her philosophy on the compromise of process writing seems, to me, the most concerned with authenticity of the writing experience in her classroom. For this reason, I am also drawn particularly to her ideas. Since I envision myself using some of her techniques exactly as she describes them, I want to discuss them here to help me commit these ideas to memory.
Carney emphasizes student ownership and student choice. Often, I have trouble thinking of ways to provide choice for students and still focus them towards the same goal. She gives a simple example of how to provide choice for students: the goal may be for students to write about character analysis but the choice comes in to play when students are allowed to choose which character to write about. This is a small choice that does not affect the overall outcome of the assignment but will inevitably present different challenges to different students based on the character they choose to analyze.
The second point that I’m sure to emphasize in my own classroom is waiting until the end of the writing process to focus on mechanics and grammar. Without giving it much thought, I immediately think that any revision or editing of a piece of writing necessarily includes an emphasis on mechanics and grammar. However, I am now far more inclined to see the advantage of leaving that focus out until the very end of the writing process. Carney points to the ways that revising which concerns itself with focus, organization, and development of ideas naturally works out much of the usage and grammar issues on its own.
There is another way however, that much of the grammar and mechanics are worked out without a focus on spelling, punctuation, and so forth. That is, when students meet as peer tutors, Carney relies on a specific method that I have not been introduced to before now. She arranges two students directly next to one another. Then, the student who writes the paper reads it aloud while the other student follows along. Reading the paper aloud is the part that helps students work out awkward sentences or misused words. The other significant component of this method is that the only person who writes on the paper is the person who composed it. The peer tutor is there to offer suggestions for improvement that the writer can either use or discard. This seems like a powerful tool in encouraging students to take and feel truly responsible for their own work.
I’m impressed with Carney’s attention to creating authenticity in the writing process. I’m also pleased to see that she has invented ways to encourage students to feel personally responsible for their writing. I’m anxious to try this peer editing technique and hope that it helps students care more for the writing they do in school.
Carney, Barbara. (1998) Process Writing in the High School: Fifteen Years in the Making. The English Journal, 85(6), 28-36.
I found a link on the National Writing Project website that takes my thoughts about revision one step further. This article discusses the writing process and how Standard English comes up against other languages.
http://www.writingproject.org/cs/nwpp/print/nwpr/951