Week 4 post

Two strokes for every poke.

That was the turn of phrase I was taught when I was first promoted to foreman of my old painting crew. The idea was that whenever I was to reprimand a worker for shoddy work or blatant mistakes left unfixed, I was to precede the conversation with two things that the painter did well.

For instance, "You did a great job cutting around those windows and masking off the granite, but the door trim you spent an hour on looks like shit."

In essence, this was a practice of praise for the sake of praise so that a worker didn't get too down on themselves and lower their production rate. The fact of the matter is that it comes across as contrived and forced. Nobody enjoys hearing exclusively about thier mistakes, but meaningless praise does nothing to soften the blow, in my opinion. Still, I do think that it is crucial that individuals hear authentic praise where and when it is due to them.

When applied to writing, I think that this is especially important. For whatever reason (I haven't given it quite enough thought yet to pinpoint the reason), many people take their writing projects very seriously and react to them very personally. Even in the most technical of expository assignments completely void of intimacy, it can be very easy for a writer to take personal offense to criticism or excessive revision suggestions. For this reason, I think that it is ultimately important to find good things about any peice of writing, as suggested in the Daiker reading. However, I think that Daiker goes just a bit overboard with this. Praise should not be given for its own sake, as suggested by Daiker "...but no one applauded the effective use of appositive adjectives as modifiers..." (Daiker, 363). I agreed with much of what this author had to say, but... come on.

At the same time, Daiker continues on to suggest that teachers are trained to spot comma splices, and very seldomly give praise for stepping outside one's boundaries... perhaps this is the heart of the problem. Daiker and Spindel should get together and have a beer.