Thoughts, analysis on integrating WWE and Bravewriter approaches

[forty-two]

I've been expending time and brainsweat the past few months on trying to really *understand* the similarities and differences between SWB's approach to writing, and the Bravewriter/Peter Elbow approach to writing (Peter Elbow is one of the main influences behind BW - TWJ lists three of his books as inspiration - and I loved TWJ so much I looked them up on the spot - and I love Peter Elbow so much I now have five of his books and still haven't gotten back to TWJ because of it :shifty). Anyway, after many hours of thinking and typing today, I finally reached something of a breakthrough on part of it, and I'm so chuffed I'm posting it here in the hopes it might be helpful to others :). I'm putting my sum-up and sum-up of the sum-up ;) up top, and then I'll post the big, long analysis that led to that, so as to not clutter up the main post.

 

 

To sum up:

I agree with SWB that developing fluency and automaticity in producing Standard Written English (SWE) is a good thing, and that it takes time and effort to achieve.

I disagree that SWE is effectively a foreign language compared to unplanned English speech, and that you cannot/should-not harness spoken competence in teaching written competence in SWE.

 

(And, actually, SWB sorta-kinda gives a nod to the importance of involving the ear and the tongue: she is a big advocate of lots and lots of reading of SWE - helps internalize the patterns and feel of SWE - and I think she's a fan of reading aloud, even when students are fluent readers (even if she isn't, I still am :shifty:giggle). And of course she uses narrations in spoken SWE as a key component. So I'd say she *does* value spoken competency in learning to write - she just doesn't think non-SWE language (whether spoken or written) has anything to offer in teaching/learning SWE - that "writing is a foreign language" thing.)

 

I agree with Peter Elbow that we can and should build on our spoken competency (regular ol' unplanned speech) in teaching how to develop written competency - that writing is basically recorded speech, and that our intuitive knowledge of spoken English is a powerful help in learning to both speak well and to write well - is in fact the *core* of our language knowledge, and all our conscious, explicit language learning should build on it and be rooted in it and continually refer back to it.

I disagree that the better solution to non-fluency in mechanics and surface conventions is to adopt crutches to get by (learn how to separate the bulk of writing from the parts you aren't fluent in, so you can write effectively in spite of your lack of fluency, dealing with that lack by pushing it off until the very end, when you either rely on handbooks or friends or paid professionals to copy-edit), instead of working steadily to achieve fluency.

 

(In fairness, Elbow does actually value learning to be fluent in those areas - and offers up ways to harness our intuitive knowledge to get us most of the way there with knowledge we already have - but his primary audience is college students and adult students - who have already passed by their main chance to become fluent in those mechanics - and Elbow doesn't want to feed into the idea that you can't be a writer until you can churn out error-free prose. And I *do* agree with him, strongly, that it is much easier to turn good writing into correct writing with a good dose of copy-editing at the end than to attempt to turn blah correct writing into *good* writing - the latter is in need of much more than a quick polish. He's totally right that they are surface issues - I just am concerned 1) about the practical issues of not being able to turn out workmanlike relatively error-free prose on the first try, because so much day-to-day writing goes infinitely smoother with that skill, and 2) the lingering negative effects of not being fluent, no matter how good the kludges - I understand doing the best you can with what you've got, but when starting from the beginning with new writers, who have *time* to work to fluency, I don't want to settle for a second-best kludge-y non-fluency unless I *have* to, due to issues outside my control.)

 

To sum up the sum up ;):

The key difference does indeed seem to be the idea of writing as a foreign language - is our intuitive spoken knowledge of English a base to build on, or a parallel track, with no intersection with writing? - and there I fall on Peter Elbow's side. However, I do indeed value all SWB's goals, and want to achieve fluency in SWE (not just be able to edit my way there) - I just also believe that I can get there better/faster/simpler if I build on our intuitive knowledge of spoken English, instead of ignoring it as having nothing to offer.

 

Implications for homeschooling:

*the basic plan of brave writer plus WWE seems sound

*big mod to WWE will be grammar teaching that builds on intuitive knowledge of English - gives words to concepts we already know, and teaches us how to consciously use our intuitive knowledge at will, to achieve specific goals - instead of teaching and practicing explicit rules so much that we internalize them; planned approach - work through Patterns of English, plus some diagramming, plus Whimbey's sentence combining, plus Killgallon, plus Elbow's techniques for training the ear.

