Teaching the Writing Process Informal Response

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009 | Uncategorized

Meg Richardson

ENG 484

Dr. Lee Nickoson-Massey

February 3, 2009

Teaching the Writing Process

I am a little hesitant to start this paper in fear that my introduction might be incorrect. I was not very fond of the beginning of this chapter which talked about introductions, in fact, I was a little annoyed after reading it. Don’t get me wrong the book has been great thus far but for the first time I found something I did not really like. For starters, the chapter opened up talking about something Neman describes as “blank-page jitters.” Blank-page jitters are what are referred to in the book as the reluctance to start writing or the fear of the blank page. This is a very common problem and something that I struggle with myself as a writer. Although she describes the blank-page jitters she does not actually talk about how to cure them or how to teach our students to get past them. If that was enough to irritate me, she jumps directly from the blank-page jitters to this statement, “We should not hesitate to advise our students: begin at the beginning, start with the introduction.” This statement amazed me because I don’t understand how Neman expects us to encourage our students to just get started on the introduction without even explaining how to get past the blank-page jitters. This was a little frustrating to me.

In my opinion, a main reason people get the blank-page jitters is because they stare at the blank page and have a hard time starting their paper. Neman thinks that we should encourage our students to start with the introduction, but for some people the introduction is the hardest part. A lot of times students can’t start their paper with the pressure of the perfect introduction and thesis statement hanging over their heads. Who wouldn’t be nervous to write the introduction after reading all the guidelines to a good introduction she gives. I did however like how she offered that that we could reassure our students that the introduction can be rewritten like other parts of the paper. I think that every person is different in their approach to writing a paper and it is our job as teachers to offer different strategies and help our students find what works best for them. For example, we shared in class when we write the introductions to a paper and there were a variety of different answers. For some people, the introduction is the last thing they write.

One of the topics I really liked in this chapter was teaching topic sentences. Topic sentences are something that really help me when I am structuring a paper. When I am doing an outline I always write the topic for each paragraph so I get an idea of where I want to go with that specific paragraph. Topic sentences can also be good transitions for your paper. I used to really struggle with topic sentences and now I understand the importance of them. I liked the activity that Neman presented for topic sentences. She said, “Providing students with a page or two from a professional or even student essay with the topic sentences whited out or otherwise omitted is a convincing way to demonstrate their importance for clarity of communication.” I think this is a really good idea and it after I read it I found a way that I could even expand on this. After they see how awkward a paragraph can be without a topic sentence, I could ask the students to practice writing topic sentences by having them construct a topic sentence for the missing sentence on the paper.