2 Narratives about Teaching Writing - National Council of Teachers ...

42 Chapter 23. Teachers Can Help Students Find Authentic Reasons to Write.Writing must be treated as a valuable resource, not only in school butalso in the wider social and professional world in which students willlive and work as adults. Topics should be as meaningful for studentsas possible; in- or out-of-class publishing and the inclusion of real audiencesin writing assignments are among the strongest motivators forstudent writing. Contemporary cultural studies approaches to writinginstruction often include discussion of service-learning programs thatrequire students to engage in volunteer or out-of-class work with localsocial service agencies and then write about some aspect of their experience.While this approach may not be feasible at the middle or highschool level, teachers can ask students to research and write about topicsof interest or concern in their local communities and schools insteadof the distant and archaic topics students are often asked to write about.Teachers can also approach the teaching of writing from a rhetoricalperspective, taking into consideration issues of audience, purpose, andeffect.Other ways to bring the real world into the writing classroom andcreate authentic writing experiences for students include inviting professionalwriters to class as guest speakers or having students share theirtexts with people outside of the school and ask for their feedback orresponse. Many teachers already do quite a bit of in-class (or even inschool)publication, such as posting papers on a bulletin board or publishingthem in a school newspaper or literary magazine. All of theseare ideas that can provide an audience for student writing that is largerand more “real” than the sole audience of the teacher-grader. As a result,students may (1) try harder, (2) place more value on writing, and(3) understand writing as a part of professional and adult life.4. Effective Writing Assignments Involve the Complete Writing Process.Writing should be valued as an ongoing process; value should beplaced on writing as a process of inquiry, in addition to a final tangibleproduct. In the 1970s and ’80s, process writing was introduced to secondaryEnglish teachers by such theorists and educators as Peter Elbow(1973), Donald Murray (1968), and Ken Macrorie (1976). While the ideasof these pedagogues are still alive in current composition studies, theyhave been expanded by the social constructivist and postprocess theoriesof others such as James Berlin (1988, 1996), John Trimbur (1989), andPatricia Bizzell (1992) who have added a contextual component to thewriting process, a component that takes into consideration the socialand material realities of the writer, the time and place of the writing act,