While I love fiction writing, all types of writing are important to me. The personal things I write give me a trail of past thoughts and ideas interesting to revisit. My writing also gave me the opportunity to teach writing, which I also love because I want to help develop good writers for the future.
Two weeks before classes started at the end of this past August, I was given two more composition classes. That was great, one class was online, two classes hybrid, and one face to face (f2f -- Isn't it interesting how names for new things change names for preceding things?).
I have finished grading my first group of fifty essays. The essays' topics were great, but the grammar, while not dismal, certainly needed improvement. Which brings me to a question: don't students learn grammar anymore, like the parts of speech, or sentence structures like how independent clauses, subordinate clauses, and phrases work together? I think they do, but why don't my students seem to know them? While in fiction writing sentence fragments are sometimes a rhetorical device, in academic writing they are major mistakes. And commas! Different styles of writing often allow different comma usage, but they don't seem to know either casual or formal academic usage.
I do know most of the wording errors are caused by students not editing or revising enough, even though they have to critique each other's work.
As a writer, I know how hard it is to find glitches in your own work. I make them all the time. I think there is a mind-eye-finger connection built when you write. Your mind knows what it made your fingers type. Your eyes saw the words your mind dictated. You immediately read the results and it is perfect! It is not until time breaks the connection by a day or two that you can go back and see what your writing actual contains. Then you can see the mistakes and correct them.
A certain percentage of students don't care. They don't think writing will be important in their future career (wrong!). All they want is to complete this required course with at least a grade of C and move on. Another group thinks they cannot write.
One thing I tell them is that it is my job to point out their errors so they learn the type of mistakes they commonly make, so that they can look for them in their future writing. If they think my comments meant they don't know how to write, they're wrong. They should look at everything that was correct and had no comment on it, usually 80% of their essay. Those portions prove they can write, they just need to hone their editing skills.
Even if none of my students end up writing short stories or novels, writing well is not only important, but the ability can also effect employment, and often adds enjoyment to their life like keeping journals. Memory is short, it's good to have a written backup.
Two weeks before classes started at the end of this past August, I was given two more composition classes. That was great, one class was online, two classes hybrid, and one face to face (f2f -- Isn't it interesting how names for new things change names for preceding things?).
I have finished grading my first group of fifty essays. The essays' topics were great, but the grammar, while not dismal, certainly needed improvement. Which brings me to a question: don't students learn grammar anymore, like the parts of speech, or sentence structures like how independent clauses, subordinate clauses, and phrases work together? I think they do, but why don't my students seem to know them? While in fiction writing sentence fragments are sometimes a rhetorical device, in academic writing they are major mistakes. And commas! Different styles of writing often allow different comma usage, but they don't seem to know either casual or formal academic usage.
I do know most of the wording errors are caused by students not editing or revising enough, even though they have to critique each other's work.
As a writer, I know how hard it is to find glitches in your own work. I make them all the time. I think there is a mind-eye-finger connection built when you write. Your mind knows what it made your fingers type. Your eyes saw the words your mind dictated. You immediately read the results and it is perfect! It is not until time breaks the connection by a day or two that you can go back and see what your writing actual contains. Then you can see the mistakes and correct them.
A certain percentage of students don't care. They don't think writing will be important in their future career (wrong!). All they want is to complete this required course with at least a grade of C and move on. Another group thinks they cannot write.
One thing I tell them is that it is my job to point out their errors so they learn the type of mistakes they commonly make, so that they can look for them in their future writing. If they think my comments meant they don't know how to write, they're wrong. They should look at everything that was correct and had no comment on it, usually 80% of their essay. Those portions prove they can write, they just need to hone their editing skills.
Even if none of my students end up writing short stories or novels, writing well is not only important, but the ability can also effect employment, and often adds enjoyment to their life like keeping journals. Memory is short, it's good to have a written backup.
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