For this week, please respond to one of the following:
1. What is your favorite invention activity? Share it on the blog and explain how it helped your students to write a better essay. Of the activities mentioned in chapter 6, which was new to you? If none were new, which seem like they would work the best and why?
OR
2. Chapter 7 is full of information about teaching different types of essays. Briefly summarize any NEW information that you learned and explain how you would apply it in your classroom.
The invention activity that I like the most is brainstorming. Although all of the activities discussed in the chapter are productive, brainstorming seems to work better for my Intermediate English I students. I discuss the other ones as well when we talk about the writing process and specially pre-writing techniques. However, brainstorming seems to work for them because it helps them to easily narrow a topic and even find possible thesis statements. When I explain it, I usually ask the entire class to come up with one general subject or idea such as chocolate. From that they start telling me all the things that come to their mind regarding chocolate. Then we look for sub-themes that they can identify within their brainstorming. They chose what specifically they would like to write about based on what they have thought of and once this is done then they begin a new brainstorming. This time they concentrate on the topic that has already been narrowed down. Let’s say for example that from chocolate they decided to talk about dark chocolate. Their new brainstorming will concentrate only on dark chocolate. Perhaps from dark chocolate they will narrow it down to the benefits of eating dark chocolate. This is how I tend to use brainstorming with my students and it works because they have the freedoms to let their mind go wild and then little by little they narrow their topics down until they find a topic that they are comfortable with. But I always do a collective brainstorming before they work on it individually.
Out of all the other activities that were mentioned in the chapter, I have used all expect for the classical topical invention. I have never used this invention in the classroom and although it looks like the results might be wonderful, I do not see it working for all my students. I teach ESL students and form me it is important to give them an invention activity that they can easily rely on. This classical topical invention seems to be too sophisticated for my students. By no means am I trying to demean my students, but I do believe that they need to learn how to crawl before they walk or run. Many of my students are still learning how to crawl and giving them this activity can be somewhat overwhelming at their stage as writers. I would however love to try it. Perhaps with a group in Intermediate English II course, who are used to the other pre-writing activities and are ready for something new.
I think that chapter 6 “Teaching Inventions” is a chapter that I can use with my seventh grader students. The one that I use in my classroom are journals. I think the majority of the students are very comfortable with writing journals because there are no formal structures. Students can express themselves in a creative way and they can talk about personal things too. This exercise can help the teacher to look at students’ strengths and weaknesses.
I think writing logs are a good writing exercise to reflect on students’ writings. I also think everyday writing is another type of writing that students from junior high can benefit because it gives them the option to choose their topics. However although it will be a good writing exercise I do not think that the “everyday part” will get them excited on the contrary they will get bored or tired of it. I think that twice a week or once a week will work better.
On page 166, the author talks about brainstorming and clustering. The uses of these inventions in the classroom are very useful. I like to use them before we begin a new story or before I introduce a new topic. My students like these types of activities because there are no wrong or right answers and they can add as many words as they like. With this activity, the majority of students like to compete to see who can write the most words about the topic.
I would like to start out by saying that I have used many of the activities mentioned in the chapter on invention but I have never even thought of how these invention activities may have helped the students write a better essay. I guess now would be a good moment to trace back the activities that I have done and determine if my implementation of these inventions actually helped my students write a better essay.
One of the inventions that I use most is the use of journals in the classroom. The only difference is that I ask my students to write a weblog instead of a written journal and they have to write them on their own rather than me tell them when they have to hand in their journals. I like to use the weblog and ask the students to respond to any of the readings that we’ve done during the week. There are many people who do not participate in class and I felt that the internet could give them a voice of their own so that they can express their opinion without them having to speak in class. As of now, this method has proven to be both effective and ineffective. I have a couple of students who hardly speak in class write a very informative blog on any given subject. However there are others who hardly do their job. The students will practice their writing on a weekly basis and they have the liberty to write about any of the essays that we’ve read during the week and this is as far as how blogging will affect the result of a student’s essay.
However, the more I think about blogging, the more I think of the benefits that the students may have received from blogging. The blogs may not have directly benefited the students when they have to think of a topic for their essays. Nonetheless, indirectly, it may have trained them to find a topic out of another. I never give them any question for them to reflect on, instead I just ask them to write whatever they want about the essays they read. The fact that they’ve done this for so many times they may have transfered their skills to their writing assignments. I just hope I’m not kidding myself.
