Motivation 486

The chapter by Donald Graves, An Examination of the Writing Processes of Seven-Year-Old Children, was very interesting to me. First of all, I really enjoy case studies. I'm not sure why, but after I took adolescent psychology I just love case studies! This one was interesting because of the results. It was no surprise to me that there was a difference in the processes between sexes. I've seen that many times before and will see it many times again. The part that surprised me most was the result on motivation. In the Learning Environment section, under number 2, it says, " Results of writing done in the informal environments demonstrate that children do not need motivation or supervision in order to write" (LE 31) . I am happy to see that result. There are always questions like, "well, if you don't force a topic, or a type of writing on students, what will be there motivation to write?" I have always believed that there is motivation to write without being forced to. It is very interesting as to why the students write, but I think that answer would be different for each student. Some students may not have motivation to write, but I still think that depends on what people consider writing. Teachers may think that they have a student completely unmotivated when it comes to writing, but that student may love to "write" his or her own way. For example, my four year old nephew does not know how to write because he is four. I think that he still "writes" in his own way. He organizes things so that he can tell a story later. He will put certain cars (like a porshe) in certain spots, on different colored paper (yellow), then later at dinner he will tell us a story about how the guy in the porshe was driving one day on a long road but couldn't see because the sun was in his eyes, and so on. Is that writing? I kind of think that it is. He is not in school and is not asked to tell stories or to do the things he does, but he sure is motivated to do them.
Anyway, the whole subject on motivation in writing, process, whatever is so amazing to me. There are a lot of avenues to look down in this subject. I guess my point is that we as teachers do not need to do as much forcing or assigning as we do now. I know that teachers don't have the freedom that we all want, but I think we need to give the students a lot more credit then we do. They are capable for much more than people may think. We just need to find a way to bring it out, without forcing it out.