The
Writing Workshop
Volume 1
By Alan
Ziegler
The information received from The
Writing Workshop v.1 that would be most useful was the writer's tone, the
examples, and the bibliography. Although the book was one of the thinner styles
the print was small. This would be a really good resource book for home or the
teacher's helps area in the schools. Alan Ziegler writes like he is talking
directly to the person that is reading his material.
The author used a soft tone that
pulled this reader into wanting more. He stated in the beginning on the first
page, "Well, I'll just pretend we're all sitting around my living room sipping
coffee, and someone has asked me to talk about the teaching of writing. The
drive to get into the information in this book was delightful. The
compare/contrast was presented with humor, but remained factual. Alan Ziegler
had a unique way of setting his tone by using great examples.
He uses examples of people from
Albert Einstein's description regarding science and the steps it takes to
really understand how the final conclusion came about. This takes hours, days,
weeks, months, sometimes years to complete. Unlike reading, when the final
composition of information, sometimes comes immediately. The writer was the one
who spent the agonizing hours putting the information together for the world to
see. Another example was of a 5th grade girl who was one of the
class' better writers. He goes on to talk about her poetry paper about the
beach. He is astonished at the rhyming and type of poem she has written. He had
to ask her why she wrote this way. It did not seem like her natural voice. She
admitted to him that she copied the poem from a book. She stated it was because
she did not want to displease him. His response was priceless. He stated, "although
I was glad she was interested in pleasing him with her writing, pleasing
herself should be more important.
At the end of the book he
elaborates on positive and negative praise. He explains how responding with
"it's just super the way you develop the characters" instead of "Hey, that's
just super". "Positive reinforcement is conducive to growth." This statement
has been said many times in various types of settings, so simple, yet extremely
true.
The bibliography is almost two
pages in length. While looking over the authors' names and the titles of the
different titles, some of the information becomes familiar. Sigmund Freud,
Wilfred Funk, Richard Hugo are some of the authors' that is remembered from
previous psychology classes. Rudyard Kipling, Wolfgang A. Mozart Frank O'Hara
were also names used as references.
The tone, the examples, and the
bibliography are the main reasons for an important resource library. This is
one of those resources. The soft but firm tone is set by various examples both
past and present. The bibliography makes the facts real. Basically, not much
has changed in writing since the beginning of the pen. How one perceives the
technical aspects depends on if we drown in the rules and theories or if we
write freely in journals.
Trina Roberts
OWP 6-28-01
Report 1