Summary 11/07

Most students when they begin writing, write like their first draft is their final draft. The students get caught up correcting what they write, disrupting the flow of ideas. In this mind frame to Erika Lindemann believes the first lesson that should be taught to students is that words can change. This means that after a word is written down, it can be erased and changed in to another word during revising. This is to have students get away from their current writing style. The second lesson from Lindemann is that words cannot stand alone. Words rely on the other words around them to make sense. Last Lindenmann believes that writers need to capitalize on what they already know. Normally in schools students learn parts of speech by memorizing certain information. This takes away from the importance that each word plays in a sentence. Lindenmann also has a quick lesson in passive/active voice. Important information being that if the verb following the "be" verbs(is/am/was/were/being/been) has -ing the statement is active. A -ed, -en ending on the following verb means passive. Style was also covered by Lindenmann. Style to Lindenmann means words that give ideas clarity, emphasis, specificity, and variety. Meaning that style is apart of the work.

Style to most college students means MLA, APA, or the like. Style to us is the format that we use to enter information in a essay format. To Lindenmann style is actually something we choose. Style to Lindenmann is actually important to the way we give information. As for the parts of the speech, yes I remember some of the words but do not know what they mean. I do not even know what they do in some cases like Past Participial Phrase. But, I know that I use these different parts of speech, but I do not know exactly what they do or are called. But, the section on passive/active voice was good. I did not even know how to find if a voice is active or passive. I think that some of this problem comes from me learning this information in elementary or middle school and only remembering it for the test that had nothing to do with life. The idea for teaching kids that words can change is nice, but the second part of words being dependent on one another sort of makes the first claim about words changing weaker. If words rely on other words then changing one will affect the other words, causing problems.