Blog Post #4

Context, Context, Context…..

            After reading “Breakfast, Bumper Stickers and Beyond” I think the biggest theme is context. Who are you writing for? The article mentioned over and over the different audiences associated with different cereal brands and how those businesses use different language to appeal to those audiences. You may be saying “Yea I get it children cereal appeals to children….what else?” but there is so much more that can be learned here!

Understanding the basic idea that companies appeal to different audiences using different language leads to a whole new understanding of writing. Students in class should do exercises that cater to very specific audiences because it makes the writers more cognizant of who they’re writing to for “regular” school papers. I don’t know about you, but when I was in high school everything we wrote was very formal and we knew the audience was the teacher. This was no fun! Writing should be treated as an active dialogue between the writer and audience. Obviously when someone reads something they aren’t speaking to the writer directly but it’s the writers job to speak directly to the reader! This means that if the writer knows the audience well enough they’re writing will come off as more connected and capture the reader. Going back to how companies ingeniously use language to capture the audience can be directly used on students at young grade levels. Teaching students how to find a voice that will speak directly to the target audience will help their writing in dividends. So remember, context is very important for young writers to find their “voice” and I think every teacher should incorporate short writing exercises that cater to specific audiences to work on these skills.

Red Pencil Blues :(

Blog Post #3

In this blog post I would like to discuss the Red Pencil Blues by Tchudi, mainly because this is something I can relate to very much from my time in secondary school. The gist of the article for me was to try and breakout from the typical writing process in school. This usually consists of the teacher assigning a paper with a due date, students turning the paper in, and finally receiving a grade. This was basically my experience through almost all of high school, which made me take great solace in reading this section of Tchudi. Learning all the alternatives that make the writing process not only better but also more efficient was very informative. One of the handbooks guidelines to teach the writing process as a process in meaning rather than an exercise in learning to write made a lot of sense to me. I took this as trying to make the paper convey a message successfully is most important aspect of the writing. Instead of just judging a paper immediately on form and flow, rather look to see if the paper fulfills its purpose. The handbook also talked about teacher exhaustion towards assigning a lot of writing assignments from the shear fact of the time it takes to grade them. Instead the writing process should be interactive amongst peers and teachers, rather than the conventional method I pointed out above. Peer editing, displaying anonymously student papers on the board, as well as conferences during class are all ways I learned to remedy long hours grading that is probably ineffective anyway. I also enjoyed the standard put on the students who start by saying “this paper didn’t really come out the way I planned” and outlawing this. Nobody should ever start anything in the classroom with a self-defeatist attitude; it’s a learning environment. Tchudi also brought up how the peer groups benefit students learning English as a second language. These groups are a good exercise because they’ll be immersed in the language and with encouragement hopefully improve their writing. Finally, I liked the last section about grading. Students should know how to score and impress the reader, how can you appease the audience if you don’t know what they’re looking for? This is has been an issue in many of my classes in high school and the story in the beginning is all too familiar. When a student doesn’t know how to do well in a class you rob them of their motivation to improve and this to me is one of the worst realities of many teachers I have come across. So in closing, I ask the question has anyone else had my experience in high school with vague grading requirements? Comment below!  

I am a big fan of The Gladiator, and the message speaks to the student who doesn't know how to do well on papers from vague grading requirements. Tyranny pure tyranny haha.