Monday, June 22, 2009
Verbal fluency vs writing fluency
Don't you wonder about the student who speaks so engagingly but is not proficient as a writer? I know I do. As soon as I read Newkirk's description, I had a picture of one of my students, Billy, who was so fluent as a speaker but so stilted as a writer. I frequently wonder what causes a kid to be like that. I would hope it's not "the error-oriented approach to teaching writing", but that certainly seems like a possibility. I had never thought about the possibility of a control issue generating the reluctance to write. I mulled the idea of self-censorship and found it intriguing because it seems exactly like something that kids would do. With all the potential pitfalls to writing, it's a wonder that any person possesses the courage to write at all.
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In third grade, there is often a huge dichotomy between verbal fluency and writing fluency. At this level, I think one of the reasons is developmental level. By the time a child is nine, he/she has been talking for many years. They have had great family and school audiences to encourage them. However, writing brings along new challenges--fine motor skills, perception, connecting the mind and the pencil. Perhaps, we expect too much too soon. Maybe we need to value the idea that children develop at different rates instead of making them feel like failures if they don't meet the standard on the expected date.
ReplyDeleteLike LaQuita, I found myself comparing the student in Newkirk's opening to one of my own students, Cody. In my 3rd grade LA resource room, my kids love to freewrite and share their writing in our "Author's Chair." At the beginning of last school year, Cody would jot down a few words, usually not even a complete sentence, but would spend 10 minutes in the Author's Chair sharing what he had "written." Cody basically started with the idea he had jotted down and did an impromptu presentation to make the kids laugh. It was usually in the form of a dialogue, comic script, or cartoon script, and truly had wit, humor, and even frequent plays on words. After explaining to Cody that it is often ok to write the way he talks, something finally clicked and his development as a writer was amazing. Writing was no longer a chore, but a hobby. All year long, we enjoyed Cody's hilarious skits, scripts, and spoofs of popular tv shows and movies. Many times we have told him that he would be fabulous as a writer for a sitcom someday. It was such a relief for him (and for me) to make this connection between speech and writing and just let go and have fun with language.
ReplyDeleteThe issue of control that Newkirk discusses is definitely evident in students at my school. I am thankful that I teach in the lower grades before some of the kids have adopted the idea that the simpler and shorter that they write, the fewer errors that are possible. When I read this, I remembered Alexa talking about invented spelling at NWP last summer. She said something along the lines of, "When a child is writing a story about his dog, I want to know that it is a chocolate lab, not just that it is a dog, because the child can spell the word 'dog'." I think that as writing teachers, we need to constantly remember to encourage our kids to just let go, experiment with language, take risks, and have fun. This makes the writing process so much more meaningful and enjoyable.
I read portions of A Mind at a Time by Dr. Mel Levine this past school year as a TEPS project in my school district. In the book he says that students may have superb conversational skills, but lack the comprehension skills in reading and with verbal directions because of the way the brain works or is wired. This could result in simple sentences and lackluster abilities when it comes to writing. So I guess what I'm saying is that students don't or won't writr for a variety of reasons.
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