Makin' Plans: Learning how to Write

One of the main points in the article that I brought up in my last post is planning and brainstorming. The authors give a few examples of how to go about this process and what the students can do to practice using it.

11.       Select a topic. This is a pretty basic idea, but can actually be one of the hardest. I love writing and always have. I love the process of it and the way it makes me think. But the hardest part of completing a writing assignment (for me, at least) was choosing a topic. It took me days and a ton of partially written stories/essays before I found one that I really jived with. One of my (probably bad) habits is thinking of a really great title, and then working from there. But the title helps me think of what exactly is the topic that I am writing about.

22.       Write out a plan. This can be tough for a lot of students. Many students just want to jump in and start writing, putting all their thoughts down on paper. Instead, we should help them see that writing a plan will help them in the long run. They will have less thinking to do in the middle of their writing if they do most of it now. The actual writing process will go a lot more smoothly and quickly if they know what they are going to write before they write it.

a.       For Story writing, think of who the characters are and what their goals are. Once you know the characters, you know how they will act. I had a professor once that told me when writing fiction, one should keep notebooks for each character and write everything about them—their history, their favorite color, their fears, etc. Once you have the characters figured out and the plot set, the story basically writes itself since you know the characters so well. I have tried this, and it works amazingly!

b.      For persuasive papers, think of questions like “what do I believe,” “why do I believe that,” “what are my best reasons for believing it?” Once students figure out their thoughts, they can basically treat the paper as a fill-in-the-blank.

c.       Brainstorm “million-dollar words.” Have students think of words that will make their paper stand out. Think of words connected to the topic, then turn to the dictionary and thesaurus to find other associated words, especially ones that have more nuance and are better suited to the situation. Think of Gee’s secondary discourse idea, and help students understand that certain words are better used for different types of writing. Once they have a grasp on basic vocabulary, they can better write the paper.

33.       Use the plan, but don’t be afraid to modify it.  Some students are so stuck to plans that they have a hard time veering away from them, even if it turns out they weren’t the best to begin with. Remind them that writing is a transaction between them and the text (Rosenblatt!), and if the text they are writing isn’t really doing them any favors, it is perfectly ok to abandon them and try again.  They need to make sure that the transaction is fruitful. 

Harris, K.R., Graham, S., Mason, L.H. Improving the Writing, Knowledge, and Motivation of Struggling Young Writers: Effects of Self-Regulated Strategy Development with and without Peer Support. American Educational Research Journal, 2006. 43(2), 295-340.

Setting Goals, Self-Monitoring, and Self-Instruction: The Writing Trifecta

As is evident from the title of this article, one of the primary goals of teaching kids how to write is to teach them how to write for themselves, without constant guidance from peers or instructors. Reading and writing are tasks that can be difficult for some, and a lot of students simply rely on constant prodding from their teacher to get things done in the right way at the right time. This is somewhat counterproductive; what we really want students to learn is to regulate and monitor themselves, their own progress, and their successes.

But how do we do that? Where do we have to begin to help students develop the skills necessary to complete projects and assignments on time? And can we do it?

The authors of the article mention three suggestions of what to focus on for teachers looking to help their students become more self-sufficient with their writing.

11.       Goal setting.  In school, students assume that the permanent goal is to get the assignment done in time. More motivated students will have a certain grade as their goal. Rarely do students, even the exceptional ones, set a personal goal for themselves and their learning during a certain project.  Tragically, as they focus on superficial goals like due dates letter grades, they ignore the larger idea of learning. Indeed, much of high school education focuses on numbers instead of individual learning that students seem to be an obstacle for teachers to get good results and show how successful they are as educators.  However, when we help the students know that their personal learning should be the goal, we are better able to emphasize personal growth and a stronger motivation to do the work. When you have the right motivation, you get the right results.

22.       Self-monitoring. The old cliché goes: “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” The same is true for students. You can give information and facts and a wealth of knowledge to students in the classroom, but if they don’t have the motivation to learn it or the self-sufficiency to learn it, all of that knowledge is just floating around the classroom. Often times, the metaphorical horse needs to be taught to take care of himself.  Self-monitoring is the process by which students can track their own progress without having to have constant guidance. It takes a lot of practice to reach a point where students take initiative to keep track of their work, and most of this practice happens in college. Wouldn’t it be so much easier for students to learn this sort of self-control in middle school?