*biggish mod to brave writer will be a possibly? greater caring/emphasis on correct mechanics. Might not be a huge deal, as planning to do a serious spelling program (most of which do indeed take full advantage of training the ear to hear, in addition to teaching the eye to spell), and the grammar/WWE will address punctuation and conventions in terms of enhancing understanding - not that BW doesn't address that, but I believe it's more in the copy-editing phase, as opposed to practicing it to fluency.

[forty-two]

So, re-reading the intro - Why Writing Programs Fail - to Susan Wise Bauer's Writing With Ease (SWB's WWE - you can read it here).

 

Her points:

 

*Speaking is natural; writing is artificial.

-Kids *do* instinctively learn to speak, but expecting the same in writing is foolhardy, as while some kids do take to writing without outside instruction/prompting, writing is *not* a natural-to-humans process. All human societies have spoken language, but very few of those languages were ever written down. And in those societies with written language, the vast majority (until recently) had very low literacy rates - scribes and administrators might need to be literate, but the majority of people got on just fine without being able to read and write.

 

I do agree with her here - that the act of recording speech through symbols representing sounds (or syllables, or words, or ideas) is *not* instinctual human behavior - it is definitely a learned behavior. I don't agree that "learning to read and write" - in the "learning the sound/symbol correspondences and how to use them to encode and decode speech" sense - "is as natural as learning to speak".

 

*SWB goes on to extend that artificiality to say that, "written language is an unnatural foreign language, an artificially constructed code. Compare written dialogue with any transcript of an actual conversation, and you'll see that written language has entirely different conventions, rules, and structures than spoken language."

 

However, I think I mostly *disagree* with SWB here. Peter Elbow, in his book Vernacular Eloquence (and if you want to play along at home ;), Elbow has drafts of many of his chapters available at his university page), addresses this issue in depth - I will have to go back and refresh my memory on the particulars, but broadly speaking he says:

*The main difference isn't between speaking and writing, but between formal, planned language and informal, unplanned language. Informal language, whether written or spoken, is remarkably similar in structure and word choice, as is both written and spoken formal language. (He offers a rebuttal to the "read a transcript of unplanned speech and see how different they are" argument - don't remember details :shifty, but core point was the underlying core English grammar was the same.)

*Even with those differences, formal, planned English (referred to as Standard Written English, or SWE) and informal, unplanned English speech are still *English*, and as such are far more linguistically similar than they are dissimilar. The difference is far more along the lines of a different register than a different language - and most people have learned multiple spoken registers, and switch easily between them as the situation calls for it.

 

*SWB's next point is that, "[t]he rules of this foreign language must be learned by the beginning writer - and they have to become second nature before the beginning writer can use written language to express ideas....[t]he convention of the...language need to become second nature, automatic - invisible to you - so that you can concentrate on the ideas, rather than on the medium used to express them....Ask a student to express ideas in writing before she is completely fluent in the rules and conventions of written language, and she'll freeze. She can't express her thoughts in writing, because she's still wrestling with the basic means of exp<b></b>ression itself."

 

Agree and disagree.

Agree: medium needs to be invisible; lack of fluency makes the process infinitely more frustrating, to the point of giving up. Am experiencing this right now - typing with kids sitting on you and impeding full use of your hands forces you to direct extra energy to the mechanics of getting the words down and that comes with a cognitive cost - less energy available to *think* - very frustrating :banghead. Experience same thing re posting on iPhone - medium works against me, have to direct energy fighting it - so many times I had to simplify what I wanted to say (or gave up even trying to say it :(), because I just. couldn't. say. it on the iPhone. The iPad's the same way, though to a much lesser extent - I'm just not as fluent on a touch screen. (Nor, as the foregoing paragraph proves, am I as fluent when typing one-handed with two kids snuggled up to me.)

 

My frustrations with posting complex thoughts on the iPhone (there was lots of cursing, and lots of frustrated, "I have something to say, but I just. can't. *say* it on this stupid phone" - very disheartening :( - has brought home to me the vital importance of practicing to fluency, to automaticity. Letter formation, sound-symbol correspondences, punctuation/capitalization - all of that has to be so ingrained that writing a word, a sentence (actually a clause), is as easy as speaking it. Handwriting (and later touch typing) has become a *huge* priority around here - I do *not* want mechanics to trip up - silence - my dc.

