The Problem:
The pressure to improve student writing skills continues to mount. Students need better organizational, editing, and sentence structure/fluency skills, but nothing seems to work--the same problems occur time after time.
The Causes:
Two factors combine to create the problem:
- Teacher Training: Many teachers have received little, if any, training in grammar, sentence variety or sentence fluency.
- Teaching Methodology: Traditional teaching approaches--unchanged for the most part over the past 150 years--are ineffective and boring. There has to be a better way!
The Solution--Brain-Based Writing:
- Native (and advanced non-native) speakers have a wealth of knowledge about spoken English locked up in their brains. The brain-based writing approach takes advantage of this phenomenal resource. Rather than memorizing arcane rules and lists, students (and teachers!) are taught how to query their existing knowledge of English, areas we refer to as Wizards: Grammar Wizards, Sentence Wizards, Rhetorical Wizards, and Word Wizards. They are then able to use this information to resolve sentence-level and stylistic issues.
- Another tremendous advantage of this approach is that students are actively involved in discovering how things work through guided analyses of what they already know subconsciously about English. This type of engaged learning much more closely mirrors the natural learning process that the brain utilizes so efficiently on a daily basis. This classroom-tested approach is the answer--it's fun and it absolutely works!
Brain-Based Writing--The Basics:
A brain-based approach to writing operates from two perspectives:
- Teacher to Student:
- We teachers are constantly preparing material for input into our students' brains.
- If this input is properly structured, our students will internalize the material, which will then transfer into better writing skills.
- The perspective here is what is going on in our students' brains.
- If teachers, irrespective of content area, have some basic idea about how the brain internalizes things, they are in a better position to feed the learning process. This basic concept is especially true in the teaching of composition skills.
- Writer to Reader:
- Writers prepare material for input into their readers' brains.
- If this input is properly prepared, readers will process the material smoothly, grasp the content accurately, and wind up with a positive--or at least neutral--impression of the writer.
- The perspective here is what is going on in the readers' brains as they process the written material.
- If students have some basic, non-technical concept of how a proficient reader reads, they will be in a better position to understand how to prepare the material for it(something we refer to as feeding reading).
A brain-based approach to writing is based upon four basic principles:
- Tie instruction about written English back to what students already know about spoken English.
- Do not cover concepts in class--help students try to discover them first.
- Work primarily with those areas where written English is different from or more specific than spoken English.
- Be recursive. Spiral material through the curriculum, adding additional pieces in the process.
Find out more about how this innovative, classroom-tested approach works:
Be sure to have the volume turned up before you run the slide show.
- New! Unleashing Your Language Wizards is now available at Amazon.com!