33.       Self-instruction. This is a tricky subject. For all of these ideas, planning has been the focus of the research done in the article. Helping students learn how to lay out a proper plan to guide them through the process of whatever activity they are working on is a huge step. However, this part of the process is probably the most difficult. Students are still learning to learn at this point. They are learning to read, learning to write, and learning how to synthesize information and remember it. It takes a lot of practice. When they are told that they are expected to learn information on their own, they may feel incredibly overwhelmed. However, this is a process that merits much attention; it’s not just a writing thing, or a learning thing, or a school thing. Learning how to learn on your own, how to come up with ideas, how to make sense of other people’s ideas is a skill needed for navigating the world, and the sooner students learn it, the better. 

Teaching Writing

At my job here in China, we begin with the basics of English—the alphabet, “What’s your name?”, “how old are you?”, “how are you?” “what is your favorite color/animal/food.”  Our curriculum goes pretty quickly, but usually the students learn well and with repetition can answer those questions and recite the alphabet by the time they finish the first two levels.  When they reach the third level, they have a good foundation for beginning to read and write in English.

Once in a while, however, there will be a couple of students that slip beneath the radar, and we discover that they don’t know the alphabet, and can’t answer simple questions.  When this happens, it is difficult to know what to do. We can’t hold them back, because their parents pay a lot of money for these classes. Individual attention is hard to give in these classroom settings. So what do we do?

Harris, Graham, and Mason (2006) address these concerns in their article Improving the Writing, Knowledge, and Motivation of Struggling Young Writers: Effects of Self-Regulated Strategy Development with and without Peer Support. They admit that “waiting until later grades to address literacy problems that have their origin in the primary grades has not been particularly successful” (p. 296). It is necessary, therefore, to be on constant watch for problems that may arise in the young grades, and especially to be vigilant about 
preventing these problems from arising.

So far in this blog, I have talked about reading and learning to read. This post, however, focuses on the need to write. One of the course questions is as follows:

“What is the difference between writing to communicate and writing to learn? How are both important?”

As I began reading this article, I was made to think of the process of writing to learn, and also learning to write. Much like learning to read, especially within a certain context or subject, learning to write can be a daunting task for young students. Different styles are appropriate for different subjects (think creative writing vs. history, or an academic research paper on Shakespeare vs. a school newspaper article). When students learn to read, they often mimic the style of writing they read, which is useful insofar as it is used correctly and creatively. Practicing copying writing styles is a helpful practice for students to become familiar with different types of writing and find what they are most comfortable with, often combining styles to create their own unique flavor.

Learning to write is one thing, but then we are faced with the idea of writing to learn. To me, this is an easy concept to understand because I have seen it work in my educational career. I studied English in college because that is what I felt most comfortable with. However, I still had to take those damnable General Education classes, consisting of things like biology and physical science. I had a hard time understanding concepts, no matter how vigilant I was at sitting in the front of the class, taking notes, and reading the textbook. It wasn’t until I had to write an essay or short paper that I was able to synthesize the information and it finally made sense. One of my favorite classes I took in college was Bio 100. There were no tests, but weekly article readings and essays. When I had to write about what I was reading, I learned it. I was able to make sense of the information and tell it in a way that made sense to me.


In my next post or two, I will continue to discuss this article, and the way it emphasizes improvements for teaching writing in classrooms. 

Sumerians, Lists, and Learning

"Thousands of years ago, the Sumerians already understood that the teaching of reading should include explicite attention to multiple aspects of language."

This sentence stood out to me as I read Wolf's article on her response to Strauss' article. As I continued reading I became more and more intrigued by the way ancient civilizations emphasized the need to correctly learn and use a language through reading and writing.

Wolf uses several studies to point out how the Sumerians emphasized reading. They were extremely analytical, and left little to played around with, in regards to language. When a new scholar was learning to read, they were given lists of words that had commonalities amongst them.These were mostly semantic and visual. The reader would spend a lot of time learning these lists and the ties between all of the words. Once those lists were mastered, a second set of lists was given out. These words were interconnected mostly through phonetics. 

