Blog Post #9

Literacy Development

To be honest, I am very aware of my use of punctuation, capitalization and spelling in my writing. I even sometimes say the words to myself as I type.

Capital "s" - summer break is good for the soul - period - capital "i" - I love going for ice cream - comma - especially on hot summer days - period.

I even spelled out my eleven letter maiden name letter by letter as I wrote it. Every single time. This was not just in childhood; I did this until I was married and changed my name at the age of 24. I do sometimes free write, and in those cases I think less about mechanics, but in academic writing I am very conscious of the words I choose, spelling, and mechanics. Reading is different, though. Unless something sounds wrong or is spelled wrong, I get caught up in the words and do not notice the mechanics of the text at all.

Processes for Acquiring Academic Reading & Writing

Like most people, I acquired my academic and professional reading and writing skills through a mix of trial and error along with explicit instruction. Teachers, professors and colleagues would explain the formatting that they expected, and I would do my best to stay within that format. Through the use of that format, I would find out what was and was not acceptable. Sometimes I was allowed to push the boundaries of the format, and sometimes I was not. Basically, the acquisition process was through practice and use of the genre.

As far as informal literacy activities, I have never thought much about how I acquired these skills. I was a bookworm as a young girl, so that is where my reading skills come from. I read anything I could get my hands on, especially Nancy Drew books and Seventeen Magazine. Informal writing was taught in school - we had to practice writing letters. I also remember my grandpa teaching me to send an email when I was nine years old. I typed up a short note, and he helped me send it to himself. From there, my writing just expanded to more in-depth approaches to the same activities - longer emails and letters, leaving notes for parents to explain my whereabouts, grocery lists, etc. I learned it on an as-needed basis.

Ongoing Literacy Development

In a writing or literacy course students need a great deal of ongoing literacy development. Students need to learn about different genres, both in reading and writing. The instruction needs to be explicit. Students may not pick up on the subtleties of the genre unless they are pointed out. Students should be given rich reading materials that pertain to their real lives - careers, majors, hobbies, etc. A scientific report is going to look much different than a professional email, each using specific lingo and formatting. Students should be exposed to a variety of written work and then practice reproducing the same genre.

Developing Linguistic Knowledge

I feel somewhat comfortable developing students' linguistic knowledge in a writing course. I know that students need a lot of variety and a lot of practice. However, my concern would be that I would want more guidance in pacing and organizing the material in the right order. I imagine that since students build their knowledge, there must be certain texts that make more sense to teach in the beginning and some that make more sense to teach later in the course.

In all, developing a student's language skills is an important piece of the puzzle in an L2 writing course. It's our job as instructors to provide context-rich materials so that students have a wide base of knowledge that allows them to succeed.

Blog Post #8

Linguistic Accuracy

During my own writing process, I focus on linguistic accuracy throughout the course of my writing. I begin to write, focusing on getting my thoughts on paper. Once I have completed several sentences or a paragraph, I usually re-read my work, checking that the content flows, makes sense, and is focused. As I read, I edit the linguistic errors I find and revise the content at the same time. I do this constantly throughout my work, and upon completion, I proofread, make last minute corrections, and then submit my work. I do not usually have much to change during my final proofread since I have caught the majority of the errors during previous read-throughs. I acquired most of my grammatical knowledge in late elementary school and continued to grow and develop that knowledge throughout the later years of my schooling. I had a very firm foundation in grammar, including lessons on sentence structure and parts of speech.

Effectiveness of this Approach

While academically, I am not sure if my approach is sound, it has worked very well for me. I believe that it has saved me considerable time in editing and revising since I catch errors as I go. I am able to see that a sentence does not work or fit with the text that I am writing and revise, edit, or eliminate it before the problem starts to affect the rest of the piece. 

Teaching Writing

I do not have experience teaching writing, though if I do teach a writing class, I imagine that the most difficult part of giving students feedback on language errors would be in deciding what to mark on their papers. I know in my foreign language studies, having this kind of feedback has been helpful, allowing me to avoid the same mistake the next time. However, since English is a more opaque language, it leaves more room for language errors, especially in spelling. It will be hard to determine a good balance - marking errors to help the student avoid future mistakes versus marking so many that it becomes overwhelming and discouraging. 

L2 Learners and Editing

Seeing language errors can be difficult in L2 learning. For this reason, in the editing process, I would encourage students to look for one type of error at a time. I would guide students in subject-verb agreement, tense/aspect, plural/singular, etc., one at a time, so that students can focus on specific issues instead of an overwhelming and seemingly infinite number of possible errors. While this is not congruent with my writing process, I have the benefit of native speaker intuition guiding my writing. With a sense of what sounds "right" and what doesn't, the editing process for me will be different than it will be for my students.

Regardless, it will be a difficult but satisfying journey into guiding my students into writers who are proud of their work and feel accomplished and proficient as L2 writers.