Memorandum Recap

I knew this assignment would be difficult because I enjoyed the readings, so I couldn't exactly pick two and consider my work done. Furthermore, I cared, which usually makes anything I do take twice as long due to pickiness, etc. Not that I' m complaining...even though it sounds like I am. I enjoyed the assignment because it made me think about the material, rather than just read it. I find that any work that I can identify with is easier to remember, so viewing the articles as a teacher, I was able to distinguish which ones I felt I would like to use.
First, I read all of the annotated bibliographies of my group, jotting down ideas that I felt were important to teaching as well as new forms of teaching that I felt could change-up a classroom rather than continue with mundane vocab sheets and handouts. Second, I decided on three central issues that I felt were important, 1.) Topics that students could relate to/encorporating originality and flair into assignments 2.) Genre practice 3.) Writing as a social practice. I decided which of the three categories my notes could fit into and found that many of the articles had similar steps toward an overall goal. So, simple, sort of.
The writing proved to be much more difficult. To keep a memorandum about changing teaching practices was a challenge. Mostly because I'm wordy, but also because I felt that I could write a twenty page memorandum on such a topic. Not an option, or rather, not an option that I wanted to take. I had to condense my ideas and really focus on the main issues in the articles, removing any excess information and avoiding jumping from one central idea to eight sub-topics.

Correctness

I've never been a fan of grammar. Which makes many question why I chose English as my major, considering the fact that grammar is, well, important. Luckily, I read a lot as a kid, so I just picked up my grammar along the way. Sadly, I didn't have many grammar lessons that I can recall in early grades, nor did I have many lessons in High School...perhaps the lack of practice made me dislike it. Last year I took my first real Grammar class. It was interesting, because for the first time I was required to explain WHY commas were placed in certain spots, and what they did to the sentence, etc. It was difficult to grasp many ideas due to my lack of grammar knowledge growing up, but with work, I was able to do OK.
When reading about correctness this week, the book started off by saying, "Too much concern about correctness can inhibit your writing; too little concern can come between y9ou and your readers. Don't let the fear of errors dominate the experience of writing for you." (2). This was my kind of book. Hundreds of times I'll start a paper and get stuck on things like spelling or use of colon, and have to look them up. Great. I find an answer, but by the time I do, I've completely lost my train of thought. I find myself getting caught up in errors before they've been made, and this considerably slows down my writing. I think that this has something to do with the fact that I'm the type of reader that picks up on every error, and often get hung-up on it, ignoring the point of the work and focussing on the mistakes that could have easily been corrected.
So correctness is important, because it makes writing more credible, but I feel that free-writing should come first. Some of the best ideas generated are the first, and it is important to get them down on paper and correct and work with them later. The book defines freewriting as, "dinding your ideas by writing with no plan, quickly, without stopping. Don't worry about what to say first"(60). I feel that this concept is more important that anything else because it is what makes us writers, not where we put our commas.

Thoughts on Memorandums

Based on my readings so far, I think that I have a strong basis for describing important elements in writing. Many of my articles described how to make students enjoy writing, how to make them improve their skills, how to create well-rounded characters and plots, etc. All these points are important in the process of getting students to become better writers, and I feel that they are often considered less-important on standardized tests than elements such as spelling, grammar, and paragraph development. For me, this is silly. Many of the articles argued that it was equally important for students to understand how to improve their work in terms of creativity and originality. I feel that these are the elements of writing that make students enjoy the act of writing. As I recall, vocabulary and grammar lessons were not the types of lessons that made me decide to be and English major, I always preferred lessons that focused on creative writing and brainstorming new ideas.
So far, I think that these are the types of concepts I want to include in my memorandum. Granted, standardized tests are helpful in grading students based on a flat scale, but I feel that these grading procedures ignore students that have high levels of creativity, but need work in other skills. I feel that the ability to produce writing that is compelling is equally, if not more important that producing writing that is correct in every sense of the grading scale, but perhaps lacks elements of originality. Students that work on interesting writing should be understood rather than discouraged by low test scores. Why do standardized test merely reward authors who answer questions correctly, but possibly lack any sense of flair in their work? Continuing to grade in such a manner seems a crime. How will creative writers have the esteem to produce work if every piece of writing they submit is flatly graded with a criteria that takes no account of their creative abilities? I hope to propose a number of ways of creating new criterias in standardized testing, as well as lessons that will help teachers develop new types of writers in my memorandum.