Living Life Twice

Going From General To Specific. Young writers benefit greatly when shown how to sharpen their writing by moving from the general to the specific. When they are armed with this important knowledge about writing, it improves the quality of the images that emerge in the mind of the reader. When we know the exact name of something, it brings that item, that thing,  closer to us. It provides us as readers with greater clarity. The fog of uncertainty is blown away. As readers, we are more alert.  ' The bird flew down ' conveys less information than writing, ' The eagle swooped. ' Judy Blume in her book ‘Tales Of A Fourth Grade Nothing’ uses specific details to describe the materials her characters used to make their school project. 'We keep our equipment under my bed in a shoebox. We have a set of Magic Markers, Elmer’s glue, Scotch tape, a really sharp pair of scissors and a container of silver sparkle.' Notice how the initial sentence is quite general, However, the ...

In 2005, Professor Richard Andrews of York University conducted the largest systematic review of existing studies on the teaching of grammar and found there was no evidence that teaching grammar as a formal stand-alone exercise helped 5-16 year old write more fluently, or accurately. A most powerful and informative finding.  By way of contrast, contextualising the teaching of grammar assists students to understand the role grammar plays in the development of an effective writer. It teaches students to produce writing that is ‘reader friendly.’  What it doesn’t do is divorce grammar from the actual act of producing writing. However, what also needs to be present in our curriculum planning is the awareness of the need to teach students to be meta-cognitive with respect to the writing they produce. Grammar alone just won’t cut through.  We know that explicit teaching of grammatical rules is not necessarily matched by an ability to make corrections. There is no simple relati...