英语写作教学的三十法

    19. Make grammar instruction dynamic.

    Philip Ireland, teacher-consultant with the San Marcos Writing Project (California), believes in active learning. One of his strategies has been to take his seventh-graders on a "preposition walk" around the school campus. Walking in pairs, they tell each other what they are doing:

    I'm stepping off the grass.

    I'm talking to my friend.

    "Students soon discover that everything they do contains prepositional phrases. I walk among my students prompting answers," Ireland explains.

    "I'm crawling under the tennis net," Amanda proclaims from her hands and knees. "The prepositional phrase is under the net."

    "The preposition?" I ask.

    "Under."

    IRELAND, PHILIP. 2003. "It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time." The Quarterly (25) 3.

    20. Ask students to experiment with sentence length.

    Kim Stafford, director of the Oregon Writing Project at Lewis and Clark College, wants his students to discard old notions that sentences should be a certain length. He explains to his students that a writer's command of long and short sentences makes for a "more pliable" writing repertoire. He describes the exercise he uses to help students experiment with sentence length.

    "I invite writers to compose a sentence that goes on for at least a page - and no fair cheating with a semicolon. Just use 'and' when you have to, or a dash, or make a list, and keep it going." After years of being told not to, they take pleasure in writing the greatest run-on sentences they can.

    "Then we shake out our writing hands, take a blank page, and write from the upper left to the lower right corner again, but this time letting no sentence be longer than four words, but every sentence must have a subject and a verb."

    Stafford compares the first style of sentence construction to a river and the second to a drum. "Writers need both," he says. "Rivers have long rhythms. Drums roll."

    STAFFORD, KIM. 2003. "Sentence as River and as Drum." The Quarterly (25) 3.

    21. Help students ask questions about their writing.

    Joni Chancer, teacher-consultant of the South Coast Writing Project (California), has paid a lot of attention to the type of questions she wants her upper elementary students to consider as they re-examine their writing, reflecting on pieces they may make part of their portfolios. Here are some of the questions:

    Why did I write this piece? Where did I get my ideas?

    Who is the audience and how did it affect this piece?

    What skills did I work on in this piece?

    Was this piece easy or difficult to write? Why?

    What parts did I rework? What were my revisions?

    Did I try something new?

    What skills did I work on in this piece?

    What elements of writer's craft enhanced my story?

    What might I change?

    Did something I read influence my writing?

    What did I learn or what did I expect the reader to learn?

    Where will I go from here? Will I publish it? Share it?

    Expand it? Toss it? File it?

    Chancer cautions that these questions should not be considered a "reflection checklist," rather they are questions that seem to be addressed frequently when writers tell the story of a particular piece.

    CHANCER, JONI. 2001. "The Teacher's Role in Portfolio Assessment." In The Whole Story: Teachers Talk About Portfolios, edited by Mary Ann Smith and Jane Juska. Berkeley, California: National Writing Project.

    22. Challenge students to find active verbs.

    Nancy Lilly, co-director of the Greater New Orleans Writing Project, wanted her fourth and fifth grade students to breathe life into their nonfiction writing. She thought the student who wrote this paragraph could do better:

    The jaguar is the biggest and strongest cat in the rainforest. The jaguar's jaw is strong enough to crush a turtle's shell. Jaguars also have very powerful legs for leaping from branch to branch to chase prey.

    Building on an idea from Stephanie Harvey (Nonfiction Matters, Stenhouse, 1998) Lilly introduced the concept of "nouns as stuff" and verbs as "what stuff does."

    In a brainstorming session related to the students' study of the rain forest, the class supplied the following assistance to the writer:

    Stuff/Nouns : What Stuff Does/Verbs

    jaguar : leaps, pounces

    jaguar's : legs pump

    jaguar's : teeth crush

    jaguar's : mouth devours

    This was just the help the writer needed to create the following revised paragraph:

    As the sun disappears from the heart of the forest, the jaguar leaps through the underbrush, pumping its powerful legs. It spies a gharial gliding down the river. The jungle cat pounces, crushing the turtle with his teeth, devouring the reptile with pleasure.

    LILLY, NANCY. "Dead or Alive: How will Students' Nonfiction Writing Arrive?"  The Quarterly (25) 4.

    23. Require students to make a persuasive written argument in support of a final grade.

    For a final exam, Sarah Lorenz, a teacher-consultant with the Eastern Michigan Writing Project, asks her high school students to make a written argument for the grade they think they should receive. Drawing on work they have done over the semester, students make a case for how much they have learned in the writing class.

    "The key to convincing me," says Lorenz, "is the use of detail. They can't simply say they have improved as writers-they have to give examples and even quote their own writing...They can't just say something was helpful- they have to tell me why they thought it was important, how their thinking changed, or how they applied this learning to everyday life."

    LORENZ, SARAH. 2001. "Beyond Rhetoric: A Reflective Persuasive Final Exam for the Writing Classroom." The Quarterly (23) 4.

    24. Ground writing in social issues important to students.

    Jean Hicks, director, and Tim Johnson, a co-director, both of the Louisville Writing Project (Kentucky), have developed a way to help high school students create brief, effective dramas about issues in their lives. The class, working in groups, decides on a theme such as jealousy, sibling rivalry, competition, or teen drinking. Each group develops a scene illustrating an aspect of this chosen theme.

    Considering the theme of sibling rivalry, for instance, students identify possible scenes with topics such as "I Had It First" (competing for family resources) and "Calling in the Troops" (tattling). Students then set up the circumstances and characters.

    Hicks and Johnson give each of the "characters" a different color packet of Post-it Notes. Each student develops and posts dialogue for his or her character. As the scene emerges, Post-its can be added, moved, and deleted. They remind students of the conventions of drama such as conflict and resolution. Scenes, when acted out, are limited to 10 minutes.

    "It's not so much about the genre or the product as it is about creating a culture that supports the thinking and learning of writers," write Hicks and Johnson.

    HICKS, JEAN and TIM JOHNSON. 2000. "Staging Learning: The Play's the Thing." The Quarterly (22) 3.