Teaching Writing at the Grassroots Level Part I

by Carmelita Cochingco Ballesteros.
June 16, 2012
I’ve taken the plunge! No, I didn’t re-marry. I organized my own company in the Philippines, the Blessed Teresa Language and Education Consultancy Services. That means that I registered my business name at the Department of Trade and Industry and I obtained the required clearances and permits.
Most of all, I secured my Certificate of Registration with the Bureau of Internal Revenue and had my official receipts printed. I’m in business, and I’m legitimate. But afterwards, I didn’t know how to actually begin. You see, I’m a sole proprietor. I’m the director and I’m also the janitor.
When I woke up on March 30, I had the bright idea of launching my business in Nasugbu, Batangas, my hometown. I sent an SMS to my brother and by afternoon of the same day, we were talking to a host school in Nasugbu.
I felt as if I had won the lotto when Adelaido A. Bayot Memorial School agreed to host Blessed Teresa Lang-Ed Consultancy for the summer (April and May). I offered speech and writing modules for elementary, high school, and university students.
That’s when I met Rica (a code name to protect the person’s privacy). She was 12 and was going to be in first year high school. She enrolled in essay writing for children, not for high school. Her parents said she was weak in writing.
The author’s tarpaulin ad on the fence of her host school, A. A. Bayot Memorial School, Inc.
I organized one-hour orientation sessions for the public for one week, but only a few students, parents, and guardians showed up. Rica did.
She’s well-groomed and well-mannered, but painfully shy. Her hunched shoulders, downcast eyes, and inaudible voice said it all – she was in dire need of teacher intervention. No, not academic force-feeding. She urgently needed to be mended. What could be her issues? Did I have a right to intrude into her privacy? How could I bridge the chasm between this beautiful child and the outside world?
Because Rica had enrolled in a writing class, I asked her during the orientation session to write a paragraph. She said she didn’t know how. So I told her to write three sentences, instead.
“Sa Ingles po?” Rica asked softly.
“Yes, in English,” I said.
Here’s the first sentence which she wrote right in front of me: “Yesterday ay play a laptap end tagotaguan end ipad. ” (sic)
That’s the exact way she wrote her first sentence. “Tagotaguan” means hide-and-seek. I pointed out to her that ‘ay’ should be ‘I’ and ‘play’ should be ‘played.’ Then I asked her to write another sentence.
This was what she wrote: “Yesterday I played may father laptap and may sisters ipad. ” (sic)
I was relieved that she’s not a hopeless case. She was able to immediately apply what I taught her. I didn’t correct all of her errors in the first sentence because that would have rattled her. In her second sentence, there’s another glaring error, the spelling of ‘my’ as ‘may’.
I decided to ask Rica to read. I had the suspicion that she didn’t read much. I asked her to read a sample essay written by my grandson when he was 10. I was appalled because not only was she a non-writer, she was also a non-reader! My suspicion was right and it made me more miserable.
My sister-in-law, also a teacher, was in the room because she had been helping me with admin matters. She had been listening and watching at the back. Moved with maternal and teacher instincts, she pulled out a big book and asked Rica to read it instead. Perhaps, my grandson’s essay was too complicated.
My sister-in-law and I held the big book for Rica to read. She still stumbled on every word. But she was able to repeat every word we said aloud for her. It gave me the insight that the spoken word was the key to Rica’s dark world of illiteracy.
So I advised Rica’s parents to enroll her in the speech and drama module, beginner level. The class was composed of kids aged 5 ½ to 8. There was a 7-year old girl who was being babysat by her 11-year old sister. She was good company for Rica. At least, there were two of them big girls in class.
I briefed the facilitator of this beginner level speech class about Rica. Let’s call the facilitator Caridad. She was empathetic and earnestly concerned. During Rica’s first session with the speech class, the lesson was on the /th/ sound. There were word drills, phrase drills, sentence drills, and then there was a two-paragraph story entitled, “The Night Bath.”
To my amazement and Caridad’s, Rica was able to read the short story!
What strategy did Caridad employ? Knowing that Rica was a good listener, Caridad always called her last. To support Rica in reading the drills aloud by herself, Caridad moved close to Rica and, when needed, whispered the words to her. Caridad asked the other children to project their voice, but not Rica. It would have been too stressful.
Reading words, phrases, and sentences was easy. But reading the two-paragraph story was an absolute challenge. Would Rica be able to do it? Yes, slowly but fluently. She didn’t stop in the middle of a word. She didn’t get stuck. She just read slowly, but surely like a new bicycle rider.
Did she memorize the words as she heard them? I don’t know. I’m a frustrated learner of Mandarin, French, German, Russian, and Japanese. I could never have done what Rica just did.
Afterwards, the children did a role play and Rica took part awkwardly and hesitantly. I coached her group during rehearsals. It gave me the impression that unlike ordinary kids who sing and dance without any cares, Rica had been muffled and crippled by criticism, perhaps? By inattention in a large class of 60 pupils in a public school? By neglect at home? Please take note that Rica has access to a laptop and an i-Pad. So the problem is not material want.
I handled the essay writing module for children. This was the first module which Rica enrolled. I designed a differentiated lesson for her of course.
There were two honor students in class who were going to be in grade six. They knew how to write an essay in the sense of putting together sentences into paragraphs and piling paragraphs upon paragraphs. But they had problems with lack of clarity, inadequate content, lack of focus and organization, broken grammar, and atrocious spelling. Rica was not alone after all.
I realized that my two honor students were able to write decent essays only with much intervention from me. They were responsive to my comments and didn’t mind doing multiple drafts.
But whenever I asked them to write on another topic, their first draft would have the same problems: lack of clarity, inadequate content, lack of focus and organization, broken grammar, and atrocious spelling.
For example, “chicken pox” was spelled as “tsikenpaks.” “Ferris wheel” was spelled as “periswil.”
One of the visions of Blessed Teresa Language and Education Consultancy Services is “language fluency for communication and empowerment.” Thus, I asked myself how I could empower those children so they could succeed in mainstream school. To be continued…