All About English Composition

[csc]

pixiedust:

chamonix, thanks your reply, I am seeing some light.

This is now a more balanced debate.

It was never meant to be a debate in any way

There was no intention to discredit any writing programs mentioned.

Just sharing of personal experiences and alternative ways of doing things

[csc]

Read the quotes below somewhere.


“A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.\"

“Strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what—these are the thousand and one adulterations that weaken the strength of a sentence.”

[Chenonceau]

csc:

Read the quotes below somewhere.


“A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.\"

“Strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what—these are the thousand and one adulterations that weaken the strength of a sentence.”

This seems to be advice for expository writing. For creative writing, the techniques are different. PSLE tests creative writing. JC level GP tests expository writing.

[Herbie]

Hi csc,


I like the word passion. Passion is very important, if kids has passion towards learning... it will be a bleeze for the parents to raise up their kids..

[tamarind]

csc:

Some of my after-thots


If there is passion and love for writing ,one will tend to write well. Writing needs to have a purpose - and not just for exams . The child takes pride in his writing and experiences immense satisfaction from it.

The key to reading is for pleasure ultimately and linguistic skills are just picked up along the way. There is no need to get the child to read beyond his level. It is a natural process. Parents can interfere to ensure that the child read widely ( focus on width and not depth) - books of different interests and topics, newspapers , magazines etc

Well, home environment and maybe 'genes' do play a part in honing the writing skills. In a home where reading and writing is frequent and done naturally, the child will grow to love reading and writing naturally.

Enjoying the process beats the end result. The end result should be a love for reading and writing for a life time and not merely a distinction in English during exams

I absolutely agree with you.

My aim is to let my kids enjoy reading and writing. For those parents who keep emphasizing to their kids that \"You must do this, then teacher will give you high marks\", or make their kids memorize model compositions, I believe that their kids will not enjoy writing, and they will only write for exams. It is unlikely that kids will get very high marks if they don't enjoy what they are writing.

Kids who enjoy writing will actually write stories for fun, instead of playing with their toys or computer games. This is what all parents should aim to do.

[atutor2001]

Chenonceau:

This seems to be advice for expository writing. For creative writing, the techniques are different. PSLE tests creative writing. JC level GP tests expository writing.

Ya, ya, ya you are right. One of my kids very good in compo writing but faces big problem in GP - too much unnecessary descriptions (they no one novel liau)

[buds]

Chenonceau:

chamonix:

There are always two sides to every coin. Of course, all parents will be delighted to see their children writing well without memorisation. However, like babies who develop at different rates, a child's ability to write develops differently too. Unfortunately, our education system does not wait for one to develop at his/her own pace. (At least, not the grading and streaming.) The discrepancy between reading and writing that you pointed out is very true. The following is an exerpt lifted out from a Model Essay book -

Why use a model?

Sometimes the reading material we use provides an ideal model. For instance, Kit Wright's poem \"Magic Box\" works without fail to produce good writing. However, most adult writing for children is actually too subtle and complex to offer a model that can be easily imitated. To put it bluntly, Ted Hughes' The Iron Man is a great book to use with Year 4 children. But Hughes was a genius at level 3000, and Darren at 8 years old is only at level 2! ...

I was once uncomfortable with the idea of models memorisation (even though my siblings scored A1s for Literature by memorisation despite scoring a C6 for English ). However a recent encounter changed my perception a little. A mother confessed to me that her upper primary school child was horrid at writing. But by memorising models, he was able to put something down on paper. I hope the writing confidence he gained through memorisation will help him work towards being an independent writer in time to come.

Btw, my kids do read and enjoy the so-called \"trash books\" immensely. They often share the silly and funny bits that they come across. From there, they develop the skill and habit of picking up certain phrases & vocabulary from books, stick them in their minds and share as and when they see fit. So, many things are but different strokes for different folks.

I find this post wise and nuanced. :goodpost:

To add to it, I notice that this thread started on the issue of COPYING compos, not memorizing compos. Many people hope that by getting a child to copy, the child will remember. People hope one leads to the other. But the 2 are not the same.

Memorizing Compos
I have recently become a convert of memorizing compos. For a child who does not even hear the language at home and rarely uses it in school, memorizing is helpful to the extent that it imperfectly mimics immersion. Perhaps not 100% recall of the whole text for the purpose of wholesale regurgitation, but it does help to read a good quality compo enough times to have phrases stick in the head for future use. Little Boy's Chinese compos have jumped 6 points out of 20 and he is beginning to read Chinese fiction with greater pleasure than before. I'm like \"Wow!\".

We've never had to do this for English because we speak English at home, and Little Boy in P5 is already reading Isaac Asimov, Malcom Gladwell and Michael Crichton for pleasure.

Copying Compos
What I am against is the practice of copying in order to memorize. Copying is a physical activity and physical activity is controlled by a different part of our brain. Think about it. Can one walk absentmindedly into the men's toilet? Can one turn absent-mindedly into the wrong street? Unless one makes a conscious effort to copy mindfully, the brain (for reasons of efficiency) will manage copying activities on auto-pilot... a mode that does not engage the higher order cognitive processes.

