Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Alternatives to the Error Hunt
Helping students revise and edit their work, during the writing process, allows them to learn from their mistakes and eliminate the number of errors that are made in their writing. Thus, Weaver takes a constructivist stance on errors, and believes that errors can be used as a tool for teaching. First, Weaver suggest that teachers give students plenty of time to read during school. This suggestion enforces the assumption that the more a student reads the more familiar the student becomes with discourse associated with that discipline. Thus, is is wise that students use reading time and quick quizzes to get well acquainted with grammar and style. This can also limit the amount of plagiarism that can accidentally happen among students. Next, Weaver insist that teachers make sure students have plenty of time for all phases of the writing process. Reviewing literature review on the discipline, or having students read from a number of different authors on the same topic, is essential for students during the self editing process. Therefore, students will feel that their audience is more public. Teachers should also develop and collect resources that are useful for editing, such as editing checklist. The editing checklist serves as a model for students to follow, which leads directly into Weaver's next suggestion. The author suggest that teachers provide students with a model of what is expected so that students can follow a template for the assignment and have a higher chance for success. Teachers can help students help themselves, by creating peer editing workshops. If the teacher finds that a large number of students are making the same grammatical mistakes, then mini lessons should be taught to the entire class. Teachers should also hold mini-conferences with students to point out what matters need special attention within that particular student's writing. Weaver ends this section of the book by giving teachers some suggestions on how to approach responding to errors in the final draft. The suggestions are the teachers should not do anything about the remaining errors, respond only to selected kinds of errors, or put check in the margin of lines where there is an error and invite the student to correct the errors. Nonetheless, Weaver's approach to using errors as motivation for tutorial materials takes a constructivist stance very common today in American education.
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17 comments:
I agree that errors can be used as a jumping off point for teaching and should be used in a positive way to correct the students in their learning. I am not so sure that having the students read all the time in class will help them with much more than spelling and basic sentence structure. I do not see how it would help with plagiarism. The mini-lessons about grammar would be a good idea, but more should be done about creating a basis or foundation for the learning that needs to take place. Interesting stuff.
This article was very interesting and had several useful tips for correcting errors and help students to learn. I think it is good for students to learn from their mistakes and to understand what their mistakes are in order to improve. Errors are the best way to help students improve, because if they don't learn from their mistakes then they will continue to make them. The article had some good ideas and some not so good ideas, but overall I think doing all we can to help students learn and help them to teach themselves is good.
I also agree that errors can be used as learning tools to help students realize what they need to work on. I do have to agree with Jessica, that reading all the time in class may not help with grammar structure. Although I do believe that reading is class is beneficial, teachers must balance reading time and instruction.
I think that large amounts of reading will improve your writing. But it has to be good material. We learn by mimicking what we see. It is natural and inevitable that we will be influenced by what we take in. It is a great idea for a teacher to include lots of good reading. Of course this will not make the students perfect writers. But reading mixed with a willingness to learn from your mistakes will take you a long way towards that goal.
Bryan Norbut
Errors are important in the fact that that errors by nature show what the student is struggling with. I don't think that the teacher should merely focus on just looking at the error in itself, rather they should look at the reason why the errors being commited, in order to best fix it. I thought the idea of the mini-lessons was good.
I agree with Zach. Everyone makes errors, it's the way we learn. I think that having the students read in class is a good idea, but not all the time. Reading is not going to necessarily going to help them correct all errors. I think the mini lessons are a good idea.
i think that having students read in class. Although i don't think that it should be done all the time.i agree with Lindsay, that this isn't going to help correcting all errors.The mini lessons are a great idea for this subject.I found this interesting.
This goes along with the saying "Learn from your mistakes." I think that often students just want to see the grade and do not care why they got the grade. If you follow the guidelines that were stated then the students will be more likely to ask why. This was extremely interesting.
I like the constructivist approach taken by Weaver in this instance. While it is important to correct student's errors, it is not essential to their learning to correct every one. Ideas such as this allow teachers to focus on the main tenants of teaching, and not just jumping through preordained hoops.
This article was very good, errors are always around because no one is perfect. The key to mistakes is learning from your mistakes and correcting them as you learn.
I believe that if someone learns from an error they are more likely to retain what they learned. I like the idea of one on one time with teacher and student. Not all students have the same errors and I think teaching is most effective when a student gets personal attention.
Using errors for learning is a great idea. As long as the student is informed of the mistake and why it is a mistake, this can be a valuable learning tool. However, I agree with Jessica that in-class reading may have limited results in learning proper grammar and writing skills. This only works if the student has an excellent memory.
I agree with Weavers approach. Having students learn from their mistakes is better than trying to reteach them something they do correctly.
This topic is very interesting, and I will also agree that learning from your mistakes is one of the best ways to learn. Pointing out students' errors and explaining where they went wrong is a very important way to make sure they do not continue to make the same mistakes. I'm not sure a lot of reading is necessary. I would definitely encourage reading and I think reading comprehension exercises help a great deal, but I wouldn't take up class time with reading.
I like this model of teaching. I believe that errors in writing and language are useful tools in improving your skills in those areas. An approach like the one described in this article seems like an approach that would do better to improve a student's ability than just a quiz or test with corrections. By using errors as learning tools, the student will not feel as down about making mistakes. Instead, this approach changes the way that students view their mistakes; under this approach, mistakes are not just bad grades, but rather stepping stones to a better understanding of a topic or technique.
I agree with what Weaver had to say about teaching grammar as the problems come along. It's too hard to learn grammar in chunks of lessons and then to apply it in writing is nearly impossible for students. Instead, Weaver argues that errors should be the place where learning begins. I think this idea makes it her teaching method easy for students to learn from and also manages classroom time better.
Being submerged in what you need to be doing (aka reading a lot of good material to improve one's grammar)is very important in the learning process. However, teaching does still need to occur. Students need to be able to recognize what they are seeing as correct grammar.
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