SentenceMakers.com Mission Statement

Mission Statement for SentenceMakers.com

The mission of the SentenceMakers.com website is to provide decision based editing strategies that will help students edit the writing they do in college. Below is the rationale for the workshops found on this website. Please note for the remainder of this document, I use the second person in order to speak directly to students who may use the site.

Here are the guiding principles of decision based editing:

The first guiding principle:

You will not be asked to hunt for errors in your writing. Though you may find some errors to correct in your sentences as you experiment with some of the strategies found on this website, you will never be asked to hunt for errors in your writing. I promise!

I make this promise because I believe editing is much more than finding and correcting errors in our writing. In his book, Breaking the Rules, Edgar Schuster identifies the grammar book that changed all of our lives. It was the book that made error hunting a key feature of editing.

In 1762, a man named Robert Lowth created a book, A Short Introduction to Grammar. At age 12, Lowth entered the Winchester College in England, where he spent sixteen hours a day studying Latin and Greek grammar under these awful conditions: “Either Learn, or Leave, or Be Beaten” (Schuster 9). Given his grim school experience, it was not surprising that his book on grammar focused on rules and correcting errors at all costs.

In his book, Lowth emphasized that to be a good writer one must learn the parts of speech, and more importantly, one must root out all errors (Schuster 8-10). In fact, Lowth defines editing as “The Art of rightly expressing our thoughts by Words” (Lowth qtd.Schuster 11). His book became more than simply a book on grammar; it became a sensation that often led to lasting conservative judgements, applauding those who wrote with absolute correctness and damning those who did not (Schuster 10-11).

Lowth’s book did something else that still impacts writing students to this day. He made it seem like only a select few knew the “real” rules for writing an absolutely correct sentence. By doing this, he separated writers from what they intrinsically knew about communicating their ideas (Schuster 15). As a college writing teacher, I could retire today if I had a nickel for every time a student told me, “I have no idea how to write an essay,” or “I am terrible at editing my own work,” or “Writing has never been my thing.” My own view is that these comments grew out of the long-held deficit model of teaching students to edit by error hunting.

Lowth’s grammar book also set in motion the traditional instruction model most English teachers still use when teaching students to edit their own writing. See if this sounds familiar. A teacher defines a grammar concept or correction on the board or on a handout; then provides an example of this concept or correction; and finally, drills students to practice this concept or correction independently, over and over again (Schuster 15).

If you don’t believe me, think of the last time you were in an English class and your teacher gave you a handout that asked you to do things like underline the subjects and verbs in a sentence. Or maybe you were given a paragraph rigged with mistakes and your job was to find the mistakes and correct them. I recognize these types of handouts because I gave them to students in my own English classes. These types of handouts are all part of Lowth’s complicated grammar instruction legacy: Define a concept, provide examples, drill, or the skills and drills approach to grammar instruction.

Please don’t misunderstand. I realize Robert Lowth was a smart man---a scholar of his times, who most likely believed he was doing good in the world. And, I am in favor of students writing correct sentences. I hope they all achieve that success someday; however, I don’t want this success to come at the expense of their engagement with learning, or their confidence, or their sense of wonder when writing for college. In short, I want grammar instruction to empower students, not debilitate them. (Sorry, Mr. Lowth).

The second guiding principle:

Decision based editing relies a metacognition. Metacognition—or thinking about your thinking---is the cornerstone for decision based editing. Each editing strategy presented on this website will lead you to think about and reflect upon the decisions you make as you write and edit your own sentences.

Research has shown that when students use metacognition to learn something new (like the editing strategies presented on this website), they become more aware of how and what they learn. This self-awareness helps learners recognize their own strengths and weaknesses as they develop a new skill or concept (Chick).

So how does metacognition apply to decision based editing? When you can describe the behind the sentence thinking you have done as a writer, you will be better equipped to recognize when and why a sentence is (or is not) working well for you. Gaining this ability to assess your own strengths and weaknesses will help you expand on what you already know about editing, and it will help you find ways to solve your own editing problems.

