A desire for writing

As I was reading the Emig and Perl articles, many of their theories seemed to echo how I feel about teaching writing. While I have fantasies that teaching college English will somehow be more enlightening, stimulating, and less of a head ache politically than teaching high school English, my musings have failed to account for the fact that these 'college students' were once the same high school students that loathe writing, and struggled with it for years. I don't think exiting the graduation stage and entering the college classroom will erase that contempt.

Emig states that "because there is a product involved, writing tends to be a more responsible and committed act than talking." I believe this is true among the intrinsically motivated writer, the writer that has something at stake, or a sense of pride in his/her writing. My students commit as much to their academic writing as they would to a text message....sometimes I assume more committment to the latter. I stive to instill that sense of pride in their writing. While I have on average a 40% turn in rate for a typed essay, that 40% anxiously awaits feedback, asking me the very next day "Is my paper graded? Did you read it?" So this tells me there are students that care and want to improve. As for the students that don't even attempt the assignment, at this point they are 17 years old. I'm a teacher, not a miracle worker. Those are the students who will learn the hard way at about 26-27 years old they should have learned to read and write. Better late than never, and these students, when ready, will make better students as adults than they did as teenagers. As Emig eloquently sums it up, "Successful learning is also engaged, committed, personal learning."

Perl, on the otherhand, has unearthed a whole new science to analyzing the writings of 'struggling' writers. I had a flashback to my undergrad taking langauge and linguistics classes. However, this study is more practical and applicable to the classroom. I like that this study didnt just focus on "average or skilled writers", but writers who "baffle their educators" with their writing mistakes. As I would have presumed, the subjects struggled less with recursive writing than they did with extensive writing. Reflexive is more personal. Tony, the subject, spent "more time prewriting and produced fewer words" in the extensive mode. The only downside the study found was that in reflexive mode, Tony made too many assumptions about his audience. The best part about this study, is it poses a problem, a study, and a solution with suggestions for writing teachers. For example, students like Tony need a teacher that will "interpret" the writing process for them. Also, the students referred to grammar rules they thought were correct, and judging by the mistakes, the students only knew partial grammar rules, obscuring the word's meaning. Lastly, teachers should refrain from looking at their 'remedial' students like they are clean tablets. We need to find out what they know, build on that knowledge, and correct as needed.