Many of my students begin each paragraph by writing, "In this paragraph I am going to talk about..." I encourage my kids to make topic sentences and use transitional phrases, but to me, it doesn't make sense to say "Now I will talk about..." A lot of my students write like that so I am not sure if it is something that they were taught to do in previous years. Since their writing would still make sense without saying, "In this paragraph, I will talk about..." should I have them take it out?
In the five step writing process, that would be fine for a rough draft and editing, but would be deleted out during the revising stage.
One year, I had an entire class that had been taught by a previous teacher to start every essay with "Hello! My name is ______, and today I'm going to write about __________." What a nightmare! It was so hard to unteach it, but of course, I had to.
My own kids have been taught to begin paragraphs in a similar manner (Next, I will talk about). High school has been an eye opener for my older son. He started the year at a private school where the honors English teacher ripped that style apart. Of course, it was MY fault for never having corrected him ( if you have teeenagers, you know its always someone else's fault!). He's since learned to write without beginning paragraphs that way. Trying to unlearn something can be quite a challenge for many kids. Fortunately, my seventh grader abandoned that kind of topic sentence on his own.
Our third grade teacher teaches kids to do this. Drives me crazy, and so I've spent most of the year trying to unteach these kind of writing styles. They also think they have to include themselves in every report (I like this topic because, or I think this, etc.) If it's a report I only care what sources say, I don't care what you think.
This is my biggest complaint when my students write essays in my world history classes. I tell them until I am blue in the face "Don't tell me what you are going to talk about, don't tell me next I will talk about, don't tell me how you feel and don't use the word "I" I think they spend so much time writing creatativly in their English classes and it is hard to make the adjustment. It usually takes me until the end of the first semester for most of them to get rid of those nasty habits.
I hate hate hate when my students write that. I have 11th grade honors students who still use those phrases. Grrr!! My other pet peeve is when students write "in conclusion." Usually those are the same students who wrap up with "I've just talked about x, y, and z" in their conclusions. ...didn't mean for that to come out as a vent. :lol:
Hate to break it to you, but it doesn't end in high school. The English professors at the community college I work at moan and groan about the same thing in the comp I classes. I don't have any advice since I teach math, but I can totally understand, since there are similar issues in math where we have to "unteach" what previous teachers did.
I model model model and model some more for my kids, and even in 3rd they do it. But by this time of the year, I've usually gotten them out of the habit.
My 7th grade English teacher would give us an automatic zero if we used any phrases like that. Heck, even the word "I" was enough to earn a failing grade. That sure cured all of us.
I love it! I broke my kids from doing that by giving them a list of creative beginnings for essays and challenging them to use those. Now they have expanded the list, adding some of their own.
Some of my younger college students do this, too. They told me it was how they were taught to write essays! I wonder if somewhere along the line a teacher gave them the old speech advice: Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you've told them. But you're NEVER supposed to actually say (or write) the actual words of that advice! Most of my erring students have come from the same school system. I think they're telling the truth when they say they were genuinely TAUGHT to write like that. Holy scheisse on a popsicle stick. There's a teacher in that system who should rightfully be flipping burgers somewhere. On the bright side, such papers are easy to grade. I just stack them with the papers that are handwritten, used ink other than black, aren't double-spaced, have wonky margins, capitalize every line because the student doesn't know how to change the computer's setting, don't have a cover sheet, have no name, or use any kind of moronic text-message-spellings. No wonder corporate America is going under. They can't find employees who know how to communicate!
I worked at an elementary school where a "writing system" was used by many of the teachers-- they paid good money at a workshop to get it -- develolped by some retired teacher. It has the students "tell them what you are going to say..." "say it" and then "tell them what you said." Even worse, as part of the revising step, students had to go back to each paragraph and add an "I feel" statement. This was supposed to develop "the author's voice." A bunch of hooey, I said. I refused to use it.
One of the best ways to write an essay, speech or anything is to begin with a question. It sparks interest right off the bat. It's effective in ending an essay or speech as well, causing the listeners and readers to give thought to what they have just heard or read.
To make the point with my 8th graders, I ask them to tell my how they make a phone call. I ask if, when their best friend answers the phone, they say, "Hello! My name is __________. In this telephone conversation, we are going to discuss __________, _____________, and _______________." That is good for a few laughs, but it seems to sink in...with some of them at least!