Anyhow, out of the activities that were mentioned in the chapter that I have not used in class is the Classical Topical Invention. Many of the students are still used to high school education an many of them still expect us to spoon feed them with information and have them bottle up everything they learn in class. I feel that they have to be conditioned to think critically on their own before I used something like classical topical invention. However, this is a method that I unconsciously use in class when I discuss an essay. Analogy is one of my favorite methods that I use when I start a discourse and I can see the possibilities that it might have on students when they have to find their own topic.
The writing invention that I mostly use with my students to have them prepped up for their development of ideas for their essays is the use of Brainstorming and the second is always journal writing. For reasons of using Brainstorming I have to say that it is the most effective way to have students develop their topics into specific areas where they can pursue an area between the topic and what in that topic is of the utmost importance for them to develop further. The use of journal writing is to give them a sense of development of a paper since they already have their ideas and the specifics of it then they go on into the writing of a journal entry for the purpose of exposing an idea to be developed later if they wish to or they can go on into other ventures. He journal gives them the possibility of option in their writing for the journal they use the journal entries to write about guided topics and they are the ones that are going to narrow the broad topic into a venture of their own construction without drifting from the original purpose of the topic discussed in class. Also within their journals they have the option of using free writing as their form of continuation in the pre-writing techniques, but they have the free-writing option in a guided topic and with a word limit so they don’t distance themselves from the topic at hand.
Out of all the writing inventions I think that the one that would work the best as mentioned in the context of “The Saint Martin’s Guide to Teaching Writing” it would suffice to say that it would have to be classical topical invention. Giving a topic and writing about it in a controlled situational clause seems to possess for me the biggest freedom and inductive matter to the student to go on further in his understanding of writing under a topic without deviating from it. The students, as I have encountered, seem to like the topical writing more than just free-writing even though sometimes the students do not like to do all the investigation about the topic that is being assigned to them. from the main topics the guidelines are placed to represent a series of investigative patterns into the construction of the paper such as following a definition, an analogy, consequence, and testimony, the students see this as a lot of work to do when doing a paper but in reality they are doing the same as if they would do a research paper or an essay since all academic writing process require that the students find sources for their papers.
Answering the question of what new information I acquired by reading Chapter 8 I could point out: Aristotle’s influence on what we call rhetoric today, Whately’s types of introductions, and Corbett’s questions for the writer.
It is not surprising to know that the basic of rhetoric are attributed to Aristotle, I mean this man was immersed in every field of knowledge and inquiry that existed during his times. What I found interesting was the fact that we could actually add this historical component to the introduction of essay construction in our classes. Esssay writing could be viewed differently by our students if they see it is not a mere construction of the English class but a mode of writing that has its bases on a prominent figure as Aristotle and that dates of centuries of writing.
Likewise, it is the first time that I hear about Richard Whately and so the first time I observe his suggestions on how to write introductions. In my class, I taught students varied strategies to hook a reader and introduce a thesis statement or a topic but I did not know there was a more purposeful way to teach this. If students were given instead various ways of writing an introduction depending on a specific aim or purpose it seems to me that it would be fruitful and clearer for them.
Finally, I understand that in the course of a semester where we introduce rhetorical modes of writing it is very difficult to have time to give students choice on the rhetorical modes that they want to use when we first have to assess them in specific ones. However, if we were in a course that provides this space and freedom Corbett’s questions for the writer would be a very useful tool. It will allow the students to understand the situation in which they are in and which writing mode would be more suitable for this context. These questions would help students be aware of the person who will read their essay; it will also enable them to set a realistic schedule and an appropriate content for the paper. The questions that Corbett poses are the following:
1. What do I have to say?
2. To whom or before whom it is said?
3. Under what circumstances?
4. What are the predispositions of the audience?
5. How much time or space do I have?
Now, other useful points made in Chapter 8 with which I completely agree are: showing students that these modes of writing can be combined, that they can be applied to paragraphs or complete essays and that to familiarize students with the modes the educator should provide them with samples. In our courses we tend to teach students how to write a complete essay following a rhetorical form but we fail to tell them than in most published essays experienced writers play with these methods to create a rich paper. Finally, most of us have a book of esssays that we use in the course. I understand that we should perform careful readings to select those essays that best represent the mode that we teach our students.
