The student responses here have insight for you about both mechanics and writing which the students use in tandem. Their feedback is thrilling because it includes statements from students who are learning-disabled, or special-education, as well as students designated as advanced-placement and gifted-and-talented. One student said, "I've been struggling with this grammar for a week!! The colors made it all make sense." A week! Adults have struggled for years!
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Reflections from
Salt Lake City, Utah
Fall Semester, 1998
1) When I wrote this I put my self like I was coloring it in my head while I was typing this paper. I feel like this really helped me with my writing skills and I feel like this has really helped me with a lot of stuff... I really enjoyed doing this. It made me use the writing sample while I typed this paper. It kind of helped me to understand it a lot more.... I really liked my writing a lot and this made me understand this a little bit more than when I was totally confused.
2) I think writing in different colors is challenging to some people but it is very challenging to me. I think it is a lot of fun in a way just because you're learning something completely new. I think it helps us to understand our own language better and gives us a different perspective on it. Sometimes it can get really confusing but when you finally understand it you feel like you have accomplished something.
3) Analyzing the paper I wrote on asthma: I have realized that I do not write with enough detail. My writing consists mainly of primary image and if I want to make readers understand what is going on better, then I need to put in more details.
In analyzing what I have written I realize that I write to suit what the teachers want. I wrote this paper last year for my English teacher. If I was going to write this paper from scratch for Mrs. Shelstead's class I would have put a lot more pink into it. If I was writing for Mrs. Borne's class I could have left it the way I have it because she likes to write in blue, like I have done in this paper.
4) The color I used the third most was blue, I really don't exactly know why it ended up that way. I didn't want to use any blue at all but without it the poem would not be right. With the little blue that I had, I found myself deleting it and rephrasing it: not all, just some.
The color I used the least amount was pink my favorite color to write in. I wanted to try something new, that's why I used so much orange. I wanted to let my mind expand more. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be, especially with the trigger list right in front of my face. It was very hard but I achieved my goal.
In my poem, it was weird because I was able to see what I needed more of and see what to cut out because it ruined the mood of the poem. From doing this I learned that I wasn't as dumb at this new kind of grammar than I thought I was, I finally realized while I was highlighting my paper pretty much without even thinking. So through this whole term thinking that I wasn't learning anything I was actually learning a lot. I also think that if I would have actually come to class with a good attitude I would have realized it along time ago, and I know I would be getting a better grade.
5) In my writing I have a lot of blue. I don't write in a lot of pink or green at all. My writing is very to the point and simple. My sentences don't have a lot of detail. They are just mainly subject-verb. When I write, I use a lot of detail in describing things but in a simple way.
When I write I don't use a lot of green. Green has a lot to do with action and verbness and I don't use a lot of that. Even when I am describing something with a lot of action, a battle scene, or whatever, I will use a little bit of green but not a lot...
I think that if I would include more pink and green, it would clarify my writing more and give it more detail. I used to think that my writing style was great and I loved it. Now I know more about sentence structure and styles of writing. I don't think my writing is so hot anymore. People who don't know about The Exact Word are missing out. They will never know how they write and why. They are missing out on making their writing better than it is. When people read my writings they might now know that there is stuff missing. When you know about The Exact Word you can see that I am missing a lot of important detail and structure.
6) I have noticed that in my writing I usually begin my sentences in blue. And at the first paragraph of my paper I notice that I put more of all my colors. Toward the end of my paper I can see that I have put lots of Blue and Orange. In most of writing I use very little green and pink. I think my writing would make more sense to whoever was reading it, if I included more pink and orange. I think in my writing I shouldn't ramble so much, I should make it more interesting, and fun to read and not use so much blue. It would sound a lot better if I didn't use so much blue. And right now I'm doing what I just said I didn't want to do, I'm rambling. I think it's good to use more of all the colors of an opening paragraph, so I'm not going to change much of that.
To revise this story I would probably add more orange to get rid of some of the blue. In doing this I would make the story more interesting and appealing to the reader. Taking away some of the blue allows the story to be less fact stating and like a newspaper, while adding orange will allow for more place and time detail.
7) When I was rewriting my sample I changed a lot of the begging words in each sentence. I took out the meaningless words that don't do much to my writings. This made it a lot easier to read it, making it much smoother sounding. I also changed places with some information. I did this in hopes of making it sound a little more interesting by not putting information in the wrong spot, or sound repetitious. I ended up starting over on the last paragraph making it sound more like an ending, rather than a paragraph that sounds like there should be more in it.
