Journal Article About Writing

Smith, C. (2010). "Diving in deeper": bringing basic writers' thinking to the surface: when basic writing
     students are encouraged to value their thinking as they revise their prose: they are likely to become more
     constructive critical thinkers and less fearful performers of academic tasks. Journal of Adolescent & Adult
     Literacy, 53(8), 668-677.

     In this article, Smith is writing about her "Basic Writing" students have a problem with critically thinking about what they have read rather than being horrible writers.  Smith believes that students "shut down" once they read something that they do not understand.  Smith's solution is to teach students metacognative skills in order to better her students' reading abilities.  Once the reading abilities improve, Smith says that their writing abilities will improve as well.  Smith suggests that the most important aspect of writing it the revision process.

     I found this article to be extremely interesting.  My students always have trouble comprehending what they read, but it never dawned on me that my students' writing abilities stemmed from their reading abilities.  The author says, "students can never outwrtie their reading ability."  This statement is so true now that I think about it!  In her article, Smith gives examples of the revisions two of her students did to a midterm exam.  I like how she had the student show her how they corrected their mistake and why they made that correction.  I plan to use this in  my classroom.