 

My disagreement relates to both the previous point (SWE has way more in common with unplanned English speech than not) and the one coming up (SWB separates putting an idea in words from writing it down in a more absolute way than I agree with): in my opinion, and in my experience, once basic mechanics are down, writing is as easy as "speaking onto the page" (to use a lovely Peter Elbow phrase :)).

 

Now, SWB does sorta agree with this - she *does* separate the "putting ideas into words" step from the "putting words on paper" step, and, like Julie Bogart (Bravewriter creator), she has budding writers orally narrate with parents taking dictation (and has students copy back their narration, or part of it). SWB does require students to use SWE, or the oral components thereof (which is? isn't? odd given her implied position that oral language is vastly dissimilar from written language - I mean, I totally agree that all the important features of SWE are present in planned speech, but I didn't think SWB did.)

 

Ok, losing the thread here - kid distractions - I think my basic objection was related to freewriting - the use of writing itself to generate ideas (not just record ideas already generated), and that freewriting - speaking onto the page - generates writing that is a lot closer to SWE than "SWE is a foreign language" advocates give credit for. That, basically, you *can* harness what the tongue intuitively knows and does automatically in unplanned speech as your base for teaching writing in general, and SWE in particular. That in fact SWE is just one of many possible registers for writing, not *the* written language.

 

SWB is right that it takes a fair amount of exposure and practice to internalize the SWE register (or any register) and be able to use it effortlessly, though. Can't neglect copious amounts of reading of SWE.

 

But I *don't* think that she's right that SWE is functionally a foreign language. I fall on the side of "writing is recorded speech", and learning any particular register in writing is comparable to learning a particular register in speech (the ease of which is, granted, highly related to the amount of time you spend hearing that register, and how different it is from other registers you know).

 

*SWB separates writing into two distinct and non-overlapping steps: putting an idea into words, and putting words onto the page. And she maintains that the problem with most writing instruction - that makes it "fundamentally flawed" - is that it doesn't explicitly teach the "putting words onto the page" step. While mature writers are capable of doing both tasks without a problem - not generally consciously aware their minds are doing two tasks (not one) - it's cognitive overload for beginning writers. "Young writers need time to learn the conventions of their new language. They need to become *fluent* in it before they can use it to express new ideas....While immersion techniques often work for spoken foreign languages, they don't work nearly as well for writing - which is, after all, an artificial code rather than a natural speech exp<b></b>ression."

 

Ok, continuing the theme, I agree totally that beginning writers need time to become fluent in the mechanics of writing :yes. But I'm thinking strictly what is needed to turn speech into writing - knowledge of sound/symbol correspondences, letter formation (the ability to physically form those symbols), and basic punctuation (the ability to indicate, in writing, the pauses and other temporal elements of speech that aid understanding).

 

(Spelling, capitalization, and strictly visual punctuation marks and conventions (such as apostrophes indicating possession and contractions) are in this weird middle ground for me. On the one hand, from a "writing is recorded speech" view, they are surface edits only - they don't really affect what is said/heard. And very good writers of the past were inconsistent with all those things. But from the perspective of SWE, they are a big, huge honking deal. Even if your ideas are good and sound, surface mistakes like that are going to cost you, because they are like big blots on the page, jolting the reader out of the flow of the words. It's like forcing them to look through a dirty glass pane to look at your painting, instead of a perfectly clear protective glass that is effectively invisible - no matter how good your painting is, it's going to look less than it could behind dirty glass.

 

And while for big things you ought to always do a big polish at the end, do you really want to have to seriously copy edit (versus a quick check) *everything* you do? To ignore *all* issues of spelling and conventions until the end, to not have *any* of that be automatic, to always have to look it up? I mean, you *can*, and it's nice to have that option when you need it, but for most of the writing in life, it's awfully handy to be able to dash something off that is basically correct without having to expend conscious brainsweat on the surface things.

 

I do understand Peter Elbow's advice to not get hung up on surface things when you are trying to get your ideas down. But isn't it better to not get hung up on it because you get it right without thinking - you're fluent in spelling all the usual words and all the usual surface punctuation and other conventions - than to teach yourself to quit noticing mistakes - and thus make copy-editing both necessary and a big chore. Granted, working for fluency is a bigger investment at the front end, and as an adult, it may well be a better use of time to find ways to compensate. But for kids, I think the investment is very much worth it.)