8) My next most common color is pink. I found this unusual because in my previous writing samples that I have colored there was hardly any pink. I came up with two different reasons for this. The first one I hope isn't true, however it is a possibility. That is that when I colored it I didn't color it accurately, or I didn't have the same knowledge and understanding as I do now. The second, which I think is the real reason, is that my writing style has changed. I think it changed for two reasons. The first is that as we have studied the exact word, I found a style that I like that sort of "meshes", if you will, well together. The other reason is the type of paper that it is. This paper was mostly memories of past and included a lot of action words in describing the science experiments that happened. Speaking of the action words, that brings up the next color, green... Even though I don't use it very often, I think it makes it more fun and easy to read with words like stunned, smoking, and bubbling. Green creates very vivid images for the reader.
9) The styles of my writings vary a lot from paper to paper. If I were writing a paper on what kind of threads my socks are made of that would be a very informational paper. In that paper there would be a lot of blue coloring. If I were writing a paper about a carnival scene, there would probably be a lot of detail. Orange would be very prominent in that paper because of all the details of the different colors, clowns and all the performers.
After fully analyzing my writing I have concluded that I write more to one color depending on the type of writing. In this particular writing I wrote mainly in blue because of the factual prominence in this paper.
10) The conditional triggers I used the most were the words "who" and "that". I found that those two words were almost at the beginning of my conditional trigger sentences about every time I used one. The background triggers I used the most were "about" and "of".
11) I have noticed the author [of a literary writing] writes similar to me. I like stories that hold you in suspense. The author uses a lot of orange like me, and hardly any pink. He doesn't use very much green. I think I use more green than him. I use more blue than him.
12) [Richard] Bach's writing pattern is similar to mine. That is probably why I like him so much, he has a good blend of every color and his words flow nicely. I'm not a very good writer but I do get right to the point. That is what Richard Bach does so well and that is why so many people like his writing.
13) What I found in writing my first copy of the paper I did was that I used a lot of orange, or background detail. BD tells us the where and when of a story. BD worked very well for my paper because I believe that every good paper needs these things to be included in order to more fully understand what is taking place. However, I wanted to set a different kind of mood for my paper. I noticed that blue, or the primary image, gives us the meat of the sentence and can also be used to tell the where and when a story takes place.
I wanted to create a different kind of mood for my story than the original, since it is about somebody's death. I wanted to create a kind of cold mood, like I was telling a tragedy and not a driver's ed. story about how we need to look more carefully before crossing the streets in our cars and that we also need to wear our seat belts. Yes, these things are important but I didn't want that to be the focus of my story.
I think that I did a fairly good job of changing the mood of the story by adding more blue.
14) I have found out in my writing sample that I am using too many background triggers and equalizing triggers and not enough conditional and primary triggers. I want my paper to be less boring: I have too many facts. I think that I need to decrease the size of the paper and increase interesting Ideas, they are usually in Conditional triggers. I also want to really decrease the amount of background triggers in my writing. I don't need to use so many "of"s and "to"s. I generally think my writing is quite good except for a few grammar and punctuation errors. I hope in the future to become an excellent writer with precise punctuation and grammar. I like using conditional triggers even though I don't use them very much....
Reflections from Salt Lake City School District
1) I have learned so much more about grammar using the colors. Infinitives, participle phrases, and other big names meant nothing to me, and only confused me more. Using colors opened up a whole new part of English to me. It is simple, straightforward, and actually interesting. I think I am more of a visual learner because seeing the colors made so much sense. I can pick out what colors I need more of. Rearranging the colors is easy to do also.
2) I found that for me, learning the colors was learning WHY: why certain writing styles appeal to me, why others bore me out of my mind. Why someone is writing a certain way (whether he or she thinks in direct blue, with lots of elaborate orange, etc.) has never been so clear. Traditional grammar is much more focused on how sentences are formed and how the minute technicalities fit together. My color sheets are some of the few school-related handouts that I will keep and refer to later on. The color system seems like a much more modern way of thinking. There is more room for expansion and deviation.
3) Pink; I don’t know if anything else helped me but pink did. If I didn’t know my dependent clauses before I know them now. Never before have I thought about how much the condition adds to the sentence. Now I see pink when I read, I don’t see blue or green, only pink. I’ve been lacking pink in my writing for so long, so thanks for the pink.
4) Learning this "color grammar" has helped me to look at my own papers and look at how much of the same color I use. After coloring a piece of writing, I can tell how the author thinks, acts, and responds to situations by noticing the extensive amounts of one color he uses. By using just one color or mainly blue, there are no details, actions, or prepositional phrases. These types of papers become boring to read and I often lose interest in them. When, in the past, teachers have tried to teach grammar and sentence structure, I don’t remember the ideas for more than 2 months – max! I think that I’ll always remember the coloring and distinguish grammatical phrases. I believe that I’ll be forever grateful.
5) Using the colors has helped me see what I need in my writing. I can see where I need more details or where I need a clearer main idea. I find myself looking at things and saying, "That’s green!" or "That’s pink!" It has also helped me to learn grammar in a way that I can understand. Strange words don’t make any sense to me, but I can understand "Primary Image" and "Process Detail." Now that I understand how things work, the big words don’t seem as scary. I can move on in grammar and not get completely lost.
