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Can California's students write the right way? Academically speaking, not quite. Several recent studies have called attention to a lack of writing ability. While the majority of students can put pen to paper and produce a five-paragraph essay, educators say their work lacks analysis and too often centers on irrelevant personal experiences. The National Commission on Writing in America's Schools and Colleges released a report, "The Neglected `R': The Need for a Writing Revolution" in April. The report notes that writing has been shortchanged in classrooms and, "American education will never realize its potential as an engine of opportunity and economic growth until a writing revolution puts language and communication in their proper place in the classroom." According to the results of the 2002 National Assessment of Educational Progress in writing, the country's students are scoring about average, but overall have improved only slightly in the past four years. That will likely change soon as students will be forced to showcase their writing skills on standardized tests. Citing a need for strong writing skills across subjects, the College Board announced this year that it will be offering a writing sample on the new SAT in 2005. So far, 112 colleges have adopted the writing portion as a requirement for admission and more than 200 more campuses are expected to approve similar policies. California's students also will have to showcase their composition skills on the state's High School Exit Exam in order to earn a full diploma, beginning with the class of 2006. This is great news for writing proponents, who have watched in recent years as standardized tests focused classroom instruction on reading and math. "In the last five years, there's been a very strong emphasis in California on reading and especially on early reading," says Carol Booth Olson, director of the UC Irvine Writing Project and senior lecturer in the Department of Education. "With that emphasis in reading, writing has been somewhat overshadowed. Not that it hasn't been out there, but as a state priority it's kind of been on the back burner. With all these new reports, the SAT with a writing composition section, and the California High School Exit Exam...there's a resurgence of interest in writing." No doubt, writing is critical to most professions today, driving critical analysis and communication in the workplace. Technology has forced more workers to translate their ideas and analysis into words, either through e-mails, presentations or reports. While not everyone will turn out poetic prose, they must be able to write comprehensible analysis for their companies or even just intelligible e-mails. For instance, Olson says her team is working on writing skills with a group of actuaries who perform statistical analysis. "The decisions of these people, their projections of trends - million-dollar transactions are made on the basis of their decisions," she says. "And people can't understand their e-mails." Take this word and spell it Are we talking misspellings or punctuation problems? While many elementary schools now incorporate keyboarding lessons into computer classes, it takes more than fast fingers to make a good writer. Helping students improve their writing skills can be time consuming, and many public school teachers simply don't have the time to grade dozens of essays each week. Time for grading also has been a key barrier to adding a writing segment to standardized tests. But now technology has made it easier to evaluate students' writing ability. Although still costly and relatively unusual, software used by some Southern California school districts can help youngsters create multiple drafts of the same paper, making improvements to each version. Students may visit websites and submit essays for computerized grading. Much like the spelling or grammar "check" functions in word processing software, these programs take evaluation to the next level and critique writing samples for sentence structure and other areas. Technology also allows major standardized test companies to efficiently score writing samples. Instead of sequestering groups of essay graders in a hotel for one weekend, they can work together in an online environment to grade thousands of essays. The National Commission on Writing has called for lawmakers to extend the federal telecommunications policy to cover financing hardware and software for schools and teacher training. It also encouraged further development of software that will more easily measure student writing skills through standardized assessments. Pen to paper The new focus on testing writing skills coupled with tools to ease the burden of evaluating lengthy assignments will likely prompt teachers to introduce various types of writing skills earlier in students' careers. Educators at the UCI and Inland Area Writing projects have worked with teachers on innovative ways to teach writing for the past three decades. The statewide program, which was the model for the National Writing Project, had its funding reinstated this year despite budget cutbacks and will continue to offer teacher training as well as summer programs for students. UCI's Olson says one need only look at the state's standards for writing to see the various genres and types of writing students should master at increasing levels each year. "Whereas you might have seen at the elementary school more emphasis on kids just writing stories and reports, you will see kids in elementary school learning the art of persuasive writing, for example, in a way we