READING RESPONSE #1

LETTING GO OF TOO MUCH CONTROL IN THE WRITING CLASSROOM

I was particularly interested in the discussion of critical thinking in Chapter 2 of EI. So often, students
in modern classrooms are not encouraged to think critically, particularly in the writing classroom.
Some teachers give very specific directions as to how assignments and papers are to be written, but
there is often a lack of emphasis on students' own interpretation and critical thinking. Naturally, we
here are not charged with teaching literature, but it is a rich source of material for our courses.
While it also is important to guide them in their comprehension, we should, as is suggested in "Reading
Practices," not tell them what the readings we bring to students were about, but rather tell them how to
go about their work. Each student brings his or her own unique experiences to our classrooms, and
their interpretations of the works can be interesting, to say the least, as was illustrated in "Who Killed
Annabelle Lee?"
Likewise, I found the "Risky Business" discussion to be of great interest. Students in group discussions
can and do learn from one another. However, teachers are often reluctant to assignment pair or group
work due to time constraints or fears that the "bright" students will end up doing all the work.
As a veteran teacher, I admit to having erred in all three of these areas, especially early in my career. It
was extremely easy to give students very specific writing assignments and literary interpretations that,
by their nature, may not allow for the type of critical thinking that I should have been seeking in my
classroom. Group work can appear chaotic and generate noise, and it may look like play to a passing
administrator whose philosophy does not include such activities. However, it's clear that there is value
in allowing students to explore their own interpretations of literary works and in considering the
viewpoints of others in group work.
READING RESPONSE #2 ON THE MATTER OF GRADING
Grading student work does give me some anxiety, since I have not done it at this level. While things
are going relatively smoothly at this point, I probably have as many concerns as any of my colleagues
about grading student work I am not only from the old school of grading, but I have most recently
been in a foreign language classroom where grading was easier to grade objectively. (Perhaps that's an
excuse; I'm not certain.)
The reading in LTA reinforced that we are not to zero in on errors in student work but rather to reflect
on their writing by asking questions. (77) As I have stated, I'm one of those who will have to keep the
cap on the red pen and overlook the obvious mechanical, grammatical, punctuation errors and pay
attention to the student's meaning. And while the suggestion on p. 83-85 (Figure 5.3) was somewhat
intimidating in its scope, I found it could be easily adapted for almost any writing course. Another
suggestion that I liked from LTA was that of the response sheets. (93, 98-99) Though this formt may be
a bit advanced at this point for ENG 100, it could be easily adapted.
While it might not contain all the comments that could be made about a student's paper, since some of
those need to be made in the margins (EI 327-329), it would perhaps eliminate all that marking on the
paper that can be demoralizing to the student.
The subject of grade inflation is one that has dogged me in teaching for a very long time. Each time I
began a new school year, I would discuss this with students. The general consensus was that A was
"desirable," B was "OK," C meant "I'm in serious trouble," and anything below that meant that death or
dismemberment might be imminent. Of course, I was dealing with 14- to 18-year-old students, but
most of us may be able to relate. The grade assessments reflected by the author on page 102 of LTA

may not tend to reflect what most students have in mind when receiving those particular scores.
READING RESPONSE #3 THE SOUND ON THE PAGE
In this week's readings, I was particularly interested in St. Martin's discussion of journals in the writing
classroom (172-178). I'm doing that with ENG 100's this semester, using prompts for their
assignments. However, I found the suggestion of giving choices of prompts to be a worthwhile idea,
since I have only been giving one. The author's way of evaluating journals was also interesting, as I
generally grade on completion after having read through to ensure the student has written on the
assigned prompt.
One area that I found particularly interesting was St. Martin's discussion of language variety and
varying syntax (222). While we have not yet discussed the question of audience, this is an interesting
topic to me as both a student of language and dialects and a teacher at WIU. In my students' current
assignments their characters are speaking in their own unique dialects.
One issue that I have found thus far is that my students seem wedded to the idea of the five-paragraph
essay that we have discussed in class. While we are currently working on description of a character
and they have a word limit, I did not give them any specific requirements regarding paragraphs. That
was not accidental. While they have submitted other writing, this is their first full-length assignment. I
wasn't surprised to see quite a few five-paragraph essays. When questioned, a couple of students even
told me they had cut their stories short, preferring to end them at a certain point and write a conclusion
rather than go over the five-paragraphs "limit." We have not yet discussed any specific number of
paragraphs.

READING RESPONSE #4 I THREW AWAY ALL THE RED PENS

Naturally we all have opinions about grading/not grading grammar and sentence errors. This is
something I am wrestling with, as my natural inclination is to start marking up the paper as I once did.
Of course, this isn't the way it's to be done, and this is a good thing. And it's questionable that students
learn from such teacher feedback. One of the interesting points that came up in the reading in EI was
the 1963 study by Braddock et al. which concluded that "teaching grammar does not improve writing."
(68) While these results may be debated, they do raise an interesting question: At what point in the
education process is the process of teaching grammar occurring? Grammar instruction generally
begins at the earliest levels (at least it did in the past). I would be interested in researching this 50-yearold study and comparing it with any comparable studies that may exist today, if there are any.
Heyden echoes Braddock's sentiments when he states that teaching grammar exercises separately does
little to develop writing skills, but at times he still does it. (15) I can completely relate to this, since I
find that I want to do so on a regular basis; I handed out one skill-and-drill sheet on fragments and runons just last week. This is an area that I need to address as a struggling "correction addict." (17) It's
difficult to overlook the obvious errors, but I am slowly learning to do this and leaving the editing to
the students.
Because I have writers at the remedial level in ENG 100, the exercises in concept attainment presented
by Sams in "How To Teach Grammar" were interesting. (38) However, it's difficult to justify the time
needed for such exercises. Another method I found most interesting (though I wouldn't consider it for
my current course is sentence outlining. I did use this in the past with ninth-grade students, who

