As a
beginning writer I definitely remember there were many pre-writing activities
such as brainstorming, first draft, second draft, and revising so it was definitely
more of a process approach. There is no recollection of a product approach, and
that might be due to the fact I finished school before all the High Stakes
tests, but after the popularity of the product approach. One approach that I
remember well is not really formal writing but a fifth and sixth grade teacher who
taught us how to outline information and take notes. I cannot recall writing
many compare and contrast, or argumentative papers. It seems like there was a
decent amount of freedom to write about what I wanted to write about so it must
have been a more expressivism type of approach.
Because my
major was History I only had a couple of general education English classes in
college. My recollection of those classes is that they were similar to approaches
used in high school, so more like a process approach with an emphasis in
expressivism. There of course was a tremendous amount of writing in my history
courses, and I always did well on any essay question or paper. They were
probably primarily grading me on the content in my paper or essay questions instead
of my writing ability. Actually I do remember being coherent and organization
was important but they did not count off for mistakes like spelling. Towards
the end we did have to complete a research paper and cite sources to receive
our degree in History so that gave me some experience towards academic writing.
I think
process writing has been the primary method used in my classes. It was most
likely a reaction to students not having much say in what they write, and not
really being taught how to write. As is usually the case though when you have a
reaction to something you perceive as negative one can sometimes have an
overreaction. This is probably why negatives arose such as giving students too
much freedom, and so an adjustment again needed to be made.
My Minor was
in Spanish and I also took many upper level Spanish classes so I could pass the
certification exam to teach Spanish. We did write a decent amount of the time,
but after reflecting on this question I realize that the strategies were much
different than L1. There was definitely no prewriting process such as
brainstorming or revisions. It seemed to be more of a product oriented approach
were we analyzed texts then wrote about the text, and responded to certain
prompts the professor would give us so that we could specifically work on the
past tense or stay in the future tense. Again after reflecting on this I think
the strategies used in L1 compared to L2 were much different and I really can’t
think of anything that is similar. If I had to come up with one instance of similarity
it might be a couple of writing prompts were we had more flexibility to write about
what interested us. This was not an essay but instead a test question and I definitely
can’t recall having to do a formal essay.
After
reflecting on my teaching style as a Spanish teacher I would say that I have tried
to emulate my former professors so when writing we do similar exercises.
Sometimes I also give them prompts which force students to write in the past tense
or future tense so they can work on their grammar. I also have them summarize
or analyze texts they read. There are instances when I allow them to freely
write by keeping journals, so that is one example of something that carried
over from my experiences in L1. The skills I think are most important to master
vary depending on the level of class being taught and the student. For
instance, I believe that I need to lay down a firm foundation of grammatical
and lexical knowledge for Spanish 1 and 2 students before allowing them to be
more expressive. In my opinion they don’t really have the ability to do complex
writing. I also mentioned it depends on the student because each student has
different needs. For example my native Spanish speakers have enormous lexical
knowledge so I will usually focus more on grammatical knowledge with them, and
even give them different assignments at times or give them some choices in
assignments.
I have
always been very open to numerous ways of doing things. Flexibility is very important
to me. When there are various theories or beliefs in certain practices, I think
there are some positives and negatives with each so I try and incorporate a
little bit of each one, and be well rounded. Because students are so diverse
and have many different needs I don’t think you can come up with one way of teaching
writing. Given this belief it is important for me to listen to all of those
with experience and be ready to possibly use any approach at any given moment.
