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Show Tmch&m Stmty Writing When Davis School District students get to the writing part of their readin', 'ritin' V 'rith-metic 'rith-metic next fall, they will benefit be-nefit from some new teaching techniques learned this summer sum-mer by local teachers JoAnne Elmore, Syracuse and Virginia Shaw, Centerville. FOR SIX hours a day, five days a week, four weeks in a row, Elmore and Shaw participated partici-pated in the Utah Writing Project Pro-ject at Utah State University. During the month-long writing seminar, the teachers learned how to teach writing better and how to teach their colleagues ways of teaching writing better. "It's nothing if not intense," in-tense," says Utah Writing Project Pro-ject director Bill String, who has been teaching the workshop work-shop at USU for the past five summers. STRONG, professor of secondary education at USU, says the Writing Project is the most important and enjoyable of all his duties at the university. universi-ty. Enjoyable, he says, because be-cause of the contact with top teachers. Important, because he believes reading and writing will be even more important in the future, in spite of the pro- liferation of television and other mass media and computers. compu-ters. So, that makes the teaching of writing even more important. impor-tant. Formerly, Strong says, teachers did not really teach writing. The typical way writing writ-ing was taught was to give the students a topic and tell them to write about it. That's not teaching, Strong says. NOW, TEACHERS are beginning be-ginning to realize what a complex com-plex act writing is, he says. "Writing is not as simple as it might appear," he says. Teachers are developing methods to teach this complicated compli-cated act. Writing is now being taught in terms of stages, Strong says. It might begin with the rough draft or free association. Questions and answers may help a student realize what he wants to say, or how much he really knows about a subject. Group discussions discus-sions help generate ideas for exploration in writing. TEACHERS are showing students how to mimic the process pro-cess of writing as followed by professional writers, such as note taking and pre-writing. "Teachers are also trying to help students overcome writing writ-ing anxiety," says Strong. "Many people in our society are 'linguistically neurotic' and believe writing is something some-thing sacred; something they would never be able to do." THIS HAS happened, he says, because of a traditional over-emphasis on correctness in writing-worrying about simple, errors in writing (such as spelling, grammar or punctuation) punc-tuation) rather than the content con-tent of the piece as a whole. The result is people tend to become be-come self-conscience, inhi bited and a "bundle of nerves waiting to be corrected," he explains. , Strong says the cosmetics ot writing are important, too, but there has to be a balance and perspective with the cosmetics and the whole of the piece. PEOPLE who suffer from anxiety about writing are "cut off from their own language, and that cuts them off from their own intelligence, says Strong. , . .. Exercises such as free writing, writ-ing, jouranl writing, and peer group review all help reduce writing anxiety. The most important im-portant thing, says Strong, is to get the voice inside the writer's wri-ter's head to flow and get it down on paper. BUT TEACHING tear, how to teach and bJl 4 dents is only half thegoaw'T Utah Writing Prt$ I workshop also shows ieJ how to teach these methods to their colba," more and more teacher! develop effective writin 1 rams in their classroom |
