Blog #3

As I reflect on my past experiences with writing, I am immediately compelled to state that my overall writing experience was good. I always had the best and most passionate teachers throughout my writing journey. I recall that much of my primary school writing instruction was to encourage writing as a means of self-expression. Almost all of my primary school instructors constantly lectured us about using writing to tell our personal stories, keep journals of our adventures and write short stories about anything that came to mind. I believe that majority of my instructors used the process-oriented approach due to the fact they stimulated us to writing as a means of self-discovery. For example, I recall my 4^th grade teacher gave us an end of the year writing assignment. We had to come up with a story based off a painting that had been completed earlier in the year. It was a chance to be creative and burrow deep down into our knowledge base of information and imagination in order to create a story that was unique to our individual experiences.

In my university experiences with writing, instructors were unforgiving and had high expectations for completed assignments. They provided materials and resources for students to use in order to produce high quality work. In terms of principles and methods my instructors did not provide of us with new skills sets or knowledge in terms of writing. However, more so stressed the fact that the skills learned in secondary school; such as, identifying your audience, successfully writing a thesis statement, having adequate support and answering the prompt effectively were ideally things that should have already been acquired and only to be improved upon. I think this is a much more product-oriented approach to teaching writing. In my case, the lack of instruction, practice and individual feedback hindered me; conversely, other instructors that I encountered were much more involved in their students’ progress and improvement. Nevertheless, it did help to reinforce the techniques, rules and formulas required to produce a good quality writing assignment.

As my writing skills have developed and continues to develop. I feel that the instruction that I received in the classroom in my primary schooling has molded me into the writer/reader that I am today. Due to my primary school instructors whom I have discerned used the process-oriented approach as expressivist; who encouraged a wide range of self-discovery writing prompts and activities. Conversely, the exact opposite can be said regarding my university classroom instruction. Which I believe focused on a more product-orientated approach with some integrated process-orientation approaches. For example, regarding rhetorical practices we were given argumentative prompts where we had to choose a position and another prompt where we had inform readers of an issue and provide a solution.

I have attempted to learn several languages, Japanese being one of the many languages that I tackled over the years. I have never taken a formal writing class in regards to academia. The classes that I have taken only teach the writing necessities; such as filling out documentation, making written request and other daily needs where writing might be required. The only purpose emphasized by the instructor for learning to write was for daily needs, because of this I believe instructors took a more product-oriented approach. They only wanted to see that students were able to write in response to everyday questions in a variety of situations. On the other hand, the instruction that I received in writing in my L1 encompassed everyday writing necessities. In my Japanese writing class we were taught how to properly respond to an email; and in my L1 class this was taught as a form of formal writing. However, similarly my experience in both settings stressed the importance of writing formalities.

My classroom experience with writing has been an exciting and revealing journey. The passion that I have for writing stems from my love of self-expression. This is evident in the task that I assign my students. I enjoy giving students prompts that require them to think as well as use personal experiences in their responses. I encourage making outlines and brainstorming before sitting down to write. I am an expressivist through and through. I use writing as a means of self-discovery; while focusing on rhetorical practices because I teach in an academic setting. I strongly believe that the skills and strategies that my students need to master are building a strong vocabulary, taking time to explore and develop topics and outlining before the writing begins. In my opinion, this creates strong writers.

I think that by cultivating an understanding and of diverse models of writing and instructional methods can help me accommodate a wide range of L2 learners. No single method of teaching is going to work in every setting with every student. In order to be a more effective writing instructor I have to be able to incorporate different practices into my writing instruction. For example, I was teaching English in a community setting where was need for students to learn the formats and formulas for writing an essay. They simply needed to learn how to write in some cases only a basic knowledge of was all they needed. Whereas, teaching in an academic setting that requires focusing on the various writing styles and practices. In the community setting students often only need enough basic writing skills to obtain a job and in the academic settings students require extensive knowledge of the formal writing criteria. A single method will never work because the dynamics of the classroom setting, students and context are forever changing.