Ineffective Approaches to Teaching Writing by Nerissa Jarvis
There are two writing approaches that are deemed ineffective, in improving students writing skills. These are the penmanship approach and rules-based instruction. Below is a synopsis of why these approaches are considered ineffective to teaching writing.
Penmanship approach
Berninger and Richards (2010) posits, while penmanship is a foundational skill, the development of transcription skills, including handwriting fluency and spelling, is just one aspect of the broader writing process. Penmanship approach now called handwriting instruction, is the aim of traditional penmanship training was to guarantee that kids could form letters correctly and produce neat, readable writing. By the 1930s, teachers were criticizing penmanship as a limited approach to writing instruction and promoting penmanship as a communication tool. As a result, writing instruction began to focus more on teaching children to write for actual purposes. Handwriting lost importance as the curriculum shifted to emphasize original compositions, and the use of technology lessened the significance of handwritten texts. According to recent studies, proficient writers are able to focus on more advanced writing elements because they have fluent handwriting. It is now accepted that teaching children to write by hand can help them form letters with ease and free up their time to concentrate on ideas rather than transcription. This change in perception regarding the function of handwriting has impacted modern methods of teaching writing.
Rules-based instruction
Writing
instruction that is based on rules teaches kids how to write words and
sentences correctly. This includes teaching them grammar rules, parts of
speech, punctuation, and spelling. Nonetheless, a lot of educators have
criticized this strategy for being inauthentic and decontextualized. It is
regarded as inauthentic since it does not reflect actual writing practices and
as decontextualized because it frequently concentrates on single words or
sentences rather than entire texts. To communicate important ideas, people
write reports, blogs, emails, and stories in authentic writing. This type of
writing necessitates the creation of concepts and the rational arrangement of
ideas. Rules-based writing instruction frequently ignores these more advanced
writing concepts in favor of emphasizing sentence-level accuracy. Consequently,
it does not adequately prepare students for writing assignments in the real
world. The effectiveness of it in enhancing kids' overall writing abilities is
constrained by the mismatch between rules-based education and real-world
writing situations. Integrating instruction that covers both writing mechanics
and the meaningful expression of ideas within real-world writing contexts is
crucial to developing proficient writers.
Picture from YouTube
Your post is informative as well as insightful. I agree with your notion that the penmanship approach and rules-based instruction are ineffective to teaching writing. Firstly, with regards to penmanship writing, the focus should be more on teaching the lesson rather than it being on the writing itself. Furthermore, because rules-based instruction solely concentrates on student's ability to construct specific words and sentences by using rules; they are not exposed or equipped to write the advanced writing concepts that you mentioned above. Some critics may even postulate that this teaching style may dull the students' creativity as well.
ReplyDeleteYour post has eluded to a mouth of unspoken thoughts, recently shoved under the rug. However, there may be some truth to it all, I believe that there is room for the penmanship approach and rules based approach coupled with new and innovative methods of teaching writing. I think this because students still need to know how to write legible pieces by hand and they also should know how to apply language rules when writing. Perhaps I am misconstrued on the points you have mentioned above, however, I am of the belief that this is where the integrated approach takes flight.
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