Ruth W. Wilson
Since this is my first attempt to teach a writing unit, I found Secretary T.H. Bell’s ten rules for teaching writing very helpful. The rules will serve as a guide for me in teaching writing skills. They are:
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1. Spend time on activities that require real writing rather than short answers and fill-in-the-blank spaces. In primary school, we teach youngsters penmanship, vocabulary, and spelling. While in the middle or high school, only 3% of lesson time is spent on writing assignments of paragraph length or longer. In short, students won’t learn to write if they don’t spend time writing.
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2. Have students spend more time putting their thoughts on paper in a logical, well organized way or use the cluster system. Much time has been spent on the mechanics but not enough on how to organize and write their thoughts coherently.
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3. Include research, brainstorming, and clustering as a part of writing assignments. Giving students adequate time to plan and prepare helps them become confident that they have the knowledge about a topic to write about.
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4. Many assignments are unrelated to the real world or slightly to the classroom. Therefore, quality assignments are important to the lives of the students and the quality of their writing improves.
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5. Stress the importance of drafts to the students with conventional writing (not so in journal writing). By encouraging
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students to work through drafts, teachers can provide constructive criticism during the writing act or use peers to help in the edit work. There are numerous ways a classroom teacher can accomplish the above objects.
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6. Respond to the ideas expressed in a written assignment. Many students believe the teacher is interested only in the punctuation, spelling, etc. This ignores the true function of writing, which is to convey ideas.
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7. Allow students to choose their own topics. When students write about something that interests them and are free to select how they are going to express their thoughts, they have more invested the effort, and hopefully try harder.
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8. Take advantage of writing skills that students use outside the classroom to help teach in the classroom. For example, listen to the inner-city jargon with its elaborate rhymes; students who aren’t able to write well in school can do some fine rapping.
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9. Reward students who write clearly and concisely. Let the students know that flowery language and the use of big words is not always good writing.
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10. Use writing assignments to help students see that writing can help them in the real world. Such assignments as writing a letter to the newspaper, developing a resume or filling out a job application, all helps show them that good writing is useful.
With these ten useful ways to improve writing skills incorporated into my teaching philosophy, hopefully, someday my students will be counted among the one-fifth of the nations students who can write a persuasive essay.