Freewriting
Teaching Writing I must say is not as easy as it may seem. Students are not very willing these days… Anyhow, my favorite invention to place a love for writing, or at least a less negative view towards it, is freewriting. Freewriting does work wonders. Because of the fact that, as the book mentions, it can be either used after brainstorming and clustering, or just as a start-from-scratch, it makes the students see writing as something that does not have to be structured and perfect to be valuable.
I use freewriting for all my essay assignments, as the first thing to be done in the classroom. I give my students a few minutes to write what they begin to think, whenever I assign an essay, because usually the brain begins at that very moment to come up with ideas of what they want to write about, or which things they could include in the assigned topic. Since we all know that none of them is going to write quick notes on those first ideas, this is a way to help them keep track of these early offspring and use them further on in the process.
I agree with the author when it is mentioned that “what freewriting does best is loosen the inhibitions of the inexperienced writer,” and that as a mandate, teachers should “never grade or evaluate freewriting exercises in any way.” Why? Well… for me its true! I mean, think about it! Once you have made clear the true meaning of freewriting, which is not busy work, students will get used to writing. Also, they begin to be less judgmental about their own work because “it has to be perfect” right from the beginning. When a teacher grades these, it puts more pressure into the student to make it “perfect” without really having the stream of thought which is what the freewriting exercise truly is for.
I also found this chapter interesting because of the definition Elbow gives of freewriting, which is “Never to stop!” I honestly have read about these techniques before, and I always tell my students to write whatever comes to mind, but writing “I don’t know what to write” five or six times because nothing else comes up, is just not something that many learn to do from a few sittings. That is why one of the best suggestions that I found in this chapter to freewrite was that you should do it in class constantly, maybe everyday for a few weeks. This will help students in getting used to writing whatever is on their mind, making writing a habit, and allowing them to improve their ability to structure their ideas and sentences right from the beginning.
Finally, another very useful tool I found in the chapter was the integration of invention techniques. This is because I believe and know that all students are different, and they all have different ways of learning. This gives a little something for everyone, and surely, after correcting, each student will have developed more material in one technique or the other regardless of the time limit they had. So, I may like freewriting, but allow my students to work in other techniques as well and with whatever they feel more comfortable as long as they write. When they write, and come at the end of class to show me what they wrote because they believe it is pretty good for a “right off the bat” writing, I feel they are catching on and stepping up in the process, thus, becoming better writers.
Well, I always believe that at the beginning of the semester the teacher should always know the context he/she is going to be dealing with. In my case all my students are interested in Science and its different branches, computers and interestingly enough world issues. I figured that their future essays are going to be about more or less their concerns on these issues so, I decided then to give them a weekly oral presentation on a given web page about a newspaper from any country, for example Africa, Dominican Republic, Afganistan, etc…and make an oral presentation on an issue presented in the newspaper. After they present they have to write a journal about their opinions, or other topic, and believe me, these journals are very strong. According to the chapter journals are important in the sense that students “when faced with a writing assignment, many students are troubled not by the lack of subject or topic, but by a seeming lack of anything important or coherent to write about it” (151). In my case these oral presentations give them ideas on topics they could write about for future essays, since they use their journals as a reference. I have to give them a time limit to present and discuss because they get very involved on the issues, if not the class period will be about one presentation. I believe this is a good exercise because if their favorite topics are taken into consideration then they will be very comfortable when they get to write an essay, since they are getting information from different sources. To this day students love to talk about their concerns, and according to their feedback, I think I’m going to repeat this exercise in the future.
The brainstorming process it’s an essential part of any English Composition class. In my classroom I sense that students need to feel that they are writing following a “formula” or a certain guide in order to feel that their essay is “organized”. Even thought they always have it as an option the freewriting process does not work for most of my students because they don’t feel they are structured enough. The four common topics will help students to develop more their thesis statements, to stay focused on the topic and to also “organize masses of information” (159). They will also “have a much better idea of where they need to go to look up information they do not have at hand” (160). Students will find this process very helpful in looking for information and to develop more about it.
