(Download) "Through Glasses Half Full (Treatment of Students' Writings) (Report)" by Writing Lab Newsletter * eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Through Glasses Half Full (Treatment of Students' Writings) (Report)
- Author : Writing Lab Newsletter
- Release Date : January 01, 2008
- Genre: Education,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 65 KB
Description
The liveliest writing center listserv discussion in recent memory began with a somewhat innocent posting of a student's "grammar goof" for the amusement of list readers. Astonishingly, the e-mail elicited more than seventy responses. Most contributors added bloopers they'd seen or committed themselves; a few debated whether or not we should mock student writing. Though the comments were mostly lighthearted and sometimes comical, what struck me most about the conversation, labeled by the listserv thread's title as "best bad grammar mistakes," was its sheer volume. Why devote so much attention to stylistic or mechanical deficits? Why gaze at student writing through half-empty glasses? Later that same week, students in our tutor education course displayed similar behavior during a simulated, in-class writing consultation. Acting together, nine students tutored an instructor who'd brought everyone copies of a sample draft. True to "best practices," our neophyte tutors asked their "student" to read her draft aloud as they followed along. Yet despite several weeks spent discussing higher-order rhetorical concerns and producing-better-writers-not-(so-much)-better-writing, the tutors-in-training couldn't set down their pens to just listen and read. They couldn't resist the corrective habits passed down to them from their teachers and their teachers' teachers. Happily, the session ended well--students provided plenty of wonderful help regarding substantive issues such as focus and coherence. But I kept wondering: How much better could they have listened without first nitpicking? What unintended messages might their busy pens send to a student-writer while she nervously reads aloud?