Writing to Learn

I like Emig. When I was reading her this week and she was talking about how we use both sides of our brain in writing, I was reminded of our discussion last week about brain function. I guess we were one step ahead of ourselves. Emig says that the brain is "bispheral" when we write. Considering we don't usually use much of our brain, and therefore can not tap into our telekinesis power (bummer), it is amazing to me that writing can motivate the brain in ways so many other things can't. I can honestly say that writing does not come that easily to me. I like to write, my finished product is usually pretty good, but I never imagined i was using that much of my brain to put words on paper. Is it happening write now? I would think that the person writing would get some sort of euphoric feeling, but I am no scientist. Deanna asked in her blog, "How could we as teachers ignore such a powerful tool?". I am not a teacher, but I can see her point. We also talked about students who are taught to write by such "mechanical" standards. Teachers should utilize the brain more, get students to think on their own. Start them when they are young, and when they hit college they will not have to "learn" how to think on their own when it comes to writing, they will already be adept at it.

Free-writing is not a concept I am familiar with at all. I know Peter Elbow values it and I can see his point that it is good for students to learn to write better, and be able to muddle through unwanted things to get to the heart of what they are trying to say. I have never taken a course where I was required to free-write. I'm not sure I could "unstructuralize" (is that a word?) my thinking enough at this point to actually free write properly. I have become so accustomed to organizing my thoughts and words before writing them, I may not even get any joy or worth out of free writing. Then again, I have never tried it, so how would I know?

Along the same lines, I remember reading that Elbow says that reading out loud is the first and true test of good writing. I have to agree with that. I always read my papers aloud to my husband before turning them in, and I always find errors and things that don't sound right that I missed by just reading it to myself. It is a sure fire way to know if your writing makes sense and if an audience's attention will be kept.

I'm having a real problem with the different rhetoric theories and I am hoping some light can be shed tonight in class. I have read it and re-read it, but every time I read, and I'm being honest here, I lose the thoughts half way through the paragraph. Maybe someone could put it in layman's terms for me.......I have a thick skull.

Theory and Practice

I find it hard to believe that elementary and high school students are taught to think for themselves when it comes to writing subjects. I recall my own forays into writing in high school and as near as I can recall, I was always TOLD what to write about. I don’t remember ever being given free reign with my thoughts as to what to write about. Granted, we were given parameters and were told to stick to those parameters, but the “specifics” were up to us, as far as what we wanted to write about. Again, those parameters kept u sin check and on course for what the teacher wanted us to write about. Never, until college has I been told to write about what I wanted to write about without restriction. I feel that the writing genius of many a high school student is stifled because of the set structure they must follow, so “a student finds his own subject” does not sit well with me.

I can see the blank look on the faces of my fellow students, and my own to be honest, if I were told in high school to “write anything you feel is true to you”. Huh? Please tell me what to do and how to do it. That most likely would have been my response back then. Young students don’t have to OR get to think for themselves when it comes to writing. I found a boatload of freedom in college writing as the subject is mine, the style is mine, the media is mine. Love the freedom.

Studying theory when it comes to writing is proving difficult for me. I suppose it is because it is my last semester, I have taken so many English classes, read so many novels, written so many analytical papers without a thought to theory, that I feel a little behind in the game. If I had had the theory training before my other English courses, perhaps my writing would have been better. It may have been easier for me to put my “training” to good use. I think that perhaps when students are taught theory, and those theories are put into practice, the student has more of an idea of how to produce authentic writing.

Spectator Role

In the readings this week I can see that as a spectator. it is my job to decipher what the speaker is really tyring to say.Britton says, "poetic function may be defined as a 'focus on the message for its own sake'" (Villanueva 152). Poetic function is merely trying to decipher a verbal art. It's not as easy as some would think. While poetry is oral art, it is sometimes hard to find the meaning behind the words. I also understand the two types of reading process. Efferent, what we take away from the reading and Aesthetic, what we see during the actual reading. I think on the whole I use the Efferent reading process. Yes, I watch the reader, but it is what I "get" from the reading that most concerns me.

There are many ways a listener or reader can interpret what they are reading. A lot of times, a poet will use a word in lieu of another simply because it rhymes. The impact the chosen word has on a reader depends on how the reader interprets the word, or how they feel it works in the poem or literature.

Grammar

One of the first things this section says is basically that teaching grammar does not help improve writing skills. I disagree. Without proper grammar, you are not a writer. There are structures to a writing and if not done properly, they can even change the way a reader interprets the writing. Grammar is basically a way of organizing words to get your meaning across. Apparently a research study conducted in New Zealand proved that teaching grammar did not improve writing skills. I just don't understand how that is possible. How can improved grammar not improve writing skills? Hartwell says that even if we can't verbally define a grammar rule, we can write properly using a grammar rule. Doesn't that contradict the fact that knowing grammar improves writing?

I think that some grammar rules may in fact confuse a student in writing, but that these errors are more of a accident than a true error. Hartwell gives an example of a student who adds an s to children because it was plural. I actually think that grammar errors as they are defined are more than likely,pluralization, spelling and punctuation errors, than in fact true grammar errors.