There are two invention activities that I believe would help my students the most when they engage in the writing process. They are brainstorming and the elaboration of journal entries. Brainstorming is very productive because it allows the students to purge themselves of ideas that are disconnected or fragmented. Then they are able to select the ones that best describe or support the idea that they are trying to communicate in their essay. They can also visualize the main idea of their essay because it is going to be the sentence or the thought that integrates the rest of the ideas that are fragmentized.
The journal entries I believe can be used for reflection and as building blocks that will help the student complete the final work that is requested from them. For example, you can tell students that each week for two or three weeks they will have to hand in a journal that contains important parts of their final essay. In week one you can ask them to talk about the topic that they choose for their essay and why. If the teacher selected the topic then they should explain in what issues he/she would be focused for the essay. I agree with Linnette when she mentions that journals give students the freedom to express themselves. I am currently teaching Basic and I have learned a lot about my student’s abilities by reading their journals. When I read their journals I know that I am reading their own voices and other works do not influence them. Sometimes when we assign our students to summarize a news article they just paraphrase it and they even use the same words. In the journal they do not have this opportunity because I ask them of personal experiences and themes that cannot be copied from some place else. Therefore if the journal is used wisely it can serve as an aftermath for the brainstorming exercise that will help the writer create a cleaner image of the path that she/he is going to take to construct the essay.
From all of the invention activities mentioned I have never used my self as a student the Classical Topical Invention method in the writing courses that I took as an undergraduate. In classes that are specialized in literature I believe that this method would work because the students that are prepared to take this type of courses have a different vision of the role that the professor plays as a facilitator. They do not expect to be guided through the whole writing process. Usually in these courses the professors assign a reading and then they tell the students to write about anything that caught their attention within the text. In this case the CTI would work because the student would have enough freedom to generate and analyze different topics about a same subject. I also believe that in order to be able to make the most out of this method you have to be a professor that has a lot of experience because it is difficult to judge which topics can be integrated without affecting the purpose of the written assignment.
I believe that every writer should choose the best invention activity that best suits his purpose, style and audience. Now, this may be true for experienced writers, but not so for students in a basic writing course. This is my first semester as a TA and obviously my first semester teaching a basic writing course. For the invention activity for their first essay I gave them the libertly of using two of the invention activities they liked. Obviously before that we had a class about the topic. After that the invention activity that I use daily with them is freewriting. I do this because as Chapter 6 says” is loosens the inhibitions of the inexperienced writer”(168). I think this will help them get use to the idea of writing, generating ideas and feeling comfortable doing so in a short period of time. This, I think, will also help them in their final exam, were they must generate new ideas and create a 500 word essay in a two hour period.
Now, in terms of invention activities mentioned in the chapter that are new to me I have used most and heard about the rest. What really captured my attention was the idea of not evaluating journals. This is something I will like to elaborate a bit more in class to see how many are evaluating journals, how many are not and what do all think of not evaluating them. Personally I am evaluating them, but I think that for next semester I just give a genral grade if they just do the amount of journals they do. This will help them feel more free and less stressful about writing, while they practice generating ideas.
I assume an invention as the combination of language and interaction process. To encourage and activity the teacher must think in the ability of the student at the same time the teacher must think the students will be in progress improving writing skills.
I like the activities to identify a point of view and in the same way students can share their own comments. A teacher can use a representative reading as resource. The students read this source and they create a new critical dimension. Students learn how to organize ideas by the combinations of facts and opinions, they follow the author’s purpose.
Most of the times you mind find one strategy better than another. The strategies explained in chapter six and seven describe the component of invention. Writing a journal students describe situation and they find a special inspiration writing about their experiences.
The invention techniques are like a new experience to write. Every new activity must care attention in the growth as writers. Invention through writing is linked with the explanation of the teacher, if the teacher defines what she/ he wants the students will clear the sense of an audience.