The third guiding principle:

Decision based editing inspires catalyst thinking and a new mindset for editing. Each editing strategy presented on this website will ask you to make one small, but deliberate decision to change your sentences. The hope is that one small decision will more than likely cause you to make other editing decisions in your writing. When these other decisions start happening, the real work and play of editing begins.

Here is a good place for me to digress for a moment. The play aspect of the decision based editing concepts found on this website have been partially shaped by my fascination with the maker movement. Makers are people who find joy and satisfaction in building or innovating new ideas into products or information they can share freely with others. Makers have formed a DIY counterculture that challenges the standard ways of thinking, learning and doing business (Dougherty & Conrad XV - XVII). For example, a person selling a handmade quilt on Pinterest is a maker. Some would argue that we are all makers. I would argue that when we build sentences, we are also makers. Let me explain.

I believe if students learn to adopt a maker’s mindset when editing their own writing, then the task of editing will become a much more engaging, empowering, and rewarding for them.

So what does a maker’s mindset look like? In their book, Free to Make: How the Maker Movement Is Changing Our Schools, Our Jobs, and Our Minds, authors Dale Dougherty and Ariane Conrad define the qualities of a maker’s mindset, some of which I list here:

Makers have a sense of wonder and curiosity
They are self-directed learners
They are willing to take risks
They are persistent when faced with frustration or failure
They have a strong sense of agency and believe in their ability to create change in their own world
They are resourceful and willing to share their ideas with others (Dougherty & Conrad 144).

When my students first hear the word editing in my classroom, their faces register fear, frustration, or instant boredom, and I can understand why. I was teaching them what and how I learned to edit when I was a college student years ago. Like my students, I had a less-than-favorable view of editing. Making editing mistakes in college and graduate school threatened grave consequences to my grades, so I would edit my own essays under a dark umbrella of fears---the fear of making mistakes with my punctuation; the fear of misspelling words; or the fear of not knowing if I had actually corrected all of my mistakes (because my final drafts had usually looked pretty good to me). Under this umbrella of fear, it was hard for me to adopt a positive mindset for editing my college essays. I imagine this continues to be true for college students today.

So how can students get out from under this umbrella? I am going to ask you to dream with me for a moment. What if I adjust the qualities of a maker so that they describe college students when they are learning to edit their own writing in an English Composition class? How would doing so alter their view of editing? See for yourself!

Writers have a sense of wonder and curiosity when editing their sentences
They are self-directed learners when editing their sentences
They are willing to take risks when editing their sentences
They are persistent when faced with frustration or failure when editing their sentences
They have a strong sense of agency and believe in their ability to create change in their own writing
They are resourceful and willing to share their ideas with others when editing their sentences

Developing a new mindset takes practice, and time, and a set of guiding principles or beliefs, so let’s start there. All the editing strategies provided on this website are founded on these beliefs about sentences:

Sentences provide an opportunity for student writers to wonder, and play, and be curious about what is possible in their own writing and thinking.

Sentences are tools for learning and taking risks. For if you write a sentence and don’t love it, you can erase it and start over again.
Sentences offer us a chance to push ourselves through the frustration (or failures) of communicating our ideas in writing.
Sentences offer us the opportunity to create change in our world because our ideas shape our thinking and our actions and lead us to making better decisions.
And finally, the hope of every sentence is that it be shared with others someday.

With these beliefs in mind, let’s explore what’s possible when we focus on the decisions we make as we write, revise and edit our sentences. Go ahead. Try some of these editing strategies and become a true sentence maker!

Works Cited

Chick, Nancy. “Metacognition.” Center for Teaching and Learning, Vanderbilt University. 2018.

https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/metacognition/

Dougherty, Dale. Free to Make: How the Maker Movement Is Changing Our Schools, Our

Jobs, and Our Minds. North Atlantic Books, 2016.

Schuster, Edgar. Breaking the Rules: Liberating Writers through Innovative Grammar

Instruction. Heinemann, 2003.