Teaching Students How to Write Essay -- English Writing Teacher Studen

Experience shapes us, randomness shapes us, the stars and weather, our own accommodations and rebellions, above all, the social order around us.Adrienne Rich, Of a Women BornMy four-year old daughter presently has the yearning to learn how to write. She scribbles illegible swirls, which she says is her story about a princess. She prints her name Olivia on books, magazines, and on her drawings. When she has a indite or crayon in hand she has an immediate urgency to write her name and where ever there is a flat surface she prints her name incorrectly. When I tell her there ar not two Is in her name and attempt to show her the correct spell, she throws her crayon in the air. What is crucial and what I must remind myself is that at the moment, in her world, the spelling of her name is Oliia. When I hover over her shoulder as she scribbles, she stops writing. She feels inhibited, so now I resist teaching her writing. This is how I imagine many teachers feel when faced with a pile of e ssays written by high school students, which are streamed with grammatical errors and incoherent sentences. They feel apathy, as do many students, about writing. After reading texts required for our composition theory class, I sympathize with students, teachers and my daughters frustration. prison term is spent on error identification and what constitutes a finished piece, rather than on the potential of a piece of writing and the process of completing that piece. m is not spent on how to create a good piece, or as Donald Murray describes, rehearsal, drafting, revision and connecting. In a sense I could say Olivia is rehearsing the spelling of her name. It is no wonder she is throwing her crayon in the air, because I am correcting her versus ... ...se for Conflict. Contending with Words. New York The Modern Language Association of America, 1991. 105-124.Kirsch, Jesa E. Ritcie, Joy S, Beyond the Personal Theorizing a administration of Location in piece of writing Research. Colle ge Compositon and Communciation 46 (Feb. 1995)7-19.Murray, Donald M. A writer teaches writing. Boston Houghton Mifflin Company. 1968.Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born. New York W.W. Norton & Company.1986.Royster, Jacqueline Jones. When the First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own. College Composition and confabulation 47.1(Feb.1996) 29-40.Welch, Nancy, Revising a Writers IdentityReading and Re-Modeling in a Composition Classroom. College Composition and Communication. 47(Feb 1996)41-27.Zawacki, Terry Myers. Recomposing as a Woman-An Essay in Different Voices. College Composition and Comunication 43(Feb.1992)32-38.