Writing Puzzles - "Premonition" or "The Illusionist" or "A Beautiful Mind" or "Deja Vu"

In all the years that I have been grading term papers, I have graded very few that have been written well. I think the school systems could do a better job of teaching these skills because being able to write is an important skill. With texting, emails, blogs, and every type of social media, writing is key in all of them. Unfortunately, abbreviations and shortcuts, improper punctuation and capitalization are norms for these mediums. I see these norms transferred to scholarly papers all the time. Sure, the new norms for the internet mediums are handy, but there must be a compartmentalization of writing techniques.

I've asked the few students who have written an excellent paper where they learned to write, and the following are their responses:  my dad or mom or sister-in-law was an English major (although sometimes being an English major has produced quite opposite results), I took AP English classes, I read a lot, I've learned a foreign language.

My own background in writing was fueled by my mother who is an English buff. In my 7th and 8th grades, I had a teacher by the name of Ms. Gorsline, who required that I write a 200-word composition each week. Doing that one year was bad enough, but when I had her for a second year, I was doomed. I didn't do well in the class. It wasn't until she explained how to format the compositions that my grades improved slightly, but still, there was no instruction in grammar that I recall. At one point into the second year, I had had my fill of compositions, and could not write one more, so my mother decided to write it for me that week. Ms. Gorsline usually gave us a topic, but once a quarter we were allowed to choose our own. This was the week we could choose. My mother chose to write about the wind storm we had just endured, which was a common occurrence in Boulder, Colorado. The title of the paper was "January 7th." When Ms. Gorsline returned the papers, she read the titles of each one, and her voice inflected the mystery of that date. My mother got an "A," and my composition grades for the rest of the year, even though it was me writing in my usual 8th grade hand, were markedly improved. (And that is a subject for another blog.)

My mother continued to encourage me to learn English grammar, and in fact, in my senior year of high school, by her suggestion, I took an independent study English grammar course (the course was on the curriculum list for English), attended by only me and taught by an occasional instructor who checked in on me. I basically studied a textbook. It's amazing I learned anything, especially since the textbook wasn't well written. I don't remember anything I learned from it.  I learned punctuation from my shorthand book, which presented a rule at the end of each chapter. I studied another small grammar book after I graduated from high school. I also studied Spanish from 3rd grade through my freshman year of college. It wasn't until my freshman year that I had an excellent textbook that, in a very organized manner, presented the Spanish language grammar rules. I still own the book.

I've read a fair amount in my life, which has only helped my writing because copying the mechanics is a viable way to learn, but skill in writing doesn't come automatically at a certain age. In fact, it's not until after high school that young people start to have thoughts worth thinking and opinions of their own. So, I've learned I need to give a pass to many young people who are right out of high school. Still, they need to learn the mechanics sometime.

The listed movies, if viewed, will give an audience a challenge in deciphering as the mystery unfolds.

Today, I like to write almost more than I like to converse. I find writing to be a catharsis to the problems I face and to the issues in this world. It helps get things off my mind. I imagine it as a great puzzle - putting the pieces (words) together to make a beautiful picture (story). Oh, I like doing puzzles, too.