enjoyed it immensely, which I found surprising. As Sams points out, though, it does have to do with
the way it's presented. I will be honest about this point -- I had little choice, since our outdated texts
feature it (and this was some years ago), but almost all the students were enthusiastic about it. That
said, this method would not be terribly practical in writing classrooms at Western, for a variety of
reasons. Sams outlines an ideal approach for middle and high schools to teach the basics of grammar,
with students mastering parts of speech in the sixth grade and then building on that foundation in each
successive grade. (64) This is the ideal, but what we might be seeing are students who have no clear
idea about parts of speech because they never grasped them in the first place. However, that may only
be my limited experience. So much of middle and high school instruction time in English classes is
divided among writing instruction, grammar, literature, and test preparation that there may not be
sufficient time for enrichment or even the basics of grammar instruction we would like to see taking
place.
READING RESPONSE #8 STEPPING INTO RESEARCH WATERS
Although my 100 students aren't working on research with me yet, they may be in other classes, and
they will be doing so next semester. Chapter 13 of EI was very reassuring, with with valuablel ideas
for us to employ rather than just giving the old suggestion "write a research paper." Most students,
myself included, have few ideas as to where to start with that, but by urging students to asking the
research questions rather than attempting to write an "all about" paper, we can point them in the right
direction. (236)
The McClure and Clink article, "How Do You know That?" brought up some interesting questions.
Although my students have not yet done any research, just talking with them about what they have
done for other courses gives me pause. Some will tell me they know they "aren't supposed to use
Wikipedia," but beyond that, they have real difficulty articulating what constitutes a legitimate source.
Since students are using the internet to such a great degree and are facing an increasing amount of bias,
it's becoming a daunting task to help them sort out reliable sources. (118)
This article also points out that students do not tend to investigate the credentials of people cited by
web sources. Those sources may be other students, or they may not even exist at all. (123) Looking
down the tunnel of years at my high school teaching experience, I know that this was a problematic
area; students were all too willing to grab at a source and then let the gods sort it out. Granted, this isn't
high school, but I'm still expecting this might be an issue if not addressed.

READING RESPONSE #9 ON REMEDIATION

In read with some interest the St. Martin article by Mike Rose in which he states, "Since the middle of
the last century, American colleges have been establishing various kinds of preparatory programs and
classes within their halls to maintain enrollments while bringing their entering students up to curricular
par." (388) Apparently, our concerns about the writing skills that our students bring to us are nothing
new, as these appear to have been concerns that have been, according to Rose, appearing frequently in
education and language arts journals since the 1920's. I certainly can attest that it's something that's
been around since I began teaching a long time ago, and it's something my teachers began decrying
back in the days of Richard Nixon and bell-bottom jeans. It doesn't appear that we are looking at a new
problem, simply the same concern but with a new generation's face on it.
That said, I have seen an overall decline in the ability of students to read and write since I began
teaching high school, and the trend was, at least to me, alarming. Despite what I saw as very

determined efforts by colleagues at lower levels to teach all the necessary basics of vocabulary,
sentence structure, parts of speech, paragraphs, short essays, etc., these kids were still showing up in
ninth grade with deficiencies in ever-increasing numbers. High school teachers were somehow
expected to remediate those deficits, according to the State of Illinois. The task was at this point
insurmountable, since these kids are lacking (as I see it) the basic building blocks of what makes good
readers and writers in the first place, and that starts before they ever walk into kindergarten and pick up
pencils in the first place.
As to addressing their needs at the university level, I have no answers, but it seems that if WIU has
lowered admissions standards, enrollments in ENG 100 (such as my sections) and even ENG 99 are
bound to increase. That's just my take on things. I could be quite wrong on this score. That said, I
have had some kids who came to me with poor writing skills who've come along well this semester; it's
the rest of their life skills I'm more concerned about. (But that is a different discussion.)

READING RESPONSE #10 ELBOW ON THE TABLE

In Embracing Contraries In The Teaching Process, Peter Elbow states, Surely
we are incomplete as teachers if we are committed only to what we are teaching
but not to our students, or only to our students but not to what we are teaching,
or halfhearted in our commitment to both. (327) I agree with him
wholeheartedly on this point. However, I'm not quite sure that I see the
dichotomy that he refers to when he states: "Most invested teachers tend to
be a bit passionate about supporting students or else passionate about serving
and protecting the subject matter they love." (329) He seems to hint that many
of us are so busy looking after students' needs that we leave our dearly-held
subject matter on the back burner. We might just be too busy grading essays to
notice what we're neglecting. Perhaps I'm reading this with a rather cynical eye,
or perhaps he's playing a bit of a devil's advocate, or perhaps neither one. But
he does make it sound as if it's quite difficult to do both.
He does make excellent points regarding the way we should behave toward
students in his summary of the points of action we should take with regards to
better instruction and policies. (332-333) By following these guidelines, we can
do our best to provide students with the type of writing instruction they deserve.
He states that teaching that "begins and ends with attention to standards and
assessment and puts lots of student-directed supportive instruction in the
middle" and that "writing that begins with exploratory invention and ends with
critical revision" should be our goal. (339) I am in total agreement.
I'm interested to know how my colleagues feel about Elbow's statement that,
"Most invested teachers tend to be a bit passionate about supporting students
or else passionate about serving and protecting the subject matter they love."