Writing

When I think of the writing assignments I completed in high school and even college, most of them had something in common. The main goal of the writing was not to explore an idea, but to learn the process of writing. This process was painfully slow for me. It took a long time to learn how to write clear cohesive papers in the correct format. While learning how to do this, I wrote a lot of papers answering boring questions and making comparisons between foils in a book.
In Adolescent Literacy Turning Promise Into Practice, edited by Kylene Beers, Robert E. Probst and Linda Rief; Chapter 12, written by Donald M. Murray talks about writing assignments and writing in general. One of the points made is that students are asked to write about things that do not relate to their lives and that they are not interested in. This is directly responsible for the quality of writing that students produce. When students are interested and engaged in a writing topic, the quality of writing increases. Similarly, when students are asked to write about something in which they have little interest, this is too is reflected in the writing. This is good to keep in mind as I think about writing assignments for students. Keeping the topics interesting, fresh and relevant will yield more interesting writing as students write because they are engaged instead of simply required.