Teachers focused on teaching reading nowadays will recognize similarities in instructional methods between current practices and the Sumerian manner of teaching reading. Lists of words that sound the same, that mean similar things, or that have common patterns have been used for thousands of years, and prove the necessity of learning words in connection with other words so as to create meaning, understanding, and word-memory.

A Sumerian cuneiform lexical list.

After mastering the basic lists, more lexical lists were given to young learners with words that represented a visual picture of the morphology of the language, or grammatical lists that focused on syntactical uses of different words and phrases. In this way, readers were instructed in the multifaceted construction of language, thus enabling them to better understand what they were reading and why those words existed. I imagine this also helped comprehend the nuances of the language, something that is difficult to learn.

When I was in high school, I created my “word list.” This was simply a list of words I liked, words I wanted to know, words I thought sounded good. When I learned a new word, I put it on the list, and from time to time I would review the list and make mental connections. I would consider the roots of the word, the implications of it, and its aesthetic pleasantness. I learned lots of new words and was able to use them effectively in my writing.

I feel like my list, like the lists used in Sumeria, was a great help in becoming more literate and able to communicate my intentions in my writing, because not only was I learning distinct words, but how they connected with other words and ideas. Writing down the words in one place made them easy to find and refer to when I needed them, and also helped me remember them for use at a later time.

This article as a whole, I found, was a good example of an answer to the course question of “How do people become literate?” The article focused on the micro-aspects of becoming literate. That is, the more we understand the intentions and constructs of the language, we understand how to use it better. In my opinion, that’s what literacy is—not simply being able to read or understand the language, but being able to use it effectively, in a way that allows the user to express his feelings, thoughts,  and ideas.

Maryanne Wolf tends to focus on the process of reading and its implications within the arena of disorders and other reading issues. I am quite interested in learning more about what she has to say about teaching reading, especially when the odds are stacked against the teacher and student.

References:

Wolf, M., Kennedy, R., (2003). How the Origins of Written Language Instruct Us to Teach: A Response to Steven Strauss. Educational Researcher. 32(2), 26-30.

A Proper Introduction, Prezi Style

I realized that my introduction was a little shoddy, and after reading some of my classmates' intros, I thought I would give it another shot.

Instead of giving you all the run-down of my life, I'm including a link for an introductory Prezi that I did for another class.

Spoiler alert! Religion, Sex, Feminism, World Travel!


See the Prezi HERE

Phonetics and Aesthetics

As I mentioned in my previous post, the alphabetic system has been accused of being flimsy by some, while at the same time being praised as logical and natural by others.  I find it hard to side with either argument because I can see where they are each coming from.  However, I feel more inclined to side with Ms. Wolf.

English is a hard language to learn. I see that in my TEFL students now. Reading is difficult because of the silent letters and homonyms and all other sorts of strange pronunciations. Wolf’s article explains that these anomalies in pronunciation hold intrinsic value to understanding where words come from and what they mean.

I just had a conversation with a friend about the alphabetic system, Chinese characters, Korean characters, and the phonetic alphabet. It was quite interesting. We talked about how learning to read Chinese is extremely difficult because of the sheer number of characters, and how they give no hint as to pronunciation, but rather meaning. Korean has been identified by many linguists as the most perfect written system there is. The characters are easily readable (once you know the system) and give hints as to how the mouth should look when each syllable is being read, which helps with pronunciation. One of the tools we have in English (and other Roman alphabet-based languages) is the phonetic alphabet. My friend argued that the alphabet we have now could easily be replaced by the phonetic alphabet to help students begin to read. The pronunciation is standardized and there will be no homonyms or silent letters to trip kids up.

My issue with this is what Wolf mentions earlier in the article, that the way words are spelled gives clues to understanding their roots and morphology. If all words had standardized spelling using the phonetic alphabet, there would be no clues as to what the word actually means. Sure, they would be easier to read, but more difficult to understand, especially for adolescent readers that should be starting to understand prefixes, suffixes, and roots of words from Latin, French, etc.

