Blog #3

After reading the “Error Analysis” by Crovitz’s I agree with the idea that using error to explain to students about where they messed up instead of showing students that how they could make minor fixes to tweak their paper is more beneficial. Like Crovitz states, that by showing student where the mess up at especially if done in front of the classroom it makes students feel as if they are inadequate. Yet this is false. Students in fact understand most grammar rules, but due to their diverse backgrounds or other languages spoken at home the may not know all these rules or how to display them in their writing. So by showing students these rules and giving them a place where they do not feel judged for getting a grammar rule wrong it makes them want to try and experiment with sentences. I also believe that DOL is problematic. Simply because it highlights what wrong with the sentence and showing that this is incorrect instead of showing where a student might have added this or taken this out in their sentence. By changing the way students view error is beneficial in how students feel about themselves academically.

In my group we decided to take basic and simple sentences such as the weather is nice or students have a lot of homework and show students how to expand theses sentences. This could be done by adding adjectives to describe the weather instead of giving just a broad sentence. In this alternative to DOL students can be asked questions such as what makes the weather nice, or how are the students feeling since they have all this homework to do. By asking students questions that leads them to expand their sentence makes it a place where students want to try and experiment with other grammar patterns or other descriptive words to be able to expand their sentence. This is where DOL sentences lack because they are only fixing simple sentences instead of having students expand these sentences that these students were writing,

What I hope students take away from this lesson is this idea that they should not be hesitant to try and write complex sentences or go against grammar rules that they were taught. The reason is by telling students that there either right or wrong when writing leads to them not wanting to experiment, but by showing them different possibilities that they can add to their writing will make them want to try different things. For example, in the grammar alive book Goal C is dedicated to showing students how grammar changes and is a variation of one’s social situation at the time whether that being around family or in an academic setting. By explaining that to students it gives them this idea that it is okay if their papers aren’t perfect and meeting all the grammar rules because a lot of these rules are not set in stone.  Also, just by showing students that they can expand their sentences leads to students having better papers because it makes it something that audience wants to read instead of these broad and boring sentences.