 

However, SWB seems to have a much broader understanding of mechanics - she's including sentence structure and grammar (probably diction, too) into her "basic conventions". While I agree that those are all good and necessary things to explicitly study re: learning to write, I disagree they are fundamentally different in writing vs speaking. I don't believe you are functionally starting from scratch in those areas, that you have to build all that up from ground zero :no. I really do believe we have a vast resource in our spoken competence, and that consciously and explicitly making connections between what the tongue knows intuitively and what we are trying to accomplish in writing - build as much as possible on what we already can do - is a very natural and powerful way of achieving written competence.

 

Elbow's Vernacular Eloquence is in fact all about just that - it is a totally awesome book, and well worth reading if you are drawn to the Bravewriter approach to writing (worth it for everyone teaching writing - or wanting to write - actually, but it is more likely to resonate with people who have friendly feelings to brave writer).

[UrbanSue]

Just giving this a bump, hoping for more input. I haven't done anywhere near the amount of reading you've done but I have slowly been coming to a similar place . . . I think. We are on a six-week hiatus from WWE at the moment and focusing more on creative free writing which I have newly decided I want as part of elementary writing. But I remain very committed to the WWE/WWS path as well. And I'd like to hear more about using them together in a more seamless way. I think my kids see WWE as pointless drudgery whereas our writer's workshop is their favorite thing right now. I want both. They need both.

[TracyP]

All my teachers apparently thought I was a good writer. That's nice, but I have realized that I have/had no clue what I'm doing. I am learning a lot along with my dd. I don't know grammar, I punctuate based on my gut, and I spell based on if it "looks right". I am realizing all the time how little I know for sure about the mechanics of writing, and I am very annoyed with myself. Having said that, the BW method of using your gut is better overall, IMO. That is to say, I can see a situation where you can know the mechanics up and down but struggle to put words to paper. If you can put the words on paper, you can go back and edit quite easily later. That is my long-winded way of strongly agreeing with the paragraph I quoted below.

I do understand Peter Elbow's advice to not get hung up on surface things when you are trying to get your ideas down. But isn't it better to not get hung up on it because you get it right without thinking - you're fluent in spelling all the usual words and all the usual surface punctuation and other conventions - than to teach yourself to quit noticing mistakes - and thus make copy-editing both necessary and a big chore. Granted, working for fluency is a bigger investment at the front end, and as an adult, it may well be a better use of time to find ways to compensate. But for kids, I think the investment is very much worth it.)

 

 

I really appreciate your thorough comparison. I have picked from both (BW and WWE, I'm not familiar with Elbow) to get to where I am at now. I will take SWB's advice to study grammar/spelling/punctuation, but I don't feel a rush to start with very young kids. Copywork and dictation are important components of both philosophies.

 

Day to day it looks like this: We do copywork 2x and dictation 2x weekly. My dd9 either writes a summary (WWE style) from history and science daily or she will spend the week writing a more formal paragragh/report that goes through the whole writing process. My ds7 gives an oral summary of his science reading daily. Once a week we all (including me) do a free write. We haven't really been working on editing these yet this year. I ask for narrations(BW style) of what they are reading in their free time throughout the day in regular conversation. We also do read alouds and poetry tea time - although I've been slacking on tea time. Either philosophy by itself seems lacking, but I think the two complement each other really well.

[Farrar]

That's a lot of thoughts so I'm just going to respond to the one thing that struck me. I feel like SWB's style of narration is formulaic, which is why I don't follow it. And I think it reflects how much she sees SWE as a foreign language and wants kids to see it that way. Elbow's (and Julie Bogart's) vision of helping children achieve writing voice resonates with me so much more, as does the Charlotte Mason style of narration (CM being Julie Bogart's other big influence).

[forty-two]

Just giving this a bump, hoping for more input. I haven't done anywhere near the amount of reading you've done but I have slowly been coming to a similar place . . . I think. We are on a six-week hiatus from WWE at the moment and focusing more on creative free writing which I have newly decided I want as part of elementary writing. But I remain very committed to the WWE/WWS path as well. And I'd like to hear more about using them together in a more seamless way. I think my kids see WWE as pointless drudgery whereas our writer's workshop is their favorite thing right now. I want both. They need both.

