Learning from Example

Oftentimes while I read something that I enjoy, I will go back and reread whilst on an underlining frenzy, marking up lines of text that I think hint at or reveal something important. But most often, I underline sentences that I find to be beautiful. Because of this, Anderson's idea of using "mentor texts" to model good writing appealed to me. After all, when an someone is trying appreciate an artistic technique, like chiaroscuro, they probably go to a museum and look at a Rembrandt's contrast of light and shadow. They don't look at a deliberately blurry, smudgy mess and try to think of ways to fix it. Why should reading and writing be any different?

I find Anderson's sliding scale of context to be an interesting concept. At first, I was taken aback at the thought of a single sentence as a context for something, but looking at the definition of context and how it is intended to be used, I liked the idea. For struggling students, starting small, with a sentence, and moving on to more complex examples makes sense.

I can think of some ways that modeling strategies were implemented in my education. A successful example was when a teacher took an example of past student writing that used good transitions from one argument to the next, since our class was having difficulty with that in our essays.  On the other hand, a somewhat negative example of modeling was when a teacher spent an entire class using my paper as an example of what not to in choosing synonyms. She of course blacked out my name, and reassured me that she would use other people's papers as examples in the future so as not to pick on anyone. A problem that Anderson would see in these modeling experiences would be that they were only to correct errors, not to actually model good writing. Another problem is that in both instances, the modeling wasn't systematically done. It was unexpected, and not memorable unless you were the poor hapless student having difficulty with a concept.

Though I agree that using what he calls "correct-alls" do more harm then good, I actually disagree with Anderson when he says that there is no value in looking at negative examples of grammar.  I do see value in it, when it is a part of the writing and editing process. I think editing can be an encouraging and uplifting process if it is modeled well, and student-led. I also believe, along with Anderson, that it needs to be part of a routine. Part of what made me more successful as a writer was a fusion of constantly appreciating what worked and what didn't in a text.

To come full circle, one thing that I think could be helpful for students improving their conception of grammar is teaching them strategies for close reading. Not only will their appreciation and understanding of a text increase, but by seeing the structure of a good argument or just a beautifully written passage they will unconsciously be intaking models for their own work. (A resource comes to mind for teaching this is Mortimer Adler's essay "How to Mark a Book.")