I have to admit this article took me a while to wade through. (That's what I get for reading only murder mysteries.)
Some of the central ideas I took from it were:
1. Writing centers help change the writer;
2. Real education changes the learner;
3. Social constructionist theory argues that we need to help students not to just fit into an academic paradigm but to challenge it; and
4. It's time to question our traditional standard of literacy, which penalizes nonstandard discourse communities.
Although nos. 3 and 4 are interesting and valid points, I don't know that we're ready to tackle them.
I'm intrigued with the idea that to really have an impact, we need to change the writer/learner. As Ann has said repeatedly, we focus on the writer more than on the paper. One key seems to be promoting reflection on the writing/learning process itself. I was especially struck with the quotation, "Writing centers...focus on another important component of formative assessment: generating in the learner a capacity for introspective evaluation of the writing process and the quality of written work created through that process." This is why we ask our student writers so many questions: We learn to write better by thinking about our writing.
What ideas did you take away from this article?
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I love your first point Frances! I have seen this to be so true with our lab based students. I think that not only do we have an impact with how the writer changes, but also how the writer approaches his/her writing. So often, I think a large part of our battle is the battle against attitude. If we can influence the writer's attitutde I think that goes a long way in influencing the writer and his/her writing.
ReplyDeleteI underlined that same quote that you mentioned above while I was reading the article. The one about the writing center "generating in the learner a capacity for introspective evaluation..." I see this so much when I am working with students. Often a student will sit down, thinking that I am just going to edit their paper and make it "all better." I love seeing the change when I start asking questions, and they start thinking in a new way about writing. I think in some cases, a student may have been writing for years just to please teachers, but never really thinking about how to be an effective writer. It is great to see how coming to the writing center can really change a writer's perspective.
ReplyDeleteI think the main concept I took away from this article was: "Education for us is a process which changes the learners." It was helpful as, I must confess, I sometimes start to forget about the writer and merely focus on the writing. It was a good reality-check to keep me on track.
ReplyDeleteThis discussion reminds me of one of the students I tutored today. She had to write a 5pger for a gerontology class. She had 4pgs of hand-written text that was simply dreadful. Her writing was comprised of sentence fragments with commas every 5-6 words and her organization was barely coherent. I didn't know where to start. We looked at HOCs, but when I asked her questions and tried to guide her, she had no idea what I was saying or what she needed to do. I was able to help her a little bit, but it was very difficult to get through to her. In this situation I tried to focus on the writer instead of the writing, but I don't think I made much of a dent in either area; I had a very difficult time figuring out how to word things so that they made sense to her without just writing the paper for her.