My thoughts about the National Council of Teachers of English beliefs about the teaching of writing

After reading the National Councils of teachers of English (NCTE) beliefs about the teaching of writing I finally understood what my lecturer meant when he said English shouldn’t be placed in major or minor categories but instead should be studied as a single complete course. The different components that are involved in the teaching of English are too complex to study as a minor course.
Some of the NCTE’s beliefs do fall in line with what we have been taught during our course of study. The belief in that everyone is capable of writing for instance is at the core of our study. Every living human being is blessed with enough intelligence to learn with the exemption of those in comatose conditions. An individual can only refine their skills and deepen their knowledge with practice. Writing is no different. If we as English teachers are supposed to teach our students to write, we must first get them to write and to continue writing. Writing should not be thought of as an abstract concept used only for school work but as a part of our daily lives which is present in the Blackberries we us, the email we send or the love notes passed under among students while the teachers are not looking.
Writing as we know has different purposes and relationships with other English strands. Different people may write for different reasons at different times and that writing will have different meaning to different people. Some people use writing as a way of expressing their thoughts or feelings while others may write to record their experiences. Knowing this, we as teachers must first find out what motivates our students to write and provide sufficient support to them while their go through the writing processes. The rapper Christopher Wallace for example was not able to make the connection between writing songs and writing in the classroom and thus his school work suffered. His song writing however does prove the relationship between writing and speaking and also its social implications.
However I do not completely agree with everything that the NCTE says. As a former teacher, my experience has taught me to value the fact that the students are writing more and somewhat forget out scolding them about editing. The fact that struggling students were making the effort to write served as a major focus in my classes although the NCTE views on editing and spelling may be more successfully imposed on more competent students it may seem to be overwhelming to struggling students. Besides, technology has made it easier to edit writings with spell check and various other programs. I do not however completely disregard the importance of editing articles but rather places more emphasis on getting the students particularly those that are struggling to write in the first place. Editing is still a valuable skill when dealing especially with hand written work. No teacher wants to see their students writing “ppl gdmorning wassup” or “ fyi I kno wha gwan” on a exam paper…unless of course these words are appearing in dictionaries around the world or we use different forms of assessment to judge these works by our struggling students.
My final thoughts about the NCTE’s beliefs are whether or not it is practicable to the St. Lucian educational system. Although they are potentially truly a instruction manual to increase the quality of the teaching we deliver to our students, the problem lies in the fact that English teachers at a St Lucian secondary school simply have to many classes to teach and this will cause them to feel overwhelmed. This may lead to the lack of adherence to the NCTE’s beliefs about writing and undoubtedly have to be resolved before changes can be made.

Willkommen to Eng 204 with Mr Emmanuel and the students of English including yours truly Chadrick Desir ! The purpose of this is to share ideas about the different ways we can teach in the classroom and to prepare us for teaching practice. Try your best to have fun but at the same time meet your goals and objectives. Oh and remember, people please don't use any Internet typing shortcuts, only well written sentences.