Chapter 7 Biographical Writing

In general, writing is the most difficult skill to teach children among four skills, speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Through reading this chapter, I found some possible solution for teaching writingefficiently. It is to provide them with some powerful motivation to write about. If writing topic is intimately related with their own life or their favorite people’s life, they can easily get motivated to write. Tompkins (2008) observes, "Children like to investigate the lives of well-known personalities as they read biographies and share information about themselves and their lives as they write personal narratives and autobiographies" (p. 147). Hamlett (2009) also states, "A person doesn't have to be famous to merit a biography. She should, however, be someone whose life experiences are going to be sufficiently interesting and/or enlightening to your prospective readers." One biographical writing type that appeals to me is "All About Me"Book because it is all about children themselves and they can choose the topic together with teachers for each page. Moreover, children can draw pictures, which are their favorites, about themselves.

According to Jaeun Kim, integrating reading and writing workshop is effective in learning biographical writing. I totally agree with her. Whether teachers educate reading and writing separately or not, they are complementarily related, so one field helps studentsunderstand the other better. As students read books, they learn writing indirectly and vice versa. Thus, joining two workshops together will make a great synergy effect. Also through the workshop, students can get a better understanding about what biographical writing is like as appreciating a lot of writing examples.

References

Hamlett, C. (2009). Biography writing tips. eHow, Inc. Retrieved from http://www.ehow.com/way_5176067_biography-writing-tips.html

Tomkins, G. E. (2008). Teaching writing: Balancing process and product. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.