So true about the importance of writing. You know, in all the jobs I've had since college, and I've mostly been in sales and briefly ran my own business, I write every day. I never imagined that I'd need writing when I was in school and never liked English or Social Studies because they both involved writing. I've mentioned this before but I never felt I had really good instruction on how to write, as a process, until I had a college writing class. It was broken down very logically and scientifically in a way that made sense to me. Since we are both science majors (and I enjoyed technical writing in college too, btw), hopefully we can put writing in a logical form in our classrooms for lab writeups and such. And yes, writing what you're passionate about sure does help!
Giving students authentic audiences to write for is the challenge. When students are simply writing to present information to the teacher (who probably already knows the answers/information), then, like you say, it is difficult to motivate students to write. But, if we can find authentic reasons and audiences to write for, then they can be more motivated. We, as subject area teachers, need to find real reasons for them to write--real audiences will emerge from this.
This was the first week I ever heard the idea that the writer is writing to please the reader. Again, it makes so much sense yet I was never taught to write like this. Do you think it can always be easy to write things to please the reader when it is something that you could be passionate about? I feel sometimes I just go into a rant and get very passionate writing about something and completely forget about the reader. I also think that we as teachers can't be making writing sound like such a daunting task. We need to find ways to open students eyes to what writing can do for us. But, to be honest do we not all hate writing about things at times?
So true about the importance of writing. You know, in all the jobs I've had since college, and I've mostly been in sales and briefly ran my own business, I write every day. I never imagined that I'd need writing when I was in school and never liked English or Social Studies because they both involved writing. I've mentioned this before but I never felt I had really good instruction on how to write, as a process, until I had a college writing class. It was broken down very logically and scientifically in a way that made sense to me. Since we are both science majors (and I enjoyed technical writing in college too, btw), hopefully we can put writing in a logical form in our classrooms for lab writeups and such. And yes, writing what you're passionate about sure does help!
ReplyDeleteGiving students authentic audiences to write for is the challenge. When students are simply writing to present information to the teacher (who probably already knows the answers/information), then, like you say, it is difficult to motivate students to write. But, if we can find authentic reasons and audiences to write for, then they can be more motivated. We, as subject area teachers, need to find real reasons for them to write--real audiences will emerge from this.
ReplyDeleteThis was the first week I ever heard the idea that the writer is writing to please the reader. Again, it makes so much sense yet I was never taught to write like this. Do you think it can always be easy to write things to please the reader when it is something that you could be passionate about? I feel sometimes I just go into a rant and get very passionate writing about something and completely forget about the reader.
ReplyDeleteI also think that we as teachers can't be making writing sound like such a daunting task. We need to find ways to open students eyes to what writing can do for us. But, to be honest do we not all hate writing about things at times?