6) This has given me a new awareness of the structure of the English language and how I use it. When I wrote my last English paper I thought about the colors I use most. Awareness of colors has helped me stop using the passive voice – something I was never aware of before. I loved hearing about how the English language is Primary Images with things added or nested.
7) I’m not someone who gets English. By nature, I think numbers. By doing this, I don’t have to worry about listening to the teacher go off on grammar words I don’t know. I can just look at the paper and see what I need more of and where it needs to go. I can also organize my main ideas to structure my paper on, work around, etc.
I’m also a lazy person and wouldn’t plan on spending free time memorizing this & that about grammar. 4 colors – quick, easy. Thanks.
8) I feel that, by using what I have learned coloring, I can manipulate my writing in order to make it more clear and interesting.... When I Write, I am in control because I know how to make what I want to say clear; I make it "blue."
Before I learned the coloring process, I had absolutely no grasp for grammar. Now I feel like I can function in a class when the teacher starts talking about it.
9) A paper is a lot more interesting when you use more green and pink. But what I learned most was what the actual clauses and gerunds were. In my other English classes teachers would go off on parts of speech and sentence structure but I didn’t know what they were talking about. The colors have made it more clear and now I know what paragraph/sentence structure is.
10) By coloring, I have learned more about analyzing the kind of writing I use, or need to use, for varied situations. I have gotten to the point, for the first time in my life, where I can read sentences and make connections and divisions between the different words/phrases. I hope I can continue to use what I’ve learned to help me revise my writing. I think I will be able to color certain paragraphs that are going to give me trouble in order to visualize what my trouble is. I am not a grammar person but after a few weeks of coloring I think I’m finally starting to get it.
11) By learning the color system I have become so much more observant about my writing style. It has made me aware of the patterns I use frequently, and given me a simple solution to fix my problems. I have realized that writing is not just scribbling words down on paper, but about creating patterns and consciously devising a method for writing.
I feel as if I have just focused my eyes on one of those magic eyes. I understand grammar! Thank you! Writing is so much easier now that I understand where I am going and the tools I can use.
12) In playing with colored grammar, I have learned
to differentiate between strong, descriptive language and boring, straightforward language. Coloring passages and papers of mine makes me see and understand exactly what is being said. When I colored a recent paper of mine, I realized that I had an explosion of pink and orange, but green hardly ever showed up. I have noticed my structure in writing change when I think of my papers in terms of colors. Grammar and structure have crystallized in my language and understanding.
13) I never knew that you could learn to be a good writer. When I’m really concentrating on my writing I find myself coloring in my mind, and trying to switch them around. I had never really learned anything about grammar before, and now I feel like I know and understand a lot more, even though I don’t know how to do it exactly on my own.
14) I learned that sometimes the same colors are found next to each other more often than others.... I learned also that when I want to say something but it doesn’t flow with my piece or say exactly what I want it to, then I can remember the colors and try to flip my sentence and then I can usually eventually get on my paper what I really want. I also learned that if I color my own writing, such as a rough draft, then if I have one dominant color and do some flipping my piece is always better. I also learned that grammar doesn’t need to be as difficult as most of my teachers had made it. Now I think that I can finally say that I know some grammar.
15) I discovered that because I had a knowledge of the different colors, I noticed the formations of sentences more. I found myself trying to create more interesting green sentences. Even when I was reading book I would think "oh, that’s orange," or whatever. Colors helped me figure out why sentences are how they are – structure, form, etc. This helped me to arrange and to change sentences around. If I found a boring or straight-forward sentence, I knew how to rearrange it to make it more interesting. I really can say I understand grammar. I can form a sentence that is structured the way I want it to. Now I know how to show with details, and not just tell something.
16) Now when I write I think about what I am putting down on the paper. I realized how my writing was very simple, how I like to elaborate it and make it more complex. I don’t just write one draft. I write many and color my drafts so I can revise. The structure has helped me so much.
17) The coloring assignments have really made me look at writing as more than just words on a page. I have grown to love orange & green, & am more conscious of it now in my own writing. I try to use it more now. I have learned many basic fundamentals of grammar which have helped me understand language more. If we had more time, I would like to learn more about how to apply the colors to my own writing to change it around.
18) I enjoyed doing this because it made me understand the structure of sentences better. I never realized how important the organization and structure were to the meaning of the sentence. I improved my writing because I now know how to.
19) The placement of words can make or break a description.... The English language is a lot more complex than I thought.
20) Now I can explore how others write, and adapt my writing to new styles.
21) I learned how to make my writing more varied and interesting. The grammar that I had learned and understood now works together instead of just being a bunch of gobbledygook.
22) It’s changed my idea of absolutely hating grammar and structure to seeing how it can change the way I write.
P.S. They should make a computer program that colors your writing for you.
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