Over the years, I have found that teaching writing is one of the most difficult tasks a teacher can undertake. Authors who desire to produce rhetoric that is engaging and effective must be driven by and must appeal to both the intellect and the imagination. We should train our students to learn and refine skills in each of these realms, which I call Structure and Style. Modern composition theory tends to focus almost entirely on the former, believing the latter is most valuable in its "native" form...afterall, self-expression is paramount and to be valued without judgment.
When teaching, we must be careful not to reduce Structure to simplistic formulas for outlining or creating Topic Sentences, while forgetting that these tools remain useless apart from the ability to think in an orderly and logical manner. We must purposely build logical structures in the mind by the way we teach and converse with our students. I'll build on these thoughts in a later post.
When teaching, we must be careful not to reduce Structure to simplistic formulas for outlining or creating Topic Sentences, while forgetting that these tools remain useless apart from the ability to think in an orderly and logical manner. We must purposely build logical structures in the mind by the way we teach and converse with our students. I'll build on these thoughts in a later post.
2 comments:
Lori, I just realized you started a blog from being over at Jeff's. I am looking forward to all that I will glean from your thoughts and writing!
Thanks for visiting, Jessie! I'm waiting for a new installment from you about that new little one. Hope to see you tomorrow.
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