 

 

This is theoretical, wrt seamless combining, as dd6 is working on fluency in reading and letter formation at the moment - haven't decided when to start WWE, and am shamefully procrastinating on starting a more deliberate BW lifestyle (although dd6 does love to tell stories of her own) - but I've thought about it ;), and here's what I've got so far:

 

My basic plan is to do both in parallel, as separate activities serving related but separate goals. The goal of BW is to learn to be a *writer* - to develop into the kind of person who uses language to serve real, meaningful goals. So it combines inspiration to write - appreciating good examples of the written word, highlighting and creating opportunities to write - with teaching writing with a focus on how and why for-real writers write. Writing is a means of communcation, of expression: writers write because they have something they want to say. And BW focuses on giving young writers the confidence and desire to express themselves - to want to write for the only reason that matters: that they have something to say.

 

BW does more than just inspire the desire to write - it gives several tools for learning the nuts and bolts of the craft - motivated by the sensible notion that if you have something you want to say, don't you want to learn to say it well?

 

But BW does seem to more or less follow Peter Elbow in not valuing the ability to be fluent in the surface conventions of SWE - since it doesn't really affect the content of the writing, they figure it's not worth spending too much time on. Actually, there seems to be this assumption that people are either "naturals" at copy-editing or not, and no amount of training will change that immutable fact, so might as well not bother spending much time teaching it. The naturals will naturally develop it, and the non-naturals never will, so no reason to teach it either way. Just divorce the bulk of the learnable writing process from the non-learnable skill of copy-editing - so writing is accessible to all - and teach the non-naturals how to outsource or kludge their way through the minimal necessary aspects of copy-editing at the very end.

 

But I disagree that the ability to attend to the surface details of the mechanics of writing is unlearnable - that either you got it or you don't, and there's nothing to be done either way. Certainly it is easier for some than others, and some might find it so difficult to learn as to not be worth the time - but fundamentally I believe it to be a learnable skill.

 

And so does SWB.

 

In fact, she laments the lack of explicit teaching of those writing mechanics as their fundamental flaw. I wonder if the reason those programs don't teach it is because they don't think they *can* be taught.

 

Anyway, that brings me to the goal of WWE - to learn to *write*. WWE/WWS have the fundamental assumption that all aspects of the craft of writing are learnable, and they are going to teach them to you step-by-step, in a way that doesn't require you to be a natural at any point. While BW does indeed include explicit instruction in writing, it embeds it in real writing. This is a plus in terms of motivation - you are learning what you need right now in order to accomplish what you want to accomplish right now - but generally a minus in terms of efficiency. Plus, BW's focus on doing what comes naturally is great for building on strengths, but less great for remediating weaknesses.

 

So, the point is that WWE provide targeted practice at all aspects of the craft of writing. It doesn't provide the *motivation* to write - the *why* do it - but it thoroughly provides the how. It doesn't leave anything to chance, class anything in the, "only naturals can do this" pile.

 

I've thought of there being three aspects to a subject that I want to be sure to include in my homeschool:

*inspiration - seeing and appreciating the best of what has been done in that art (art appreciation, reading good and great books, reading biographies of scientists, mathematicians, appreciating the beauty of math proofs)

*instruction - learning the nuts and bolts of the art, so as to gain the ability to use it (the sometimes artificial exercises that experts in the field have determined are the best way to teach the fundamentals of the subject/art)

*doing - actually using the art to do what experts in that art do (writing as writers do, history as historians do, math as mathematicians do, science as scientists do)

 

The inspiration is needed to see what is possible, to be motivated to work at learning and practicing the art. The instruction is needed to actually learn it, especially for non-naturals. And the actual doing is needed to see the point to it all - I mean, to do it yourself is the ultimate goal, yet too often people never get to experience anything but the process of learning to do, and mistake that for actually *doing* it. There are many stories of people who think doing sums is what mathematicians do, or doing writing exercises is what writers do - because in all their years of schooling that was all they did in *learning* to do math or write, and no one ever showed them that it was merely exercises to learn, not the end goal of learning.

 

And as a result, many well-meaning people went too far in the other direction, and ditched all exercises - all artificial means of "learning to write" and "learning to do math" in favor of learning math by doing what mathematicians do, and learning to write by doing what writers do, and learning history by doing what historians do, and learning science by doing what scientists do.

 

The problem is that beginners are not experts, and all the acting like experts in the world won't, itself, allow them to *become* experts unless they are naturals. Which continues to perpetuate the notion that expertise is all innate, that either you have it or you don't, and there's nothing you can do to change it.

