Paraphrase Required - Word by Word

ENGL 607

William Gribbin

Running head: JOURNAL ENTRY 3

JOURNAL ENTRY 2

Shaughnessy seems like she would have been my kind of instructor. I appreciate the honesty of her assessments in regards to punctuation and what educators deem as an understanding what and English sentence is. It is easy to judge a student on what we think they know by simply looking at a sentence on paper or an essay as a whole. When it comes to the grading process it is a pitfall to get stuck in just grading to the numbers and per the curriculum. Shaughnessy warns against this and makes note to looking deeper at the common pattern of errors as well as the difference between performance-based errors and grammatical ones. What this ultimately boils down to is teaching procedure or educating a student. The former deals with by the numbers thinking of a student does not meet standards because they cannot punctuate and write a simple sentence. It ignores the potential root problems of a lack of understanding and knowing the mindset of the student in regards their background towards learning. This was what resonated with me because Shaughnessy’s examination of systemic errors is a direct correlation assessing our overall philosophy of learning. She sought to fix the root problem as a whole instead of constantly attacking the symptoms.

The reading by Sommers paired well with this as she also talks to the importance of feedback in creating effective and efficient students. A section that really stood out to me when formulating my thoughts was, “…we comment on student writing because we believe that it is necessary for us to offer assistance to student writers when they are in the process of composing text, rather than after the text has been completed.” (Sommers, 1982). She goes on to elaborate that the comments we provide our students are what shape their thought process and that focusing on the wrong things can gear them in the wrong direction. As an educator, the goal is not simply to teach the subject material, but instill a sense of value in it for the students so that they actually learn something from it instead of just writing for a grade. Both of these individuals relate the importance of creating an environment of lifelong learning to help students and teachers grow both as individuals and as partners in a unified learning process.