I think that as a young teacher,
I will admit that I may not always be too creative, innovative and fresh in my
teaching, especially in teaching writing. My first stage of confusion with this
course and adding on to it, the NCTE beliefs about The Teaching of Writing, came
about when I learned that ‘writing’ is taught. I have never thought of this before. I don’t
think I was ever ‘taught’ writing or was I? Maybe I cannot remember. I just remember that I was given topics to
write about then I just wrote….Was that how it was done? Was that how I was
‘taught’ writing? So my first encounter with this article was reading the
title. And this put me in a little state of disequilibrium.
However,
The article did help clear a few
matters that were a bit confusing to me. However….some points discussed in the
article also confused me more than I already am confused. However, upon reading
and interacting with the article a few things stood out to me that I can
actually identify with.
Firstly, the NCTE believes that everyone has the capacity to write, writing
can be taught, and teachers can help students become better writers. Unfortunately, before reading this article I
was one of those persons who believed that writers (like artists, musicians,
priests, pastors, singers) were born and not ‘made’ into writers. However, after reading this part of the article
I realized that everyone has the ability to develop good writing habits and
skills and become good writers. It therefore depends on us teachers to support
our students in their writing. To do this, we must be well informed of the
different strategies and ways that we can be of support to our students. Most
importantly, we must be good writers ourselves to develop good writers in our
students. (This point struck close very close to home for me as I do consider
myself a good writer, but only for a purpose, for example an assignment. I have
never taken it upon myself to write a story for pleasure or just write for
writing’s sake.) If we want to develop certain writing habits in students, we
must develop these habits in ourselves. Personally, to have a more positive
impact on my students and also to develop good writing habits and skills in
them, I will make it my duty to write more. Because I need to live the
experience in order to give the experience to my students.
From the beginning of this
course, I have developed a new motto for myself and the teaching of Language, “For
students to learn how to write, we must let them write!!” The persons at NCTE obviously agreed with me
because they stated that people learn by
writing. Just as we learn Maths by doing Maths and continuously practicing
Maths, our students will only learn to write……..by writing. When students are
continuously engaged in the process of drafting, revising and in the other
stages of the writing process, they become motivated to write more and improve
on their writing.
Before coming to teacher’s college,
I did not really think of writing as
being a process, but it is. It is not only a process from drafting to
publishing but it is a lifelong process. As one continues to write more and
more, then one gets better at the process of writing. However, as also stated
by NCTE, although teachers must teach writing as a process, we must be very
careful not to make the process a formulaic set of steps for students or be too
tasking or frustrating to students as writing will again become a ‘task’.
Although the article expounded on
a number of valid and interesting points regarding the teaching of writing,
these are the three points that really stood out to me. I hope that I gradually
develop an appreciation for more of the beliefs shared by the NCTE.
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