As I teach students here in Beijing, I realize that doing so would be so much easier if we used the phonetic alphabet. Indeed, I like to teach it to my older students and use it often to correct pronunciation. But this wouldn’t help in the real world, and in my opinion, would be shortchanging the kids’ learning experience.  I’m an aesthetic reader, I suppose, so I love reading for more than just information. I love the nuance of language, including the way words are written. Some words just look better than others.  Teaching students to read and appreciate the alphabet does more for their knowledge than a simply oral-based approach, or one that uses the phonetic alphabet exclusively.

One thing to remember is that this kind of reading (and appreciating) must be taught. In my next post, I will continue with Wolf’s address of Strauss’ theories focusing on whether or not reading (along with speaking) is a natural process. 

Wolf vs. Strauss: Flimsy Alphabet or Morphophonemic Wonder?

As some of you may know, the book that I had ordered to read for this assignment never found me in China. I am really disappointed because I was really excited to read it. It seemed so interesting. I had chosen Proust and the Squid, which discusses the science behind reading, and how our brains have changed over time to adjust to this newfound “necessity.”

Instead, I have been asked to substitute the book with a few scholarly articles that discuss the topic of our class. In the spirit of my disappointment, the first article I have chosen is one written by the author of the book I wanted to read. So I hereby present:

How the Origins of Written Language Instruct Us to Teach: A Response to Steven Strauss

 By Maryanne Wolf and Rebecca Kennedy

Steven Strauss wrote an article in the Educational Researcher that talked about the origins of human written and spoken language. He used several of his claims and research as foundations for his argument that a certain method of teaching reading in schools was the best possible method. 

I do not think Ms. Wolf was too impressed.

She immediately states that, while several of his arguments receive her “approbation,” there are three claims that need clarification (which I read as “refutation”).  These three arguments are the origins of the alphabet, the “flimsy” nature of the alphabet, and the way these two claims interact with each other in order to teach reading in the classroom.

Before Wolf actually begins countering Strauss, she extends short congratulations to him for his actions—that someone finally wrote an essay about the history of our languages and the implications they hold for teaching them to others. Indeed, she says, “Even if we must disagree on content, we are grateful for Dr. Strauss for initiating such an enterprise.”

I think that was a way to soften the blow of what was to come next.

The first thing that Wolf does is refute Strauss’ claims that the alphabetic system is “flimsy”; that is, that because there are so many different spellings for words that sound alike, and so many “silent” letters in various words, English is a difficult language to make sense of. Instead of the “logographic” system that our ancestors used, we have developed a set of arbitrary markings to convey meaning. We do not use a picture of a bird to convey the oral word “bird.”

Wolf contests this argument by saying that English is an optimal language for gaining a deeper understanding of the words than what they simply represent. She uses the word “muscle” as an example.

The silent c in muscle can be confusing for some, and can even be considered a waste of time. How then, would that change the work “muscular”? What would we say instead? Furthermore, she goes on to say that the silent c is a remnant of the Latin roots from which the English word has sprouted.  Knowing this can help readers identify other words in the same family as well as understand that English isn’t simply based on phonemic identities, but is rather a morphophonemic language—one that changes and evolves.

At this point, I would like to talk about where I stand here.

Living in China, I have done a tad bit of studying Chinese. Not much, but some. My Chinese is actually pretty miserable. But I know enough to know that Mandarin Chinese characters were originally logographic—pictures of what the word meant. I say originally because they also have evolved so much (especially with Mao’s transition from traditional to simplified characters in order to boost the literacy rate) that it is difficult to tell what the characters mean just by looking at them.  I suppose that they could be considered a morpho-logographic language.  

I would agree with Wolf that Strauss’ argument that learning the way we do through a phonemic/alphabetic is “unnatural” as opposed to learning through a logographic system. Working with Chinese kids, I know that learning characters is almost as difficult as learning the alphabet.  I teach three and 4 year olds who can recognize more English than Chinese at this point, because, well, Chinese is hard.

I would like to discuss this a bit more in my next post, so stay tuned!

A Learning Adventure Begins

Well, today marks the beginning of a new adventure of learning. So far, the adventure has had a bit of a rough start. The book I was to read for this class hasn't arrived yet. I ordered it online about 3 weeks ago, and have yet to see it. Until then, I'm trying to figure out a way to get things done. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know!