wouldn't have earlier," she says. "In high school, you'll see kids being taught to write reflective essays, persuasive speeches, research papers and technical documents." But teachers, who are already pressed for time during the school day, must be wary of giving students a superficial formula for writing, says Dr. John Briggs, associate professor of English and director of the Inland Area Writing Project at UC Riverside. "When the models are good and the lessons are carefully designed, the schools have a good chance of helping students write better," he says. "There's always a temptation to teach a recipe and I don't think students benefit from that - not just teaching a couple techniques. It's better to read and write a lot than to teach to the test at all. There's no substitute for it." Strong writing skills rather than several formulas will help students with more than test scores. Margaret Eszlinger, an independent college counselor in Orange and director of Counseling at Eastside Christian Schools, says the personal statement or essay that students submit to colleges allows them to differentiate themselves during the competitive college admissions process. They must use words to paint a self-portrait of themselves. "I tell my students it can allow colleges to get a robust flavor of their personality, life situations or challenges, and opportunities they have taken advantage of to prepare themselves for higher education," she says. "As for college admissions, the ability to write is tantamount for acceptance to most quality schools." And once students get into the college of choice, their writing ability must grow with them to ensure their academic success. A recent report stated that college professors rated their students' writing skills as fair to poor on average, compared with high school teachers who rated students' skills fair to good. Defining writing If good writing skills are important, how do you define them? For starters, it's more than just stringing a few sentences together. Educators say all good writers start by reading good writing. "Most research shows students who are good readers also become good writers," Olson says. "They're picking up vocabulary, sentence structure, sentence variety, similes and metaphors. Reading is a great teacher of writing." Good writing also takes practice and training. Good writers must be able to analyze texts and relate personal experiences in a relevant manner. They should include evidence to support their claims or pull references from the work at hand. And they should do it all with style, or "author's craft." "Good writing is a lot more than technical correctness and more than just form," Olson says. "In order to be a good writer, you have to also be a thoughtful reader. At a deeper level, they need to have insights and opinions. What a lot of kids do today is they simply summarize. Their idea of proving to you they understand what they read is to tell you back exactly what happened." And whether students are heading straight to an office, looking to start college or just popping a note in the mail, good writing will help them go farther and get better results. "Regardless whether a student is applying to college, applying for her first job, or writing his first love letter, they should be able to write and write well," Eszlinger says. "Writing is a neglected art and an extremely important educational value." Jennifer Leuer of Yorba Linda is an education reporter. To reach her: leuer.ramus@sbcglobal.net. Writing resources • The National Commission on Writing in America's Schools and Colleges www.writingcommission.org • National Writing Project www.writingproject.org • UC Irvine Writing Project www.gse.uci.edu/uciwp Writing workshop Here is inspiration from the experts on teaching children how to become lifelong writers: "Reading and writing go hand and hand - don't go to bed at night without doing one or the other." "When we give our children the opportunity to write, we then can see in later years the beautiful blend between instinctive and trained writing." - Margaret Eszlinger, an independent college counselor "Writing is something that almost exclusively happens in school because somebody makes you do it. We need to celebrate writing as we do with reading." "If you treat your child like a writer - pretend they're a writer - then they'll start believing in their writing." - Carol Booth Olson, director of the UCI Writing Project • Celebrate your child's writing as you would their artwork. • Display their work on the refrigerator or encourage them to make small books for people as presents. • Encourage very young children to dictate letters and stories to you. • Compile their dictations and "publish" them with interesting typefaces using the computer. • Start a family newspaper, which you distribute to grandparents. • Encourage the keeping of a daily reading journal into which interesting passages are copied, along with ideas and observations from the owner of the journal. • Turn off the television and read as a family. • Have a home library full of interesting books. • Buy them at book fairs, at used bookstores, from online merchants or on trips to the bookstore. • Good writers learn by reading good writing. • Visit the public library, not just to browse the books but to take advantage of storytimes and other activities. • Don't overly correct their writing. • Instead, try to focus more on the message that they are trying to convey in their work. • Keep children's' writing skills sharp by having them keep a journal of their day's activities and thoughts. |
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