One point that he made was that teachers often hear how a student speaks and does not consider that that is not how a student may write. I have discovered that myself I think that I've been lucky in that my English teachers have been aware of this fact. I myself have noticed it in the short time that I've already spent with some students in the class I am observing.
When I was in high school, I noticed this among my friends. Teachers never said it out loud, I think, but I was always aware that writing and speaking were two separate things. Friends who used certain phrases, much like the girl in the interview with "sort of," would refrain from trying to write things such as "ya know" or "like." (I actually had to stop myself from writing "like" instead of "such as" just now!) Since I've seen this before (I was the proofreader in my group of friends), I do know that speech does not relate to intelligence all of the time, but one would really have to get to know that before one hear's a student speak, which is a bit of an impossibility.
I feel that this is a simple way to teach students how to write. Just tell them not to write like they speak. The girl I told that in my class observations seemed to immediately understand what I meant. Writing should be formal, speech is much more commonly informal. I completely understood this chapter's point on appropriate times to use certain speech; we had talked about it in class, after all.
My only question that I could pose from this chapter, though, is: How might informal writing evolve? I believe that ti has greatly in the information age. Internet -- chat rooms, instant messaging, forums -- text messaging, emails -- all of these have developed much faster communication, and the more quickly we can communicate, the less time we will take to take care of how we write. Teachers already have to tell students not to write in text messaging speak -- with "lol" and "btw" and using numbers in place of words! How might we, as future teachers, have to deal with this? Will it only get worse? I am sure that it will.
I find it hard to pose a question about the actual reading. I understood it well and agreed completely, I think.
