I had a meeting with Brett during class yesterday and she asked me to read a couple of my sentences out loud because they weren't well written sentences so she was trying to see if I could fix them on my own or something like that. There were a few sentences that we had to do that for. I finally told her that sentence structure is not one of my strong suits and ever since the 7th grade English I have been told that I don't understand sentence structure. Writing is a struggle for me so not having any faith in my writing knowledge or skills I believed everything my teachers told me. I don't understand sentence structure, I can't organize a paper properly, etc. I believed them. I think I am a bad writer and I have no comprehension for how to put a sentence together.
Brett was a little taken aback by that because she said I have do understand sentence structure because when I read a sentence out loud that I had already written I knew what was wrong with it and how to change it before Brett even told me what was wrong. She said people telling me that I don't know how to do it is prohibiting me in a way. Its not allowing me to put my thoughts down on the paper because I don't think I know how to do it.
Interestingly enough, this is a similar concept to one I am writing about in my inquiry paper just a different aspect of it. I am writing about the identity of Alzheimer's patients and one of the views that I have is that when someone is told that they have Alzheimer's the person is treated differently. Family and friends automatically think they can't do this they can't do that. In related to my experience with Brett and what she said that would correlate to the patients thinking that they can't carry our their normal lives anymore because they are being told they can't do different activities anymore so they start believing it even if its not true.
This all fits into a social self theory. According to Mead one takes into consideration their role in relation to others and then that determines the self. If one role in life changes to dependent because that's how others are treating you then you may start believing you are dependent and making that your new self.
Its just interesting to see how many times what we talk about in class applies to my entire life.
That is interesting how we learn about ourselves based on what other people tell us! I am writing about a similar topic in my inquiry paper. In the Self We Live By, the authors explain the formation of the deviant self. They explain that once someone is labeled as devaint by society, that individual comes to see himself or herself as deviant. It is only after being labeled as deviant, that the person is really deviant and considers themself in that way.
ReplyDeleteFor you, it seems like you really do know sentence structure, just like you said, because you can identity issues when you read the paper outloud. Teachers labeling you in deficit in "sentence strucutre skills" apparently caused you see yourself in that way. This is a fascinating real life application of what we have been reading about!
Karin,
ReplyDeleteFrom reading your blogs, it is obvious that you are able to write clear, concise sentences. Just because some of your sentences may seem a little off doesn't mean that you don't know how to write. Sometimes our minds get a little cloudy when we are stuck at a computer or in a classroom and we need some time to reflect on what we have written.
Also, I think it is terrible that so many people have given you that negative view of your abilities. Your post made me think about how I address other peoples' small failures in their work, and how I need to make sure that I always look at their effort and their abilities, and encourage them that they can improve. I really hope to be teaching next year, and although I hope that I won't be teaching English (it is definitely not my strong point, or honestly a subject that I enjoy), I will always try to be encouraging because I don't want any of my students to leave my class thinking that they can't ever succeed in something they struggle with because there is something inherently wrong with their abilities, and instead I want to make sure that they know that everyone has the ability to improve and learn, even though it may come harder for certain people. After all, I believe that the concepts that I struggle with the most are the ones that I can remember the best in the future.
Sorry to babble on your blog, but you are a good writer! Your blog shows it!
James