Abstract: Professor Medlicott's article Cassette Commentary: An Approach to Teaching of Expository Writing contains several ideas I would like to take issue with and, importantly perhaps, prompts me to present my own theory of evaluating advanced writing. The fact may be that this generation of college students more attuned to electronic visual images and spoken than generations which preceded it, but I am not sure that our response should be to encourage this lack of familiarity with written word. In fact, it may well be students' alienation from written words and that has contributed to decline in verbal skills that classroom teachers have witnessed in past decade. Perhaps one reason this true that students have received message that few people care about language any more. We need to correct that misconception. In both our written assignments and our written comments on student papers, teachers of writing, especially advanced writing, can provide models as lovers of language for students to follow. Professor Medlicott's statement that conversational tone of his recorded comments is intended to show?to tell~my students that some of strategies of spoken word things they ought to consider in their own writing seems to me to be a delusion. He has just made point that students do not make this language transfer from other media?from television or film or radio; why, then, does he assume such patterning will derive from his spoken comments on a tape recording? More important than use of cassettes versus written comments, however, two other concepts about evaluating that surface in paper. The first Professor Medlicott's use of student papers to teach writing. He uses, he says, essays that or readable. I am sure students catch on to this dichotomous scheme very quickly and can perceive whether essay under consideration patently bad or remarkably readable. Rather than teaching them to form their own judgments about quality of writing, this process likely to teach them how to guess whether any given paper a good or a paper and then say things that will reinforce instructor's evaluation. Although he does reproduce for discussion some good papers, emphasis in Professor Medlicott's system essentially negative; focus in his directives to students to lead them to seeing their friends' flaws. This process not likely to foster a true workshop attitude of cooperation among a group of writers sharing an experience that will help them improve their writing. Wrhat important, especially in an advanced class where students can be presumed to have some knowledge about and sophistication in use of language, a writers' workshop in which all students have a chance to receive feedback from their peers. This way students develop critical skills in evaluating other than their own, learn to give and receive both positive and negativ e criticism, and learn v aluable copy-editing skills in process. Professor Medlicott's essentially negative approach to evaluation of also reflected in kinds of comments he makes on student papers. According to him. comments on tape are directed primarily to content rather than form.'' What marked on paper-the only by instructor that student sees?are the obvious flaws in grammar, syntax, spelling, and like,
Publication Year: 2016
Publication Date: 2016-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Access and Citation
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot