Errors and Expectations
I am quite surprised by how
much I enjoyed this book. Written over
three decades ago, the author’s words and insights ring true today. “BW students write the way they do, not
because they are slow or non-verbal, indifferent to or incapable of academic
excellence, but because they are beginners and must, like all beginners, learn
by making mistakes” (5). This is
something that instructors do not communicate enough to their students. They need to understand that it is more than
okay to make mistakes; it is normal that they do.
“Writing is something writers
are always learning to do” (276). Along
with it is okay to make mistakes, students must understand that writing is a
process. At the tutoring center of
Medgar Evers College where I also work, a student enrolled in first year
composition came to me with a second time with a much improved second
drafts. Sensing that I was about to
point out to her areas where she still needed to work on, she began to feel
frustrated and said that if she had to rewrite the paper, she would sooner quit
school. Attempts by me to assure her
that writers have to go through many drafts before producing work that they are
satisfied with were futile. She saw the
work ahead of her and got scared. Being
enrolled in this program while teaching remedial reading and writing labs and
tutoring, I am always thinking on best pedagogical practices and one idea I had
as a result of my meeting with this student is that assigned papers should be
broken in parts even for first year composition students. This particular student had taken remedial
English courses at a community college prior to enrolling at Medgar Evers
College. She was not yet versed on what
it meant to be a college student.
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