I really enjoyed this chapter and I just happened to read it after "correcting" a paper written by a Chinese GED student. He had saved his thesis for the conclusion as a surprise for the reader. Of course I told him that it was wrong, just because it felt so wrong to me, a person who has been taught that the thesis goes in the first paragraph of the essay. This chapter showed me that I was the one that made the mistake, not the student. Now I understand why he was trying to surprise the reader and what I could have done to help him clarify the main idea in his paper. His paper was not wrong, it just wasn't following the "rules" I grew up following. It is important that as writing teachers, we keep an open mind when reading papers written by ESL students and take the opportunity to understand what the students are trying to communicate in their writing.
No comments:
Post a Comment