As a teacher, I'm responsible for making sure that my students are competent writers. Part of that means that they are comfortable and confident in their writing, and part of that means that they know the rules of grammar, punctuation, and spelling. What must come first? What is more important?
Most of my classes have been focusing on this topic lately, and I thought it might be helpful to write out my thoughts. As a student, I would never have considered turning in any work with abbreviations, text talk, or misspelled words. It always seemed to be an insult to the teacher that I would find that appropriate. But then again, I didn't do a whole lot of texting in high school because there was no such thing as unlimited text message plans.
My conclusion is this: if my students want to use text talk or slang in their journals and private writings, then I have no need to mark them down. If a student hands in their one pager, essay, outline, or formal paper with text talk or slang then I will correct and discuss their writing choices. I want to set my students up for success, and I don't think it would be fair for them to leave my class thinking that writing in short hand or using slang in formal writing is an appropriate thing to do.
Renee, I like your idea of giving students a measure of freedom for more personal writing like journals. This writing freedom strikes me as a great way of encouraging students to write even when they don't consider themselves great writers. Your post also got me thinking about how to create a distinction between personal and academic writing. I see the use of journals as a great way to allow students to get rid of the pressure of more academic writing and by exploring the relationship between personal and academic writing, some of that freedom and confidence will hopefully transfer into their academic writing.
ReplyDeleteI like that you are not opposed to them using text/slang in private writing and journals, but agree that with formal papers it is a different story. But what about if you request that they turn in a draft? When i am writing drafts and sketching ideas I always write in run on sentences and lower case letters. When teachers of mine would hand these back they'd always ask, "Now this is a draft, so I assume the words that need to be uppercase will be fixed and you will also correct all those grammar errors too?". I would always respond with a "Yes", but they never marked or corrected those items because it was a rough draft. They would mark items and say "good idea" and "expand on this" with an arrow pointing to an item but never corrected the writing errors. It was refreshing because it wasn't as though they tore my work apart, making the paper bleed in red markings, but made note to mention those necessary changes for the final piece. I knew writing n short hand could not be part of the final process but I think it helped.
ReplyDeleteKathy Whitmore, a professor at Iowa, talked about the importance of helping literacy develop in youngsters. Needlessly correctly spelling and marking up grammar mistakes doesn't make for a positive experience as a beginning writer. She said when looking at student work, when in doubt about "correcting" their work, don't. I guess I would rather error on the side of caution and let the writer continue to take risks and write!
ReplyDeleteHear, hear! I love your thoughts Renee and it was helpful for me to read as you cleared your mind on the subject, as we have been talking about it quite a bit. I am in agreement on the letting writing flow, and then for formal papers teaching them how to revise and re-structure for a sophisticated presentation.
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