 

Many, many people *could* learn to become experts - if only someone would *teach* them. Jettisoning explicit, "artificial" instruction and exercises - because they don't reflect what real experts do (except that most experts *do* practice all lot - that's how they became expert and that's how they maintain and grow their expertise - and they use the results of all their practice when they use their expertise to do real things) - is just as flawed as doing nothing *but* exercises until "expert" status is reached.

 

Anyway, I see BW as the inspiration and doing parts, and WWE as the instruction part (with some inspiration, too) - complementary goals.

 

Ok, no idea if that is helpful, but it's my two cents, anyway ;).

[forty-two]

All my teachers apparently thought I was a good writer. That's nice, but I have realized that I have/had no clue what I'm doing. I am learning a lot along with my dd. I don't know grammar, I punctuate based on my gut, and I spell based on if it "looks right". I am realizing all the time how little I know for sure about the mechanics of writing, and I am very annoyed with myself. Having said that, the BW method of using your gut is better overall, IMO. That is to say, I can see a situation where you can know the mechanics up and down but struggle to put words to paper. If you can put the words on paper, you can go back and edit quite easily later. That is my long-winded way of strongly agreeing with the paragraph I quoted below.

I relate to this. I was never taught expicit grammar or explicit writing techniques - I write and punctuate entirely by feel (honed through the thousands of books I read as a kids). On the one hand, this has worked pretty well for me - generally, if something feels right it is. Otoh, if something feels wrong, I have zero idea what to do about it, and this lack has bothered me.

 

So I was primed and ready to agree with the classical emphasis on explicitly teaching skills. In fact, for many years, I did not get the appeal of BW. Then somehow it clicked for me this May during one of the Hive's BW-fests ;), and I *got* it, in spades. And have been trying to reconcile my old love of classical with my new love of BW ever since ;).

 

I think one thing was that I sort of took my intuitive language sense for granted - that the classical explicit skills focus would of course be *in addition to* an intuitive sense. It never occurred to me that not everyone naturally develops an intuitive language sense - I sort of thought it magically happened (much how many "develop intuitive sense and all will be well" advocates sort of assume that fluency in skills will magically happen - or at least that it can't be taught, much as some explicit skills folks assume that an intuitive sense can't be taught).

 

You know, I think what I like about both approaches is that they say that the important things (from their perspective) can be taught. BW shows how to encourage and nurture an intuitive language sense and WWE shows how to teach and develop explicit skills (and to be fair, WTM as a whole has plenty of intuitive language sense building, but I can't recall how explicit SWB makes that point, and I don't think she addresses the related issue of building an intuitive math sense terribly much at all, at least not remotely as much as she addresses explicit skill building). You aren't left with the idea that huge swaths of important aspects are impenetrable to change - that they will, or won't, happen, and there's not a thing you can do about it.

 

And as I think both explicit skills and an intuitive sense are vital, they make a great combo, because between the two of them, they show you how to nurture and teach both sides. Also, BW has the great, great aspect of showing how it all relates to the *point* of writing - the ultimate reason for learning all those skills and developing a language sense in the first place - because it allows you to do things worth doing. And here's how to do it.

[Farrar]

But BW does seem to more or less follow Peter Elbow in not valuing the ability to be fluent in the surface conventions of SWE - since it doesn't really affect the content of the writing, they figure it's not worth spending too much time on.

 

 

I think it just depends on what you mean by "much time." If you follow BW lifestyle, then you see grammar, mechanics, punctuation and style addressed through copywork and dictation and through lessons attached to that. That's a once a week activity. Since BW is all about the less is more approach, that's a day's language arts activity. You also address it in the context of writing projects. She also advocates learning a foreign language as a way to solidify an understanding of grammar (in context) or taking a year to directly and more intensively teach grammar and style.

 

Clearly, four years of FLL/WWE is a much more writing mechanics intensive approach, but I don't think BW blows off these issues the way you imply. Instead, she's talking about concurrently building mechanics and voice - in both written and spoken English (which as you point out, are closer together in Bogart's and Elbow's view). And it's all in context. Her jab at disconnected copywork passages in the ads for The Arrow are clearly a jibe at the WWE style (and others in classical education) of copywork and dictation. On the other hand, SWB advocates only focusing on building mechanics in SWE before ever approaching the issue of voice. More of a "you have to learn the rules before you can break them" approach.

