Literary Letters

 Perhaps one of the best things that I liked about Linda Broadkey's  essay was her attempt to restore the lost art of letter writing, while at same time, forcing her students to write By writing letters, she hoped that her students would feel anxiety, and would feel more free to find their voices, and would give them "...an authentic reason to write" (128).

I thought Broadkey's approach to having her students write letters,  instead of a  traditional essay,  was a clever approach because it allowed them to consider other ways that they could be creative. I am not sure that the students realized that this is one of the reasons why this approach was being used, but it is clear that Broadkey certainly did. I think that perhaps one of the most difficult things in the classroom, is to get students to write, and not  to feel anxiety about it. The idea of writing letters to friends or family, on the surface, seems less threatening because after all, you are writing to people you already know. The expectation is that they will be receptive to you, and you can open up to them in ways that you might not have considered if you had been asked to write a five paragraph essay. The letters that the students wrote for the most part, seemed to convey a sense of freedom, and a voice that they may not have been able to portray in a traditional essay. I believe that the letter writing approach that they took in Broadkey's assignment can only help them on later assignments in their classroom.

I really liked Broadkey's reasoning about giving her students this assignment because as a teacher, it allowed her to consider other options for writing assignments that could help them in other areas of writing as well. The experience of having a writing assignment that was geared to make you feel less threatened by the process,  is an experience that hopefully can carry them to other areas of their  writing in the future.