RESPONSE:

After reading Muriel's post, I started thinking about how I learned to write. I only had one speech class, and that was in eighth grade, so I know it wasn't then. In high school, we wrote many "themes," but I don't remember any instruction given other than an assigned topic.

I think I learned to write by being an avid reader. I was always reading so always had a story in my head. My favorite essays to write were expository, ones where I could describe in detail a personal experience. Summers at our lake cabin lived on my paper.

I tried to create the vividness of scenes from my favorite books. I think this is also the reason that I strongly advocate the use of mentor books for writing instruction. I wanted to describe and set scenes the way my favorite authors did. And I think it's an effective way for students to internalize qualities of good writing. By examining how authors/professional writers put together effective sentences and paragraphs, their own writing will improve.

You can use mentor pieces for any type of writing. For example, I love Gloria Anzaldua's essay on "How to Tame a Wild Tongue," which begins with a trip to the dentist.

"We're going to have to control your tongue," the dentist says, pulling out all the metal from my mouth. Silver bits plop and tinkle into the basin. My mouth is a
motherlode.·
The dentist is cleaning out my roots. I get a whiff of the stench when I gasp.
 "I can't cap that tooth yet, you're still draining," he says."We're going to have to do something about your tongue," I hear the anger rising in his voice. My tongue keeps pushing out the wads of cotton, pushing back the drills, the long thin needles. 
"I've never seen anything as strong or as stubborn," he says. And I think, how do you tame a wild tongue...

To use this as a mentor text, have students draft experiences of their own, and then give them copies of Anzaldua's piece and have them look at the length of the sentences and how she uses quotes, and how descriptive words like "plop" and "tinkle" add to a visual picture for the reader. After examining the essay, they would return to their own writing and adapt some of her style to their own piece. For older students, the entire essay may provide a model for how to take an experience and use it as a metaphor for something bigger in life.

If you are doing a whole class novel, perhaps after examining the style of the writer, students could try some writing on their own using that same style. If you haven't tried it yourself, I think you will be surprised at how effective this process is in improving the quality of a piece of writing. Let us know what you discover...