Comments on: The lost art of communicating

By: Zach

Zach — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 04:53:08 +0000

I agree mother, that’s why I am taking a business communications class!!!

By: Clix

Clix — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:00:41 +0000

At six classes of thirty students, that’s three hundred-ish pages of student writing to review per week. And that’s in addition to any study of drama or poetry or public speaking or anything else.

If you really think that’s humanly possible, I’d be very entertained to hear an explanation of how it would work. (Without a Time-Turner! *g*)

By: Leif Fearn

Leif Fearn — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 03:02:51 +0000

The only flaw in your answer is that what we see IS old-fashioned. It didn’t teach 27 of the 30 in most rooms to write well. We remember what we got as terrific because we were among the 3-4 who got it. The important question is about the other 27 kiddoes. And I want to see the evidence that read-read-read is associated with good writing — not from the good writers who read-read-read, so we make the correlation; but from the poor writers, as well,who also read-read-read. The connection goes one way but not necessarily the other. Our good writers are also good readers, but our good readers are not necessarily good writers. Finally, there is evidence that students today write more than any students before them, through the day and through the curriculum (see reports from NAEP-Writing). Those reports also show that those students who write more than ever before do not write appreciably better (a few points on a 100-point scale doesn’t reach the level of “appreciably”). People who write a lot do not become better writers unless they write well when they write a lot, and better every time as the result of effective instruction. Practice does not make perfect. Ask any musician or athlete. Only perfect practice makes perfect. The missing link is instruction on the right stuff.

Leif Fearn

By: Megan B.

Megan B. — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:49:18 +0000

I am so grateful that I had some good English teachers in school. I’m tempted to send them all fruit baskets with notes of thanks.

Everything else I was going to say has been said already, so I won’t rehash it.

By: ryan field

ryan field — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 04:49:50 +0000

Communication evolves and changes constantly. Language evolves and changes. And we’ve been on the edge of these changes with the advent of the digital age.

Steve Jobs fought to keep “Think Different” against all advice it was incorrect. No one cared. In other words, what we are seeing now is communication evolving. It’s actually quite normal. We don’t speak or write like anyone did in the eighteenth century.

By: Catherine Whitney

Catherine Whitney — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 01:52:21 +0000

As tempting as it is to blame the Internet, the answer is more old fashioned–teachers teaching and parents encouraging kids to read, read, read and write, write, write.

By: Leif Fearn

Leif Fearn — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:11:07 +0000

Yes, students write more than ever before, , but little or no better. The missing mediator is instruction about the right stuff. There are many very good teachers out there teaching the wrong stuff brilliantly. Shame on their teacher-school professors, their professional organizations, and the publishers that put crap into their mailboxes, all of whom should know better, but don’t because most of the people to whom teachers have to listen and whom they have to read don’t write real stuff for real audiences that do not HAVE to read it for a grade or to satisfy a building principal or district literacy coach.

Leif Fearn

By: Leif Fearn

Leif Fearn — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:06:04 +0000

Bingo! Clear, concise, so tight it makes readers’ hair hurt. So why do we insist on assigning 8-10 pages when any topic they choose can be handled properly in 3-5, if not 2-3?

Leif Fearn

By: Leif Fearn

Leif Fearn — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:04:04 +0000

The best of us can write what most times is assigned for 12-15 pages, but in 3-5 instead. If we taught writing, not the sillies that characterize the wall charts and fast-food metaphors we find in near every classroom, and our students wrote 1-2 page pieces that reflected what we teach, ,at least once per week, we’d have better writers.

Leif Fearn

By: Leif Fearn

Leif Fearn — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:00:28 +0000

For as long as the grammar we teach is what we all remember, and covet, I’d just as soon no one teach grammar. Most of us mistake grammar for the ability to pick predicate nominatives out of a sentence, and that is what we teach when we think we are teaching grammar. Grammar instruction is what happened in the piece in JOURNAL OF BASIC WRITING, Volume 26, Spring 2007, pp. 63-87, “When is a verb?” The rest is vacuous.

Leif Fearn