[the writing center]

All,

Barry suggested that we who are sitting in on classes make a few notes about what we perceive to be the instructor’s priorities. I have been assigned to Shawn Yardley’s 10:00 Tuesday/Thursday class. So far, she seems to emphasize:

1. Students understanding what they read.

This seems like a skill that needs improving in almost everyone I see at TWC. She spent some time today going through definitions of words in a story the class read, which was a good thing, because several students were quite confident they knew the definition of a word and were completely wrong, e.g. “serene” means “very confused,” “leering” means “to stalk,” etc.

2. Students understanding how other writers accomplish what they do.

Sort of, “Why is this funny/sad/moving/ridiculous? What did the author do to achieve this effect?” So I guess this might be a question we could ask students.

However, I think most of us would agree that it is often enough of a struggle to sort through the “to, too,” and “two”s and “your/you’re”s to get something that is at least approaching coherency, that exploring writer motivations and the minutia of word choices is sort of a luxury.

I’m not going to get the rant pants on here about that last one, everyone else feel free.

Technical note: I’m going to try to set up separate users on here, so we don’t have to sign our posts, but until then, sign your posts, y’all.

Megan