I expect my children to remember an English word from ONE glance. English is their first language. I expect Little Boy to remember how to write Chinese words for ting xie at ONE copy... or at most 2. And I find it effective already. However, if the cognitive resources for memorizing is fully deployed, there is no need to copy to remember. Copying is like a crutch for the clumsy. Little Boy is weak and clumsy in Chinese. Soon however, he will get stronger. A crutch gets in the way of an athlete and slows him down. In 1 or 2 years, I hope Little Boy can remember Chinese words at a glance.

:goodpost: you two! :celebrate:

Nice to read the above from two of my favourite contributors here.
I highlighted the ones i totally agree with in the above quotes.

I have seen both sides of that coin. :love:

Parents are often sandwiched between going for either the passion or the
requirement first as different children take to different things at varying
pace. While it is true that children who enjoy reading for leisure may
enjoy reading for the love of it and children who have passion for writing
will take pride in the stuff they write... there are some children who
cannot find this passion in them soon enough to be deemed to have well
in school or English composition writing in this case...

So, since time wait for no man.. and SG education waits for no student,
we should not subject the child to failure *choi* and begin this dislike for
writing in the name of passion... in this case going for passion (for the
love of it) first will come as a hindrance to advancement and i dare say
even getting to know it better... what more to love it.

Heck, they may even speak really well too... but somehow does not seem
to translate into writing either. I second the thought on mindless copying
which will eventually be ineffective and tiresome to see thru.. it only adds
to the bane of the writing process for children who already dislike writing.
For some children, they write well enough but not interesting enough. But
they do read books of all genre..

Since no two children are alike.. no one-trick-pony can do the job to cater
to all needs of a writitng child. We play as we go along (work according to
their abilities and learning styles) and yes 'hope\" that with confidence
built via some memorization work either phrases or model compo, the
passion decides to sink in at some point of time.

[csc]

atutor2001:

Chenonceau:

This seems to be advice for expository writing. For creative writing, the techniques are different. PSLE tests creative writing. JC level GP tests expository writing.

Ya, ya, ya you are right. One of my kids very good in compo writing but faces big problem in GP - too much unnecessary descriptions (they no one novel liau)

Sadly, those who are used to memorise model compositions for exams may be disappointed to find that they can't use them at the secondary school level even ...and of course in GP lah.

[atutor2001]

csc:

Sadly, those who are used to memorise model compositions for exams may be disappointed to find that they can't use them at the secondary school level even ...and of course in GP lah.

Not true lah. This particular kid is born with language talent. Since young can write well - never follow model compo. No need to learn grammar but just by \"sound\" alone, the sentences always grammatically correct one. In fact, it was my eldest kid who was weak in language; was forced to memorise compo by my DH but turn out to do very well for GP subsequently. Maybe this kind of kid got carried away while writing, forgetting that it was a GP essay.

[rosemummy]

I guess my approach is quite different from most parents in that I don’t encourage my daughter to read story books. From the time she was in P3 or 4, I limit her to reading just 1 story book a week. That’s because I have quite some concern over the content of some of the books, and it’s too tiring to be auditing everything she read. As for the books she read in primary school, most of them were classics by authors like the Bronte sisters, Adeline Yen-Ma, historical fiction and some of our literature texts like Animal Farm and To Kill a Mockingbird. She had re-read some of these at different ages and it’s interesting to see how she can look at the same situation with a different perspectives. For example, we read To Kill a Mockingbird as literature, but she had to review it last semester as part of Amerian History.


But we exposed her to lots of non-fiction in diverse areas, mainly areas we are interested in. She started reading the Bible, newspaper and magazines since preschool. First with Readers’ Digest when she was around 4, then The New Paper in K1. She was reading The Straits Times, National Geographic, Newsweek and Time magazine at the start of P1. From then on, she was reading what we read - from books on astronomy and military history to law reports, prospectus and financial reports. We’ll discuss what she read with her, and it takes much less effort to do so when that falls within our area of expertise. She started reading IPO prospectus and analyst reports in P3 when we got her involved in managing her investment portfolios. She also developed her interest in other areas eg animals and the environment, on her own.

But for books she read, I do discuss it with her in some depth. For example, she read her first original Shakespeare’s work at the end of P1. This was in preparation of a costume party where she chose to dress up as a fairy princess. I got her "A Midsummer’s Night Dream" as that’s the only story I could think of with fairies. At the end of it, she created a princess out of the characters in the book (the fairy king and fairy queen) and wrote something about this fictitious character to introduce herself. We also discussed certain parts of the play eg the relationship between the king and queen. I’ve also got her to do character study of the books she read. She’ll write what she feel from the point of view of 1 of the character and later, another character, but both over the same situation. This way, she learn to look at a situation from different perspectives. She started writing her own plays in P2/3 and got friends together to perform in school and church.

From upper primary onwards, I started moving her towards writing expository essay despite the discouragement from all her teachers. I feel that expository writing is a life skill, beyond PSLE and O levels. Even a friend, who’s an English HOD in a secondary school, agree with me that their approach (teaching narrative or descriptive essays) is very short term, which doesn’t prepare them for life beyond secondary school.