The Letter...Blog #4

Dana,

I found your letter to be extremely insightful and it helped me out in understanding our readings on a different and deeper level. I want to start off by saying that I agree, the readings this week were overwhelming for me. There was a lot of information I learned, a lot I found insightful, and some information I already knew, and some I just did not understand.

I found your comments about the Fulwiler article intriguing because the issue of students writing as they speak is something that is an issue within class rooms of all ages, and grades. The quote that you pointed out to me that Fulwiler said was “Most people write letters in their natural voices: first person pronouns, contradictions, personal asides, digressions, humor, slang, expletives…I prefer dashes to semicolons, ellipses to transitions, sometimes sentence fragments, other times endless sentences” I also happen to agree and disagree. I have always been a huge fan of the “letter”. I was one to never show my feelings but tell them, and I would always write letters to express how I was feeling. There were some letters that I have written informally that took upon a language of a natural voice. But then there were letters I wrote that needed to be formal.

As a teacher I would encourage students to write letters and I would have them write both formal and informal letters. I would assign assignments that deals with having them write a letter to their friend or someone they want to tell something to (in an informal language). On the contrary I would assign something that they need to write a formal letter to someone important, or a company. It is very important to learn how to write a letter that is written in grammar that is acceptable.

Within the reading by Emig he says that "talk leans on the environment" which I believe is true. If we go by the statement in which Fulwiler said that we can say that some of the letters that children write will not be acceptable English. Some children grow up in an environment that they are faced with people using improper grammar everyday. There fore they will speak the same, and write a letter the same way.

When Bean said “Good writing, I like to tell my students, grows out of good talking-either talking with classmates or talking dialogically with oneself through exploratory writing (7)” I believe that this is true. I have to agree with Bean by saying what I believe in “practice makes perfect.” By practicing good speech and getting used to proper English you are basically forced to write that way because you do not know any other way to speak.

I have to say that I found your letter to be written formally but still have the tone of informal speaking. So you can mix the two! I enjoyed reading your letter and definitely liked reading your thoughts and opinions on quotes you pointed out. I look forward to taking our discussion further.


Sincerely,
Rosemarie Civitano