Reading Response (9/14/2009)

While reading Hillocks, I couldn't find much new or original about how to teach writing to different students according to their different needs and abilities; most of points Hillocks has made appeal to our commonsense, I believe.

He gives two examples of the teachers who have opposite philosophy about teaching and learning process. The first teacher considers students as very passive subjects who are supposed to accept the given information and necessarily follow the instruction. Whether they are successful or not totally depends on satisfying his rigid standards and expectation. However, his basic epistemological assuption(traditional positivist's idea) philosophically has its own limitation. Also, I do not like his lack of interaction with students and dominace over the class. Of course, some courses are supposed to be more lecture-oriented like science, medicine and phamacy, for those subjects first require you to have more knowledge for further application. On the other hand, to be a good writier does not necessarily mean to have expertise about certain fields unless you have specific goals to write about those fields. It is a matter of thinking aloud, looking at various perspectives, logical reasoning and creative or proper language use. However, the first teacher neglects these aspects of writing, only focuses on laying down rules and fails to promopt students' creative opinions and independent reasoning.

On the other hand, McCambell applies what Hillocks calls, "reflective" practice to teaching writing. I like the flexibility of his class which is necessary when the planned teaching strategies fail to promopt students' participation and satisfy their needs. His solution is quite simple but highly appropriate for encouraging students to produce more words in their writing. Perhaps, these students are not familiar with writing itself and on this stage, what is more important is to make them feel more comfortable with writing process rather elaborating or sophisticating their essays. Reflective practice has both seemily contradictory aspects in it yet both of them harmonize finally: one is maintaining theory of the teacher and the other one is flexibly meeting different needs and expectations of the students. If you sticks to your own theory neglecting students' side, the class will become no more beneficial. The opposite situation is also as negative as it. If you have no rule or standard but follow what students want, the class will lose its coherence, focus and finally fail to achieve course objectives. In this sense, to be a ood teacher is to be a good negotiator between your own principle and students' needs.