 

It's also a question of the end goal of a writing education. The end goal of WTM's writing approach is clearly high quality academic papers. I find it to be a narrow goal. The goal of BW is creating lifelong writers. I want my kids to also learn to write quality academic papers, but my greater goal is for them to feel comfortable with writing, to like writing, to not be intimidated by writing, and to see writing as a skill for life. Most people need to write for various reasons in life. Most people do not need to write formal academic papers.

[LindaOz]

My basic plan is to do both in parallel, as separate activities serving related but separate goals. The goal of BW is to learn to be a *writer* - to develop into the kind of person who uses language to serve real, meaningful goals. So it combines inspiration to write - appreciating good examples of the written word, highlighting and creating opportunities to write - with teaching writing with a focus on how and why for-real writers write. Writing is a means of communcation, of expression: writers write because they have something they want to say. And BW focuses on giving young writers the confidence and desire to express themselves - to want to write for the only reason that matters: that they have something to say.

 

 

Your basic plan of doing both in parallel is how I have often approached writing with my kids. And I have found it to work very well. We've used a schedule such as this:

 

M: BW Copywork (using The Arrow from BW)

T: Grammar and Freewriting (we often have freewriting 2x week. My kids have written some wonderful stories in these times).

W: BW dictation using Monday's passage.

TH: Grammar and Freewriting

F: Re-write the copywork/dictation passage from memory as much as possible, paraphrasing if the original words can't be recalled. I think this activity helps the kids get down on paper words that they are holding in their heads - also a goal of SWB and WWE. My 11th grader was doing an online BW course this year which had a section on summarizing and she commented on how she found it easy because of all the times I had them summarize their BW passages all those years ago.

 

Of course, the kids also write for history and science, and you can incorporate other writing projects, be they BW or something else, on the M, W, and Friday but that was my basic plan. If you wanted to incorporate WWE narrations then maybe they could be done on TUES and THURS in place of freewriting then do a freewrite on Friday. I think there is value in both methods and they could be worked on simultaneously.

 

By the way, I totally agree that the goal of BW is not to teach 'writing' but to develop a 'writer' and I think there can be a big difference between those two goals if only one approach is taken. A blend of the two goals would surely be the ultimate result, I think.

[LindaOz]

It's also a question of the end goal of a writing education. The end goal of WTM's writing approach is clearly high quality academic papers. I find it to be a narrow goal. The goal of BW is creating lifelong writers. I want my kids to also learn to write quality academic papers, but my greater goal is for them to feel comfortable with writing, to like writing, to not be intimidated by writing, and to see writing as a skill for life. Most people need to write for various reasons in life. Most people do not need to write formal academic papers.

 

 

Yes. It pretty much boils down to the distinction between just learning to write, and learning to be a writer. I, too, want my kids to be able to write quality academic papers, but I want them to be able to express themselves through writing for other purposes as well. I think a BW approach leads them to writing with their own voice a lot earlier as it encourages them to write about their interests. Therefore they have something to say that comes from within themselves.

[Mrs_JWM]

High-quality academic research papers CAN (and should!) be well-written. Developing a writer's voice is important in all types of writing.

 

I'm struggling with moving away from WWE a bit and allowing for more creative BW-style writing. I have to remember that it was nearly impossible to develop 125 writers' voices in the classroom each year while simultaneously addressing grammar, usage, and mechanics. Now I have a classroom of one; it seems much more possible, but also more personal.

[Farrar]

High-quality academic research papers CAN (and should!) be well-written. Developing a writer's voice is important in all types of writing.

 

Yes, they absolutely should. But I think SWB would say the way to do that is by becoming fluent early in this foreign language that is SWE so that a writer develops voice within those rules. BW would say you do it by writing about your interests and building confidence while learning the conventions of SWE alongside that process.

 

I know which way is right for us, but I can see why SWB's way would work, and potentially work better for some students.

[Farrar]

 

F: Re-write the copywork/dictation passage from memory as much as possible, paraphrasing if the original words can't be recalled. I think this activity helps the kids get down on paper words that they are holding in their heads - also a goal of SWB and WWE. My 11th grader was doing an online BW course this year which had a section on summarizing and she commented on how she found it easy because of all the times I had them summarize their BW passages all those years ago.

 

Ooh, we don't do this, but now I want to!

[forty-two]

WRT voice in writing, I really enjoyed this Peter Elbow article: "Voice in Writing Again: Embracing Contraries" (free online here: http://works.bepress.com/peter_elbow/23/). He packed a ton of good, intriguing thoughts into it, all in very readable prose :).