Students' least favorite lessons

My goal as a teacher of writing skills is to ensure that what my students mean to say or write is what they actually say or write. Consider the misguided baker who loudly bragged:

"Try our hot pies. You'll never get better."

RULES? WHAT RULES?
Those of you who are younger than, say, thirty, missed out on one of the great gifts of modern education--grammar! Someone, somewhere, decided that schools should no longer teach grammar, but should, instead, allow children to "pick up" the rules from their exposure to different types of language. Since children learn to speak their language without formal training, why not let them learn the rules in the same way?

We do, in fact, learn the rules of grammar by being exposed to language. After all, we use grammar every time we speak or write. But what we can't learn, unless we are taught it, is the terminology to describe the structure of our language.

Why is it so important to learn the correct terminology? Well, for one thing, it's very difficult to know how to fix something in your writing when you don't recognise the terms used to explain either the problem or the solution. The best way to understand anything is to get to know it--and the best way to do that is to break it down into smaller pieces and to tackle each one in turn. Then, when you put those pieces back together again you'll find out how the whole system works. Simple--but not always easy.

VALUABLE LESSONS
The prospect of sitting through a class learning about the rules of language and grammatical structure is about as appetizing to most students as biting into one of those questionable pies produced by that misguided baker mentioned above. Trust me, though, these lessons are a very important step toward improving your writing skills.

Try to keep this advice in mind when I--or other teachers--announce that the topic of today's lesson is "grammatical structure" or "parts of speech." What you're about to learn may not rock your world, but it will certainly help make you a better writer.

Of fears & other obstacles

What do you feel when you first sit down in front of your computer to write an essay assignment? If you're like many of my other students you feel...the icy talons of FEAR tearing up and down your spine.

You stare at the blank screen and the blank screen stares right back at you. You have a lot of ideas rumbling around in your head. But you can't seem to put them in any order. Your fingers hover over the computer keyboard and you wonder where to begin.

It's no wonder that many of us, when confronted by a writing assignment, would rather check our email a dozen times, IM our best friends, surf the Net for the latest U-Tube video of Lindsay or Kevin or Shaggy or Britt, or see what's on the FaceBook site of an old boyfriend or girlfriend.

Anything but get started on the assignment.

DON'T FREEZE
It's completely natural to hesitate before you start writing. You have to take time to gather your thoughts, and sometimes that means just avoiding what you know you eventually have to do. But hesitation is one thing... total paralysis is something else!

My advice to my students is to start hitting those keys NOW. Confront that blank screen with anything that comes into your head--whether it's related to the assignment or not. At this stage, don't give a thought about proper spelling or punctuation or even syntax. Just get some words on the screen.

John Steinbeck, the American novelist and Nobel Prize winner, used to write a letter to his editor before starting on the day's work for his book, East of Eden. It was a way of loosening up... sort of like doing stretching exercises for the brain. Once he was warmed up, he started writing, his mind better able to cope with the rush of ideas.

It'll work the same way for you. Start writing. Really. Gradually, you'll work your way around to writing about the assignment--how much you hate it or don't want to do it or hate writing, period. But keep at it. Keep those fingers tapping. Soon, you may start putting down some preliminary thoughts on the assignment. Maybe you can settle on a topic or a way of introducing the materials or even how you'll organize the essay.

If a topic for your essay doesn't come immediately to mind, you might start surfing the Net. But this time you're not doing it to avoid work or waste time. Now you're doing it with a higher purpose in mind. Visit news and other sites--wherever you think you might find something of interest. If a topic hits you in the face, then you might go back to your document and start writing everything you could cover about that particular topic.

THE VALUE OF OUTLINING
Outlining is a great way to get started on a particular writing assignment. Just block out in your mind or on paper or on the computer what you plan on covering in your essay and in what order. You can play around with outlining for a long time, but it's time well spent. Once you've got an outline down, your essay may start becoming clearer to you. If not, then IM or call up a friend and kick around the topic a bit. Getting somebody else's perspective can be really useful. That's exactly what Writers' Workshops are all about.

Suddenly (or maybe not so suddenly), you will start feeling comfortable with the topic you've chosen. You may now have some insights into what you want to say. Maybe you even have a vague idea about how your thoughts and ideas about the topic will fit together. How one thought will lead logically to the next one. How one idea will flow into the next idea.

At this point you can keep inputting, or you may decide to create a new document on your computer to start your essay for real. Once the first draft of your essay is in front of you, you can then think about editing it--correcting spelling, using proper punctuation and syntax, etc. But leave that until after you've finished your first draft.

PRE-WRITING IS THE KEY
Was all that preliminary labor a waste of time? If you think hard about it, you will understand that doing some PRE-WRITING (which is what you did) helped you identify a topic you could write about, suggested an effective way to organize the material, and maybe even made you feel comfortable writing about it. It boosted your confidence. It got you going...

And, yes, it helped to vanquish that fear and loathing that you may have felt before you started.