I think I WAS actually tod to write that in every paper :lol: Now, I am wondering what happens to kids who have been writing small moments/personal narratives for all of elementary school. I am actually one of few teacher who teaches a separate writing block apart from the small moments, but many of the teachers only teach small moments writing.
I hate it when the kids do that!!! It is such a hard habit to break and we have to, the social studies writing portion of our state tests are graded pretty harshly and those kind of statements lowers the grades A LOT! Even worse I have students that tell me "My name is and I am going to tell you about ____________ I don't think ________ should do that because _________ should mind their own business" Then they conclude "I told you that _________ shouldn't do ___________ because they should mind their own business" GRRRRRRRRRRR So basically the entire essay is garbage and the only words that are not junk are in/the/and...etc. What isn't part of the I am _________ and I think ______ should mind their own business, is all written in text spelling or just plan spelled wrong. My issue is I could give them back to the students and they would re-do them all right, re-do them with plagerized material! Sometimes I think it is hopeless! My senior writing teacher (I had to write a 15 page thesis my senior year, it was required) told me if I misspelled their again she would fail me. I rarely misspell it now. If I had tried any of the stuff kids do today, well I would still be in high school!
When I was in college, every paper was "Three strikes and you're out." "Strikes" were bad grammar, misspelled words, illogical points of view, etc. Some people's essays didn't make it through the first paragraph! If the paper made it through the first cut, the professor then read it for quality. It was scary, but if we passed the course it was because we were not only good writers, but also excellent proofreaders. A little shame is also a good memory device. One professor I had used to put the really bad papers on the overhead so we could all learn from them. The student who learned the most was the writer; he/she checked extra-carefully next time, you can bet! In graduate school, my professors used to tell us that the undergrads had the worst writing skills they'd ever seen, because their teachers were so busy tip-toeing around self-esteem issues, they were afraid to mark things wrong even when horrendous mistakes were made: in other words, teachers were afraid to teach them actual writing skills. Then, when these students got to college, they thought they could get by with the same nonsense. Hello, the real world really doesn't give a toot whether your feelings will be hurt or not. Sometimes the best teachers are the ones who require the most from us, quality-wise, and aren't all that interested in our personal lives or whether or not we had a bad day when we wrote that essay. It's good, or it's not. Tell me why. I used to tell my middle school students that if a business misspells something on a marquee or menu or sign of any kind, customers had better count their change really carefully. A business that is careless in one area is probably careless in others. Actually, I never patronize a business that isn't meticulous about how it presents itself to the public. I don't trust them.
A tangent about finding typos or mistakes on business signs? We should start a thread about that!! I always taught my 3rd graders to start with either a question or an interesting fact about their topic. Then I told them to jump right in to writing their paragraph where they answered their question or explained the fact. This isn't a great description, but I never let them start with, "I'm going to write about...." or "My name is and I'm going to tell you about...." We spent a lot of time on leads and transitions that helped make their writing more interesting. I also taught all different types of writing. We wrote personal narratives and non-fiction essays. I challenged them to not use a single I, me, my, or you in their writing once. BOY was that hard for them!! Anyway, I must have done something right because the fourth grade teacher from that school(I'm at a different school now) told me that my kid's always commented on how I taught them and she said she could tell we spent a lot of time on writing. I think I actually was taught to "tell them what you'll tell them, tell them, and tell them what you told them." too. Luckily, I was smart enough to not use those boring leads/transitions/conclusions.
In my class, I call these phrases "wrenches" (it comes from my bulletin board about tools). I have collected phrases that give me the eebie jeebies: I am going to tell you about... I just told you about... That is all I have to tell you about... Mrs. kcjo, that was my paper about... I hope you liked my essay about... I don't have any more to write about... (all actual examples) We practice taking one of these and making it into a good conclusion sentence, or paragraph, depending. I use them in a writing center. I don't know any other way to get kids to stop, other than busting in on that teacher who is teaching the kids this and giving her the wrench!
Oh, and we use the Write Tools (formerly Step Up to Writing). They have numerous ways to convert these phrases into something useable, as well as tools to teach the kids how to write a decent topic/conclusion sentence/paragraph.
Also, writing "the end" at the end of a paper or story drives me crazy!!! If you have to write "the end" to tell me you're finished, you better make the ending more exciting and then skip writing those two words!
