Blog #4 Chapter 9

In chapter nine, Lindemann suggest that teachers often find it easier to TEACH students to isolate each paragraph, instead of allowing the students to DO paragraphs (151). As teachers we often inform our students to isolate each paragraph and stay on one topic, but Lindemann suggest that we shouldn't do that and instead teach our students to discover relationships among ideas, words, and sentences. She states that we need to teach our students to think relational, but how do we teach the student to discover relationships and express them in writing? Well, Lindemann provides one way of doing this, and that is through speech. We can help our students analyze their conversation and link words that express coordinate and subordinate relationships, because if the student understands how a conversation proceeds then they can put it in writing. I love this idea, but my main concern is for a class of 25-30 students, because how can we hold a conversation with them ALL and teach them to analyze their speech?