ENG 345 - October 6th

I did not know that there were so many steps in between writing the first draft of the paper and editing it. Speaking as a student myself, I know how painful and undelightful editing a paper can be -- after all, I wrote it, why should I have to go back and fix what I think is correct? I feel like the way paper editing was explained in the chapters is related to scaffolding. The students are not going to know how to edit a paper correctly without the proper guidance. It is therefore important that the teacher shows them both how to proper self/peer edit papers as well as understand the importance in doing so. I've noticed in practicum that the students look too much to the teacher or myself to read what they have been written and correct it for them.

The book explains that it is more important for students to understand error categories rather than individual errors. It is always difficult to go back and reread your own writing and detect errors. If students are more aware of the types of errors made in something that is not part of their own writing, it can be easier for them to recognize the mistakes that they have made.

It is inevitable that mistakes will be made in writing. We're all human, even natural born speakers of a language make mistakes in both writing and speech! Speaking in terms of achievement, I like how Ferris related to getting your students from point A to point Z rather than from point A to point B. Just thinking of my own second language acquisition, I was nowhere near proficient at the end of my first year of Spanish, nor did I have the confidence to speak. Benchmarks are a good thing, in my opinion. I really am in favor of a student reaching point B, then point F, then point M, all the way until point Z. Actually, I can very much relate this to running a marathon. A marathon is 26.2 miles total. Thinking about running that much at one time is incredibly overwhelming and quite frankly, scary. It's easier to think of it in chunks - first you run 1 mile, then you've run a 5k, then you've run a 10k, then you've run 10 miles and before you know it you're halfway done and counting down to the finish. Language learning should be the same. Start with the basics and build your way up.