Tuesday, October 31st, 1995
© 1990 Richard Wanderman
Below are a few ideas that have come out of my own experience overcoming problems with writing.
Purposive Learning, Risk Taking, and Motivation
How do we help students or adults with language deficits to go through the difficult and sometimes humiliating process of learning how to write?
People can and will do almost anything – taking large risks in the process – if they are motivated. Motivation seems to grow better out of a strong self-concept than one that is shattered.
Focus needs to be taken off of deficiencies (low points) and put on strengths (high points) to build self esteem. Then the risk taking that is so important in learning by trial and error can take place because people will be willing to make the necessary errors to learn.
Separating Questions of Literacy from Questions of Intelligence and Self-Worth. We need to help students see the difference between their intelligence and their specific language problems.
That difference is demonstrated by facilitating the expression of their ideas in concrete form: art, music, dance, building things with their hands, skateboarding.
We need to find areas of strength in students’ experiences and emphasize those as much as possible. We need to help students connect their feelings of self-worth to their areas of strength, and not to their literacy skills or lack thereof.
We need to make it clear that verbal literacy is only one expression of intelligence and that students use other types of literacy to express their intelligence daily.
A Process Approach to Writing
Writing is a process, like any other. It is hard, it has to be learned, it can be frustrating, and it can be extremely exciting and rewarding.
Thinking and writing isn’t always a clean, clear, straightforward process. This is part of what makes writing exciting: through writing, editing, and re-writing we can see some of what is going on in our heads and start to appreciate how difficult it is to express the complexity of our thoughts clearly in the abstract form: writing. Teachers need to model the difficulty of this process by live demonstration, not by doing a canned, pre-rehearsed act in front of a class.
Worrying about details like spelling, mechanics, and formatting too early in the writing process can dampen the excitement that thinking and writing naturally generates. The actual writing or composing process should be about the expression of ideas. The details of spelling and mechanics can come later.
Focus is a variable in writing. Having a clear sense of who the audience is for a piece of writing makes the thinking and writing easier.
When editing student writing, don’t overwhelm by noting all the mistakes and problems. Note only a few different types of mistakes, then teach the students about those skills, and then have them fix only those problems in their writing. Later, as those skills are learned and mastered, add other skills. The point is to not overwhelm students with too much negativity and too much to learn at one time, and to keep them interested in the process of self-expression, which is the purpose of writing in the first place.
How Computers Change the Writing Process
Electronic editing changes the writing process by separating the composition of ideas from printing the ideas on paper with ink.
* No more handwriting problems
* Proofreading is easier because text is more legible
* Less frustration with the tool’s limitations
* No more re-writes
* Less cramped vocabulary (and thinking) based on fear of making mistakes
* Spelling and mechanics can be de-emphasized and moved to the end of the writing process
* Organization can be dealt with easily by cutting and pasting and/or using outlining programs
Writing with pen and ink or with a typewriter is like sculpting stone: mistakes are costly, and that knowledge feeds back into the composition process. Writing with a computer is like sculpting clay: mistakes are fixable at any time, and that knowledge feeds back into the composition process.
Writing with a computer allows a student to concentrate on his or her ideas and leave the editing and/or re-writing for later. Students should be thinking about what they are trying to say, not about their personal limitations or the limitations of their tools.
Traditional writing methods don’t give beginning or disabled writers enough practice to learn from their own experience. Using a computer makes writing easy enough so that students can do enough of it to learn from their own experience.
More writing can improve a student’s self-concept which in turn, helps bring more writing.
Concentration on isolated skills as a prerequisite to writing can turn students off to the writing process. Generally, when we learn a new process, we don’t practice isolated skills before we get excited and engaged in the process.
For example, learning to play basketball. If we get excited about the game first, we have a purpose in going through the seemingly disconnected practice of isolated skills like dribbling or shooting. We don’t ask players to be expert shooters before we allow them to play the game.
There’s no reason to learn how to spell until you need to write more clearly to share your ideas with others. There’s no reason to learn how to type until you need to write faster.
Computer-Aided Instruction (C.A.I.)
Traditional C.A.I. software is usually used for drill and practice of an isolated skill. It is the most widely used “educational” software and this is unfortunate. There is a definite use for this type of software, but only when integrated into a larger process approach to thinking and writing and skill mastery. If this software is used by itself, with no time spent on integration and considering the whole process, the skills that it builds will be less likely to stick and transfer.
The basis of remediation is the drill of basic skills to build automaticity. The problem with working on skills in a non-meaningful context is that they don’t stick well and are hard to generalize. One can learn a skill and use it in a narrow domain but when asked to transfer and use the newly learned skill in a new domain, the skill may not transfer.
Integration and Gap Filling
For newly acquired skills, ideas, and information to be well integrated, it has to be meaningful to the person experiencing it, and it has to be experienced in a few different ways.
An important and rarely-taught skill is to fill in gaps between seemingly disparate pieces of knowledge by guessing and extrapolating. This skill (filling gaps) is best done when the information forming the ends of the bridge is well integrated. That means that the edges of the information are rougher or fuzzier or more powerful as jumping off places for guessing and extrapolating.
Ideas and Exercises
Make lists on paper and on a computer. Start all writing assignments with lists of things you know about the subject.
Students keep an ongoing, personal journal that the teacher never looks at. The only requirement is that the students must write in the journal daily.
Each class period is started with students writing for a short amount of time (10 minutes) to get warmed up. The writing is either thrown out or saved by students but is not looked at by the teacher. The only requirement is that the students must be writing for 10 minutes.
Writing with a conversational tone (the way we speak) is easier than other forms of writing. Focusing the writing on a particular person (the recipient) gives students guidelines about assumed and common language, and common ideas. This form of writing can be practiced with letters sent through the mail, or in real time by connecting two or more computers together locally, or through telecommunications.
Correspondence is a real-world form of conversational writing. Letters should be written to real people and actually sent in the mail.
The Book of Questions
Have students deal with real questions in their writing from this simple and easy-to-read book.
Sit down at the Macintosh with an outlining program and ask a student questions about a subject with you typing. This facilitates a separation between thinking and the pain or the mechanics of writing and organizing. It also helps students get used to using an outlining program without actually having their hands on it. Step 2 is to switch roles. Step 3 is to have students do this with each other.
Have students brainstorm with an outlining program about several subjects to practice getting ideas out fast and to become more fluent with the software.
Small Group Work
Have students work on a newsletter together and then publish it. Each student can take a different role: graphics designers, writers, editors, page layout, publisher.
Telecommunications and Electronic Mail
Have students write letters to students at other schools and then send them (in a batch) to the other school’s address on an electronic bulletin board system like America Online.