I am totally the black sheep of the family, I am all about math and my dad is a writer, my stepmom is an English teacher, my sister has a degree in journalism and so on. So with my background one would expect me to at least appreciate writing and I do, when other people do it that is. I feel like I will always hate writing.
So I wondered, why do I hate writing so much? And why do other people hate writing so much? I came to the conclusion that I was probably not taught well enough in elementary school. I have absolutely terrible grammar and I can’t spell very well. Those things can certainly be corrected later in school, but they weren’t for me. So now I am a terrible writer and I don’t care enough about it to correct it at this point in time.
My issues with writing are most likely because of bad teaching, but I feel like even if I went to a better school and was taught well I still might not like writing. This brings me to the point that I am trying to make: writing should be taught differently in school.
Things shouldn’t be drastically changed, but I feel like more explanation should be involved. Like instead of just teaching grammar the teacher should explain why we need to be grammatically correct; because we want a reader to know exactly what we mean when we write something because most of the time the author won’t be there to explain it. And page requirements should be explained too, like “I want to you to go in a lot of depth with this paper so it needs to be about blank number of pages.” If students were able to see the reasons why they are given particular assignments, besides just getting a grade, I think they would do things more willingly and therefore put more effort into it.
I feel like if I was taught some of these explanations when I was younger instead of realizing them as an adult I would have become a better writer and wouldn’t have complained incessantly throughout my school career about writing papers. Do you think that an explanation of why we do things in school would have helped you be a better student? I feel like students then wouldn’t think that teachers give them assignments just to torture them like I thought.
I am also a terrible writer. I have awful grammar and spelling as well. I agree that the problem with my writing has everything to do with how I was taught writing. Between kindergarten and graduating high school I went 7 different schools in two different states. Every time I changed schools its seems that writing expectations were different. It wasn’t necessarily that I was behind it was simply different. I experienced the same issues in college. My first major was a James Madison College major, and their writing style was dramatically different from anything I had ever learned. Then junior year when I switched to the Com Arts College once again the expectations were different and I struggled. Now this class is the first and only class I’ve taken in the College of Education, and my writing style wasn’t appropriate for this course either. It’s disheartening to constantly be told that you were taught wrong, but I have learned a lot of different styles just maybe not well.
ReplyDeleteGrammar is not my friend and I hate writing. As a matter of fact i procrastinate to the last minute to write because I hope it will magically write itself.I also do not look forward to my presentation either. Both are so open and can go anyway. Why would my way be right? I
ReplyDeletehad the worse experience with grammar and writing. My teacher was just rude and could careless about a student unless they kissed the ground she walked on.All of the writing classes to follow were so simple-minded i felt like i loss intelligence. Grammar will always be a thorn in my side ESPECIALLY when it comes to speaking properly. I learned if i don't speak in class then nobody would notice my country bumpkin slang.I still stutter when attempting to speak in front of others. Hopefully one day i will be ecstatic about writing a paper or speaking in front of a large group.