Writing workshop and peer response

In my memories, I don’t think we had the experience of sharing our writings with our peer learners and receiving feedbacks back in school. Writing is always regarded as an individual thing; no matter it was a weekly journal, a diary, or an academic writing that the teacher assigned.

Yes, back in middle school days, some good articles will be read aloud in front of the whole class by the teacher, but that was just for the appreciation purpose – to allow the whole class enjoy how beautifully the article was written. Gradually it turned out that we admired that writer much more than we appreciated the article. No further comments were invited from the rest of the class, and that article was regarded as the final product – a model article.

Back to my own teaching days, I also assigned writing tasks, on specific topics. But due to the big class (I had 120 college students in one Reading and Writing class), most of the time, my young writers’ reader, and their only reader was me. Occasionally, I would find one or two outstanding “model article”, which conveyed creative thoughts and refreshing air; which also carried a plenty of common mistakes that many other students may make while writing in English. Having got the permission from the writer, I would copy and paste the article to a Word document on a computer to share with the whole class, and also read aloud in front of them. Although the writer’s name had been hidden, and the students were very active in “pointing out” the mistakes, I felt something was not right... Yes, the poor writer’s face was getting redder and redder – he/she was embarrassed to some degree. Although I was still inviting students to appreciate how the paper was structured and how carefully some particular words were chosen, my students’ attention had gradually transferred from “appreciating” to “error correcting”. Will the young writer still be willing to “share” the writing with the rest of the class next time? I doubt.

This Tuesday, we had a writing workshop. We were still using one “sample article”, and the comments from the rest of the class were invited. But this time, our aim was not to “fix the article” or to correct the mistakes; instead, we were to tell the writer what we saw and what we felt about his article. I truly believe that it was a healthy way to encourage the growth of a writer by letting him/her hear the voice directly from the readers, realizing his/her own strengths and weaknesses. It is a community where people trust each other and are honest with each other...

I will definitely adopt writing workshop and peer response in my future classrooms, to build up their confidence in writing, and to help them become a better writer, and, of course, I hope I could be given a smaller classroom.

Imagination

Boice mentioned in his article that what is as same important as motivation to help writing is imagination. While I was reading, I couldn’t help asking these questions: Where does imagination come from? Is it something we were born with, or something that we need to train ourselves to be good at with?

My husband used to say that I was one of the most imaginative people in the world, because I would always have the wildest and weirdest dreams during the night and to tell him when I woke up the next morning. But am I an imaginative writer? If you ask me to answer this question, I’ll never admit it, because just like many of my students, staring at the topics which were irrelevant to my life, and holding the pen in my hand on the blank paper for couple of hours, I still, couldn’t generate anything creative or interesting to write about. I would and could write up an article freely and fluently only when I, myself, had the life experience about the topic. To be precise, this type of articles does not belong to the academic writing category. They are often journal like articles restating what I had gone through, which left me deep impression.

Does imagination have anything to do with artistic ability or handcraft making type thing? If the answer is yes, and imagination does require a lot sense of art, then probably I’ll include myself to the non-imaginative people section, because I am always clumsy doing those kinds of stuff.

Boice’s article also talked about how information collecting may help generate imagination… I kind of doubt it…I’d rather say it is the information that we collect and take in that help with our thinking -- to think about a wider range of matters, which we perhaps pay little attention to, and to think about a particular issue more deeply, more critically. Could that also be termed as Imagination? Is imagination part of our thinking process? Why each time when I look at the word imagination, I could only think of something wild, unreal, and non-existent in this world, which we create only in our mind?

Why do they write? How do they start?

Every time when I assigned a writing task to my Chinese college students, I would always be responded by their knotted brows, distorted faces written with agony.

Yes, as a teacher, I need to do my job, that is, I need to give writing tasks to my students and provide them more opportunities to practice it. And my poor students have to write, no matter how poor their English was, because I, their English teacher, asked them to; and they needed me, the reader, to give them feedback and to check how well they could write and what they were lacking of. They, themselves, also realized this need, the need to write, then why were they still so painful?