Well because I am not a TA and I am not teaching anywhere I have not had the opportunity to use any of the Teaching Inventions on Chapter 6. But I do remember when I was in my Intermediate English course I remember when I did use some of these techniques. I did learn how to use Brainstorming, and at the time the teacher did tell us to write anything and everything that came to our mind. I do remember those points that were a lot were I wrote, I don’t know what to right. She told us that we could do X’s on the paper when nothing did come out and I would have these long lines of XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX where I had nothing in my headed concerning the topic. We actually never did cluster and I don’t understand it by what I read. The last one we also did was the Freewriting technique. This one I do remember that we did used it but I don’t remember myself freewriting. These are techniques that I was taught to use and I remember that didn’t pay much attention to. Today I never do any of those when I have a paper to write. If I have to do a program for my church we do use freewriting and all those things but we don’t calla it that way. We call it a draft. So we actually use these techniques in our daily life but we don’t have a name for them until we make the connection. So I think that it is a good idea to let our students see that they do freewriting in their daily life but they don’t see it as such. So as many professors and books have said to us we need to make the students see that what we are teaching them is useful in their daily life, or in this case that these techniques that seem new, are not new, they just have a name now. But there is more, we need to make this activity more interesting because I remember that when I had to do these I didn’t want to do them and I got bored doing them. When we do use these techniques that we know that we use them and that are very helpful we need to monitor our students very closely so that they can do them correctly in the classroom.
One point in the reading that I saw important is that it says: “Never give an assignment you have never tried yourself”. This is something that we almost never do. As teacher we have graduated and done a lot of stuff and sometimes we come up with these crazy ideas on a creative assignment for a course and when the students start doing the assignment you realize that the task was to difficult even for you. So I think that when we do come up with an assignment t we should think what the students need to be able to complete the assignment and if possible try it out yourself. As it says on the book. Always have in mind that our students have other classes besides the one you are giving them.
My favorite invention activity is free-writing for more creative writing and brainstorming for academic writing. I like free-writing for creative projects because of its lack of structure, while I like brainstorming for academic writing for the opposite reason. Students, though in my experience use more brainstorming and clustering rather than free-writing because they are more accustomed to it. I found that most students that do brainstorming rather than free-writing tend to have more structure in their first drafts. I found that it is really helpful for students to experiment with various kinds of invention activities until they find that better fits their writing purposes. In the beginning of the semester when I taught INGL 3201 I use to spend a 2 class hours on different types of invention activities while they had a same topic in mind so that they thought about the different ways to approach pre-writing activities. This is helpful because the students later on feel more comfortable writing their choice of pre-writing preference. Even though journals are useful I choose not to have students do them for the whole semester, but during three weeks they are suppose to keep journals and have to meet a quota during that time. By this time they already have their first essay topic thought out and I ask them to reflect on their topics during that time or if they are having problems with their topics so that we can clarify them. Students find pre-writing activities intimidating because they have to do them in English “on the spot” and you can see a visible relief in the classroom if you tell them that they can pre-write in Spanish. The students are asked to bring the pre-writing activity in English for the next day so that they can keep thinking on their topic, but they are required to hand in both. I like for students to do as much writing as possible in class because I think that writing seems to be a neglected part in most English courses and its importance relegated to product instead as process.
I have used many of the techniques mentioned in this chapter and the ones that I can honestly say that I have faithfully stuck by are journal writing and brainstorming. It is not a matter of how many words a student may be able to write but how on track and on the subject the student can stay.
When it comes to journal writing (which I consider my favorite) there is no better way to go. With an indefinite stucture, students can write about anything and everything. They can be about topics that are ocurring in their daily lives, an incedent the saw on the news the day before, about a personal experience or even about the “what ifs” in life. I consider that students are most confortable when writing journals than when writing an essay. They don’t feel as if the have to be politicaly correct all the time; they feel loose and hence more willing to write.
If the time comes that an essay has to be writitng for a class assignment, than brainstorming can help out a lot. Students ususally have good ideas in their heads but don’t seem to know exactlly what to do with them. They might have a writing topic in mind but don’t seem to know how to narrow them down. Brainstorming can help a student find what exactlly they are looking for within the topic they chose.
Many of the ESL student don’t like to write therefore, I believe it is my job as a teacher to find a way to help them out through this process. One way of doing so, is by giving them the invention of brainstorming. Brainstorming gives the students the opportunity to come up with ideas which can be used in the writing process, also since it is something done in oral form, at least in my classroom, they feel that the burden of coming up with ideas is not only on them because all of the students should participate in this process. The students also get to see that there are many other who might have think the same way as they do therefore they open up even more.
