Where and When Did I Find the Word?: 'Good Writers' came from Mason, Wood, and Valasa's article, "Teaching Low Achieving Students to Self-Regulate Persuasive Quick Write Responses." In context, 'good writers' came about when it stated, "... good writers will focus on planning, revising, monitoring, evaluating, and regulating their writing..." (p. 304).
What It Means: A 'good write' consists of everything the article already stated about being able to plan, revise, monitor, evaluate, and regulate their writing throughout the writing process.
Level of Familiarity: I am familiar with the term 'good writer' because it is what all teachers try to help their students to become. Teachers have always had tricks and strategies to help students become 'good writers' but I cannot think of any that I learned in school, only strategies I have learned as a future teacher to help those struggling writers. I guess I would say I am familiar with being a 'good writer' through experience but am knowledgeable of the process and through my undergraduate work.
Do I Want to Know This Word Well and Why?: I feel that I am not really confident in being able to recognize automatically a student who is a good writer from one who is a poor writer. It does show in the students final product in their writing if they can clearly produce and express their thoughts clearly but during the actual process, it is hard to tell. When students are "revising" their work in the classroom and rereading their work, you cannot necessarily see what they are thinking during the process or if it is effective or not.
Do I Think Others Should Know This Word... If so Who and Why?: I definitely believe that all teachers and students should know what a 'good writers' process is and also be familiar with the quality of a 'good writers' work. I feel that the more good examples of writings a teacher provides to students, the more likely he or she will try to recreate work similar to it. I feel that it is obvious that all teachers should be aware of what a 'good writer's' work looks like and the process of getting their to be able to teach it to students.
Benedek-Wood, Elizabeth, Mason, Linda H., & Valasa, Lauren (2009). "Teaching low-
achieving students to self-regulate persuasive quick write responses." Jouranl of
Adolecent & Adult Literacy 53(4): 303-312.
This was an interesting term to focus in on Jessica. I agree it is important to try and unpack what we mean by "good" when identifying a good writer. Do you think Kucer would agree that these authors focus on sufficient descriptors/abilities when identifying a good writer? He might actually want the authors to include additional terms as well.
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