In Elizabeth Wardle’s “You Can’t Teach Writing in General” argues that writing requires concentrating on specific factors. Catherine Savini’s “Looking for Trouble: Finding Your Way into a Writing Assignment” compliments Wardles writing by providing strategies for complex writing tasks. Both these articles show that teaching writing truly works when it focuses on specific topics, not one broad idea. Wardle says that writing should not be based on rules, it should be based on realistic writing tasks. Savini supports this by saying that students need to dig into each writing assignment and see what it is looking for. Both authors suggest that writing teachers should take a step back from universal writing assignments and instead focus on methods that prepare students for the different kinds of writing they will see.
I agree with this for many reasons. My favorite class I have taken so far at Kean was my public speaking class, where we had three assignments, an informative speech, a persuasive speech, and a group speech. We got to choose whatever topic we wanted it just needed to fit in those requirements. In my first speech, I spoke about teen homelessness, something I am very passionate about. My persuasive speech was about Physician-assisted suicide. My last speech with my group was about Mass/school shootings around the world. The freedom to choose my topic was awesome, I had fun for a writing assignment. I feel like if writing teachers took something like this on everyone would have a different view on writing.
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