Learning Investigation #2

Nicole Eulberg
February 16, 2009
Learning Objective #2
Thinking back to the kind of reading and writing I was asked to do in primary and secondary schooling, for me is easy. I remember learning how to read different short stories and become skilled at writing upper and lower case letters which eventually turned into learning cursive during my primary schooling. Secondary schooling consisted of much more writing and reading. The writing turned into essays that consisted of 3-4 pages and the reading turned into 12-20 pages a night. The change in work load was considerable but doable as well.
Going back to my primary schooling experience however, I remember also learning the “correct” and “incorrect” ways to read and write. In my second grade class, I specifically remember by teacher telling all of us that it was unacceptable to begin a sentence with the words; and, but, because, or so. Every writing activity my teacher assigned us mostly reiterated to us how wrong it was to start a sentence with any of those words and from second grade on I have always thought that if I did break that rule a sentence was incorrect. When I was taught how to read, many of my teachers stressed the importance of looking up words I do not know and going back and reading parts of a story I did not understand. Like my experience with writing, I have also kept doing the same “correct” thing since then. My primary school experienced really stressed the “right way” of doing things, whether it was reading or writing, there was only one right way to do everything which defiantly impacts how I read and write still to this day.
Transitioning into my secondary education, there was still a stress on certain aspects of both reading and writing that were the same, but there were even more additions to the “one right way” of doing reading and writing activities. My freshmen English teacher reiterated the importance of word choice when starting sentences, but also added that as writers it was inaccurate to use contractions within sentences such as don’t or aren’t, just to say a few. In reading, it was still stressed that we look up words we didn’t understand, but along with that we were to answer questions about what we read and the pages that were assigned to us to read increased as was expected. Using both the knowledge I had from my primary education as well as my gained knowledge from my secondary education, I was confident I had all the parts I needed to become an intelligent writer and a solid reader.
My teachers, I feel, taught me the “one right way” because it truly was the only correct way to write and read based on the curriculum they had to teach us. For students like me who grew up with parents who introduced us to some of these concepts before we began school. This however is not the case for some other students. Referencing back to Rose, he discusses how he felt less prepared language wise while in school. I think this is the case for many students who are not taught these concepts of reading and writing in the English culture. For example, many Hispanic students are taught to say in their language, shirt black instead of black shirt as we would see as correct in our English culture. Because the curriculum tells the teachers that the verb goes before the noun, which is what they teach in their classroom. Growing up in an English family prepared me along with other students in knowing that that is the correct way to describe something; for Rose, he feels less prepared because he did not grow up in a home where he was spoken to in this way therefore he had no previous knowledge of how to say certain things in the “correct way”. I think that Rose’s experience is very similar to those of students today and we as teachers need to figure out how to make them equally prepared so they do not start off at a different level.
Shifting into college is a huge change for all students. For me, I found that the way I write has to change based on with professor I have for a certain class. Disagreeing with a professor is nothing you put in a paper because you have to play the game and not voice your own opinion if it is not the same as the professors. If you do voice your disagreeence then be prepared to have your grade suffer. Also for my writing, it was also brought to my attention that the rules of starting a sentence with because and so etc. is not an actual rule, in fact some teachers encourage it because the words can create smooth transitions. In general I would say that conventions have not impacted me as a writer after I came to college because I almost throughout every “correct” thing I was taught. I learned that there is more than one way of doing certain things and the various ways of doing them are stressed more often then not.