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RE: what's a paragraph; was: Active versus passive (WAS Displays vers us Appears-Which One?)
Subject:RE: what's a paragraph; was: Active versus passive (WAS Displays vers us Appears-Which One?) From:"Dick Margulis" <margulis -at- mail -dot- fiam -dot- net> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 26 Dec 2000 09:24:30 -0500
"Holder, Luanne" wrote:
Luanne,
In theory, what you say may be correct. And the star education students who understand that may indeed go out into the world and become wonderful teachers of creative writing. The other eighty or ninety percent of the students, however, go out into the world and teach writing based on a half-understood model and consequently send their students on to the next grade with all sorts of self-esteem but no concept of how to compose a cogent paragraph.
My argument is about real-world consequences of the way Whole Language is taught, not about whether it makes sense in the abstract. (I really don't think it makes sense in the abstract, either; but I'm granting you that it does for the sake of the immediate discussion.)
I repeat: the purpose of teaching English composition in the public schools is to send people out into the world capable of communicating ordinary ideas in ordinary ways so that shuttles don't blow up. The next Shakespeare will be quite capable of expressing herself eloquently no matter what system of instruction is in place, don't you think?
Dick
>Dick:
>
Allow her to
>begin with "free writing" and teach her how to edit her text so that it
>conforms to standard English. That's what the whole language approach is all
>about - teaching grammar using this child's text instead of using a list of
>ten sentences at the end of the chapter in some English book.
>
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