I really did like where Crovitz was coming from when they
said that errors these days are looked at as sloppy mistakes when really they
are signs of improvement. Something that I really took to heart during this
school year is when Beth said that a student could write a grammatically
perfect sentence that has no real substance. I feel like students these days
are taught to “write between the lines” and are focused so much on making sure
that a paper is grammatically perfect that they don’t actually put their heart
into what they’re writing about. In another sense, I do believe that grammatical
errors should be addressed and instead of just docking points and moving on I
believe teachers should try to help adjust the mistakes.
As for the DOL’s—I really
like the idea. I know that growing up I always enjoyed them (in my school they
were call “entry tasks”). It’s something that gets the students attention right
away, although as an aspiring high school teacher I think that DOL’s work best
for younger kids to help get them to focus on English right away when they get
into the classroom.
As for high schoolers I think that the entry tasks would
have to be more than just fixing an error in a sentence. I really like the idea
of creating more interesting sentences out of boring sentences because it will
get students brains working, and for high schoolers they can add their own
twists to it which will make it a lot more fun for them. My group is going to
be using the lesson that I stated above to teach the class and I am hoping that
this lesson will spark into their brains while writing (because I know I think
of old lessons while I write) and they will be able to add some more pizzazz to
their writing.
Well I’m not to 500 words yet so I am going to jump subjects
a little here; in the text it was brought up errors like people using words
such as porpoise, taken for granite, walla,
instead of the words purpose, taken for granted, voila [lists used without the
word “and”]. This really stood out to me 1) because it reminded me of a
meme I saw on twitter of a girl spelling “all of garden” instead of olive
garden, and 2) because after reading that article I noticed that teachers (and
clearly the whole world because of the meme) take those sort of mistakes as a
joke when really that is just someone going out of their comfort zone to try
new things and experiment with new words that they’re clearly not familiar with.
One last thing that I noticed about this text was the authors use of brackets,
here are some examples of how the author used brackets: “a teacher who would
work with [basic writers] might well begin by trying…” and “a readiness to look
at [errors] in a way that does not…” It confuses me why the author put the brackets
because the sentence would make complete sense if the brackets weren’t there so
that really confused me.
Anyway, thank you for reading.
Brandie Roueche
Brandie,
ReplyDeleteI can see that you like this class, and take a lot from it. You are right that errors and omissions in writing shouldn't be taken as a sign of not being smart enough. Your explanation about person leaving a comfort zone really stood out to me. It takes courage to step up and leave borders of knowledge or a language that person is familiar with. This courage must be celebrated instead of being frown upon. After all, a great teacher will manage for the students to come out of their shells and to see a new perspective to their own writing.
Natalia
Hey Brandi
ReplyDeleteJust got done reading your blog post and I noticed in these you type just like you are talking, which I found kind of a good thing to throw in the blogs. Reguarding the actual information of the blog, it looks like you know what is going on in both class and in the grammer books. I like how you added in making sentences becoming less boring like today in class. Also with errors, they are not bad so in that I agree with you.
Brandi,
ReplyDeleteI like the way you related your blog post back to what Beth was saying in class. It resonated with me, as it is very true to the article. A sentence can be grammatically correct, by very safe and not include any real substance. I also thought your use of commas instead of the word and was effective. It was easy to understand and good placement for it.