Voice – not which that comes out thru the mouth, but that in writing.
“Voice is the writer’s presence in a piece of writing” as Tom Romano defines it in his article The Power of Voice published in Education Leadership Oct 2004 Vol 62 No.2 Pg 20-23.
“Voice is the key to helping our students develop into writers. We must give them opportunities to hear their own written voices and the written voices of others�their peers, their teachers, and the best authors.”
Chanced upon this article from the article Voice in weblogs by Anne Davis.
While reflecting on our HPINIT project, we discussed about blog allowing for authentic writing for an audience, thereby bringing about motivation. As students begin to realise what they wrote are read by someone else, and when this presence is felt when comments appeared, “They cannot believe someone cares about what they wrote. This begins the process of having their writing validated. It’s a good feeling. Students start to see a purpose for reading and writing. This usually motivates them to write more and they begin to care about improving their writing……The anticipation of opening that weblog and hoping to have a response is exciting.”
Well, so much for the common agreement on the power of blogs. what our students currently lack and needs cultivation is perhaps a reading habit *hmm*