A writing invention I haven’t used but seams that it might work in my class, with the ESL students, is free writing. I haven’t used it since it has never occurred to me that it might help them, but since they usually get stuck in that first sentence, I guess this will help them get unstuck. Students are afraid of writing because they don’t know how to commence that first sentence that is so overwhelming to them. Since this process is one that is not, or I guess should not be graded, this will make them more at ease in writing whatever they feel is related to the topic given.
I chose to answer question 2. I liked this chapter because I believed the section on outlines to be very interesting and helpful for teachers as well as students. The chapter mentions that there are two ways of creating outlines, one being more complex than the other. The first type of outline students could use is the topic outline and the topic sentence outline. In a topic outline students simply make a list of the topics they will discuss in their essay, for example:
Introduction: 4 types of pressures
Topic 1: Economical pressure
Topic 2: parental pressure
Topic 3: peer pressure
Topic 4: self-induced pressure
Conclusion: 4 types of pressure
The second type of outline is a topic sentence outline in which each yopic has a sub topic which makes it harder to do. The author says that this outline is better to use when the essay has already began to take form, unlike the other one that is useful from the very beginning. The best way to go would be to create a topic oputline forst and then from there expand each topic into a topic sentence, The rest of the process would simply to be to expand on each topic sentence. It is also mentioned that if students have trouble crating their own outlines, they could practice creating one out of someone else’s work first to get an idea of they would be doing. Another point mentioned is the idea that these outlines help students see the editing that their essay needs in terms of rearrangement, adding and deleting. I believe that this type of outline would be much better than mapping or free writing since it is a more organized way of thinking about a topic. Once an outline is done then all it needs is the meat and you have an essay. I would definitely use this idea in my class. First I would make them read an essay and create an outline and then as part of their draft I’d make them work on both types of outlines to see what fits best.
I have never used journals in the classroom, but that is one change I plan on making for next semester for several reasons. First, I think it can be used as a tool to help with the students own organization. This semester I noticed some many students take notes and do free writes in random notebooks, and when I ask them for something from the last class, they never have it together. I also think it will be nice for the students to have something to reflect and look back on at the end of the semester — an entire book they have written, in English, which is a feat in itself!
Additionally, I have never formally introduced the concept of “brainstorming”. Brainstorming seems like it would be the easiest thing to teach, but for me it’s the most difficult. I think of my own writing process, and how I don’t want anyone to meddle with it. Everyone has their own unique process they take to writing, and I hate to impose a specific regime onto anyone. At the same time, I need to remember these are beginning students, and they probably have never even heard of the concept of “brainstorming” before, so it would be very beneficial to them as students if next semester I introduced many several different ways to brainstorm.
I agree with the reasoning Wi Hong mentioned on why he avoids topical invention, and also just because I personally think it’s boring. Crucially though, I have noticed that students are not used to discourse or analytical and critical thinking, and I consider that to be a problem. A writing course is not like a calculus or chemistry class — it’s not about banking information. On the contrary, sometimes I feel the more I talk in a class, the less successful the class becomes. A writing course is really about practice in action. Yet when I do use topical invention, I will give them only 1 word (king, shoe, grey) so it’s technically “topical”, but they have freedom to take it wherever they want. Sometimes topicals can kind of ’start their engines’, so to speak, especially at the beginning of the semester when they are getting used to the idea of “free writing”. However, my students have told me though that they like it when I tell them they can write about anything.
My favorite invention activity has to be maybe free writing or journal writing because that is the way that I can see the way my students feel about the topic. When a student starts writing an essay he/she knows that it is intended for the teacher, which means that he/she will think that the teacher will grade based on technicalities or grammar and so on. Based on the experience that I have had with journals and free writing the students feel like they can write whatever they feel and then there will be an opportunity for them to organize their ideas into a more comprehensive work. This is how I felt whenever I was free writing or even writing a journal. The pressure of writing for a professor is not the same as to writing a journal that is in a personal matter and what will be evaluated are your opinions about the topic. For me it is also a good way to evaluate the skills and what the students really know about writing.