Bitzer mentioned that “rhetorical discourse comes into existence as a response to situation”, and that “a rhetorical situation must exist as a necessary condition of rhetorical discourse” (p.5-6). The driven power, or the situation for the students to write something rhetorical is very clear – my request and their need to improve their English. However, is this simple request adequate or strong enough to stimulate them to do some nice writing?

Why were they always reluctant to write in English? Is it because that they are not very good at English and that they are embarrassed by the mistakes they might make? But without practices, how could they be fluent in writing in English language? Are they ready? Have I prepared them to be ready for the topic I assigned?

According to Edbauer’s article about rhetorical ecology, “knowledge involved in writing depends on activities and communications shared in interaction not only among people but also interactions between people and various structures in the environment…” (p. 8) Have I provided them the opportunity to talk to their peers first to help generate the elements of their writing pieces? Time is changing. Did I assign them the topics that closely related to their social life and studies that they had more to say about? Have I given them the freedom to write for the audience other than me? Have I thought of allowing them to receive the feedback from and interact with other potential audiences?

Having thought of the above, I think I sort of understand my students a bit more…

When is the best time to write?

After I finished reading Boice’s two articles, I couldn’t help asking myself: “How often would I really try to write an article or a paper without the pressure from a deadline?” and “Why would I always wait till the last minute to write up my paper?”

I’ve asked many other friends, and it seems that being the “last-minute-writer” is not my patent – they also, and always put them into the same situation.

Countless paper deadlines and endless paper writing follow after I made my decision to pursue my doctoral degree in the U.S. Every time, the requirements and the deadline were well explained and we were informed long enough before the paper should be submitted, but still, I will repeat the cycle of panicking; waiting, waiting for a long time; hesitating to write; attempting to start; writing till exhausted; finishing writing; and experiencing the extreme excitement till thrill with trembling hands…

Every time, I would blame myself harshly for not having starting writing earlier, and regret for the unnecessary crisis and pressure that I created for myself. However, it seems that once the scar was recovered, I would immediately forget about the pain that I’ve ever tasted, and I would still repeat the cycle over and over again, sticking to my old bad habit.

Why did I always wait for such a long time before I started to write? Why did I always waste so much precious time? Why couldn’t I start a little bit earlier next time? What was I afraid of? What hindered me starting early? Those questions I have asked myself thousand of times, and I have generalized the following reasons:

First of all, it’s my language problem. Writing in a second language is still a big challenge for me. Occasionally, only thinking of this problem would scare me to drop the pen.

Secondly, I was not ready, which I think contributed the most to my writing obstacles. Yes, I was very scared of writing something I didn’t know what to write about. I hadn’t found enough sources, nor had I read adequate materials to form my ideas and organize my thoughts.

Thirdly, my laziness always works. Yes, the thought that “there’s still enough time, so why bother now?” always hoaxed me into the last-minute-writing situation. When I realized how fast time may escape away, it was already too late…

Now the last but not the least, maybe it’s an excuse – I had no inspiration. Sometimes I would comfort myself that inspiration is something very special--it would hide in somewhere when you tried so hard to find it, and would come out suddenly when you least expected, but once it showed up, the pen would seem writing by itself and your time will be doubly saved. So, I was waiting for inspiration.

Why couldn’t I read a lot and get ready while I was still waiting, and hesitating to write? What if inspiration didn’t show up till the last minute? When is the best time to write? Was I waiting to get the best state in writing or was I just waiting to lose my passion and ability to write? Does confidence increase or decrease during the time of waiting? Um…there are a lot of questions…

Exploration

Life is the process of endless exploration.

Everyday we are asking questions, seeking answers, getting confirmations, and asking even more questions.

Everyday, we are exploring the most mysterious world -- the world of language, which is like the deep ocean with countless treasures hidden, to discover ourselves, and to weave our dreams.

What are we going to find?
I am ready and can't wait to start this journey...