
On 8 cover story titled "Why Johnny can not write." Newsweek in December of 1975, he ran a national concern raised about the quality of writing that students produce in American schools for K-12. It has led to a deluge of 30 years of protest by thousands of items with the same title.
Furthermore, in 1998, 2002 and 2007, national tests show that these fears were justified, the tests have been reported by the National Education Association – only one of five seniors has shown to be able to write well enough to want to apply in writing for the university. And in 2003, the National Commission for the scriptures declare a state of national crisis for teaching writing in America, and recommended, in fact, that all levels of schools and governments more chips a long time, money and people cope with the crisis .
But what the authorities have not been realized, too, that most of the big problems with the teaching> Write letters come from teachers focus their students' writing to the simple forms of writing, without the mediation of the content.
Sun emphasized the teaching of proper grammar, punctuation and organization are all forms. And if you teach writing essays, they spend all their time on introductions and conclusions, thesis statements on sentences and paragraphs – is formed. These letters are all the forms necessary to be sure,But nowhere is the connection between them and the most important thing in writing – that the content is new to the reader.
Of course, most teachers and textbooks tell students to avoid stereotypes, to say something interesting, something original or new, to say, but do not provide students with a real process to invent something new.
Do not get me wrong. I'm not to blame teachers write: I'm just describing the situation.
In reality it is acultural problem, which is a cultural problem conceptually.
You see, nobody really knows how to talk about the concept of novelty, as expected, teachers can instruct in writing the news? In reality, our civilization has ignored dealing with the concept of news for thousands of years.
Why? Because for us all the news of this mysterious, shapeless, huge black box in our minds that we have brought everything that we –
have not yet had
has not been saidover yet, and
have not thought of, but
We see this right here. As a thought experiment, try this: Can you even a category useful, it would be good for all kinds of new ideas? (Of course, I mean, when the three groups in the previous paragraph. Let's take the idea of relevance, so that four. We have a habit of inventing something, which recently became the new, like a new headache or new law has occurred. What makes it new is only occurring close in time, orrecently.)
So now, trying to address at least one category of the New, and then reading the line with asterisks below.
**************** I could not do it, or – until I realized some things more.
First, as a vague idea of what is new, the concept of what that old man, a mysterious, shapeless, huge black box is in our head, which takes place in words –
all we have seen
we all said, and
everything we ever thoughton
– In fact, everything in our life until now! Even with these three categories, which is old so large that it does not really wrap our heads, can you?
Secondly, I discovered that with the newness and the old age overcome when we recognize this fundamental relationship between the two – what's new always depends on what is old.
For example, you know the old saying: "You can not talk about color to a blind man (who has been blind since birth)." If your reader has no experiencewith the kind of thing you're talking about – that is, any experience with a common group, the thing is, what it's like, such as films or computer – then you can not talk to him about it. You can really explain anything, if you use words and ideas of groups that already share things with him.
So if your readers the Tarzan of the Jungle (Tarzan learned to read in the original story), and use the soap in your letter word without explaining itThen Tarzan not know what you mean, there's something that has never seen the soap has never been told, and never thought. And you can not describe a beautiful sunset to a blind man because he has never seen this group of things that we call colors.
Well, not too big a leap to say that what is new depends on what is already old (or known) to the readers?
Okay. So what we need now are some categories that we use the concepts of divisionold and new, so you can make a working relationship between the two.
Here is a list of what I call the old ideas:
Values
Expectations
Experience
Justification
Language
And here is a list of what I call the new points of view:
Inversion
Add
Subtract
Vice
Rearrange
With these two sets of categories, you can teach students to identify what they shared with their readers – the old view, and then we can show them how these views with the five new process so that theyagain.
For example, a student can identify high-value their opinion does not like the divorce of their parents through, also found that their friends do not like divorce, or usually is gone.
Then it can be assumed that the opposite view using the procedure again to say that divorce has some advantages, some good things about it. It alone could more than likely with examples that show you actually spend more personal time with his father every week, going to a show orfor dinner more often with him, as is the wonderful fact that he buys her expensive gifts staff now than before the divorce. Then we can help you to put a thesis statement, topic sentences make the sound, use, give examples and stories in your body paragraphs, and create a good introduction and conclusion.
We can teach Johnny – and Janey – with a new content to write and still fit. But only if we stop, focuses exclusively onForms and begin to focus on the one hand, that is new to the reader. And only then we should show their support for the traditional forms and submit this news you can use.
As we all know, is in the real world of content produced by the first vice-versa.
With the universal doctrine "What's new for the reader," as the most important factor in writing courses, we will never see on other irritating article entitled "Why Johnny can not write" – and we save a mountainMoney in the process.