<p>My son is a bright kid but an average writer and needs to improve his writing. He is in 10th grade and we are looking for a summer program or other suggestions. </p>
<p>We are thinking of sending him to the Choate Young Writers Workshop which is a 2-week program over the summer. So many programs are for very gifted writers and this is an "enrichment program". </p>
<p>Anyone have any experience with this program or any other ideas? </p>
<p>Thanks!!</p>
<p>Comfort as a writer takes a long time to develop. That’s why I’m going to suggest this instead: work with someone in your school district. That someone can be next year’s teacher, or a tutor, or a former teacher. But I think it takes a while to develop your voice and generally students don’t establish that in two weeks, especially reluctant writers. You might also want to look into enrichment / remedial classes your son could take that’s offered at the HS.</p>
<p>If money is no object, look at some other prep school summer programs (such as Andover), which are longer than 2 weeks. </p>
<p>Journal writing is one of the best exercises for a reluctant writer. If your S isn’t a reluctant writer, but you just feel he needs to be a better writer, some kind of summer program would likely help. Find courses that involve writing about a topic he’s interested in.</p>
<p>For some kids, it helps to have what’s called a “meaningful audience.” He might loosen up if he were to write a series of letters by computer to someone he loves (grandparent, favorite uncle or aunt…) about what he’s doing each day. If he knows they are actually reading, and not there for conversation, he’ll try harder to describe and explain things. They might also be cued in to write back a quick question or two, not to compliment or deride the writing, but to ask for more details on something they genuinely couldn’t understand. Or respond with an “I Wonder…” which will get him to open up more balloons within his writing. It sounds like this: “Dear Nephew, I sure liked hearing about how you all chose the tree this year. And I wonder, who was in the room when you decorated it, and what did they say? Did your family do anything differently this year to decorate? Were there any surprises or catastrophes?” Or, "I liked the story about you finding the dog outdoors, but I only wondered how you even found out it was out there. "</p>
<p>I think you need to identify what part of the writing needs improving as well as identify if there are any specific deficits in skills or in his acquiring of those skills.</p>
<p>Some generic thoughts.</p>
<p>1) For many people, good writing happens because they are good readers. A lot of writing is instinctual, shaped by all that has been read-to-date. </p>
<p>2) There are many kinds of writing, and some styles may be more natural to your son at this time. Exploit those first. Journalism? Creative non-fiction essays? Reports? Fiction? Poetry? Use the form he readily enjoys to improve the basic skills.</p>
<p>3) Does he even like writing? Are you trying to get a cat to swim in a pool? If so, why? Many kids have lopsided talents that will even out over time on their own.</p>
<p>4) Variation of #3: What are you most concerned about? Are you certain you aren’t pushing some college agenda on your kid? It is one thing to get a kid ready to handle the rigours of college writing, it is another to push development before its time. Writing is often pushed on boys too quickly… it is often the last skill to develop for boys (who are unfairly compared to girls at this time, who are generally advanced compared to boys in this area). I would worry more that your son can hold a logical conversation and verbally defend a position. From there, unless he has a LD wrt writing, he will likely develop the writing skills he needs by applying himself to his HS classes.</p>
<p>Echo thought 1 above - the more you read (good writing, of course) the better writer you become. Doesn’t really matter what he reads as long as it is decently written - magazines about subjects he likes (Sports Illustrated, Skiing, etc), books, the newspaper, CNN.com - just READ. </p>
<p>S is a good writer; he was a voracious reader. I found that writing came naturally to me, probably because I’d read an incredible number of books. When I was in 3rd & 4th grade we lived overseas and had no TV. I literally read the Childcraft Encyclopedia from cover to cover!</p>
<p>The other thing that has helped both my kids to become better writers is peer editing - editing someone else’s paper, and having other kids edit theirs. At first I thought this was just the h.s. English teacher trying to get out of doing some of her own work. But S and his friends made it a game, to see who could tear the other’s paper apart the most. Of course, they learned to look for ANYTHING that could be changed to improve the writing, and developed a defensive strategy of re-reading their own work with a critical eye before giving it to each other to read. S swears this helped him improve his writing more than anything else he did in h.s. (He had a 770 on the CW section of the SAT, BTW)</p>
<p>Many thanks to everyone for your thoughtful replies. I have been mulling them for the last few days and they are all great ideas and insights. It has been an interesting journey for us as he is our oldest. He is not a “natural” at writing but is good enough to get by but it takes a toll on him. He spends so many hours on his writing and starts so much earlier than his friends. And then the results are not what he hoped for. He has been asking us “How did other kids learn to write so much better and faster than me?” “How do people learn to write?” So, it is an issue for him and he doesn’t feel that his grades reflect what he knows. </p>
<p>He attended an elementary school that emphasized reading and being read to. It was quite creative and there was a fair amount of student-lead learning. He did quite a bit of writing but not much of it was structured or had a lot of feedback. I think many kids can absorb how to write from being read to and reading but others need a more direct approach (sort of like the phonics vs whole language debate). I think he is missing things like paragraph construction, flow in the essay and what makes a great topic sentence. </p>
<p>Interestingly, our second son is quite a good writer but also seems to have gaps in his education. He is in middle school and his teacher pointed out that his use of language and creativity is great but the paragraph construction is very weak. And they both went to he same elementary school. </p>
<p>We had hoped his writing would improve with input from his teachers but he seems to need more than just their comments and grading on his paper. And we had hoped that time would also help but he seems to need a bit more than that. </p>
<p>Sorry for the long post - it is a bit complicated, at least to me. There seem to be a lot more programs locally for math, science and reading. So, that lead us to looking for a program elsewhere.</p>
<p>Again, many thanks for your ideas and I will be following up on many of them. </p>
<p>Happy 2010!</p>
<p>So one thing that I was going to recommend is that he conference with his English teachers in school with the hope that one of them is a good enough teacher/writer to be able to explain how to write. </p>
<p>Unfortunately it seems as though he is not lucky enough to have access to that.</p>
<p>One option that might really help him is to read a book on style. It will give him something to think about as he is writing. The one that I was assigned to use this semester (i’m a freshman in college) was [Style:</a> The Basics of Clarity and Grace (3rd Edition)](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Style-Basics-Clarity-Grace-3rd/dp/0205605354/ref=dp_ob_title_bk]Style:”>http://www.amazon.com/Style-Basics-Clarity-Grace-3rd/dp/0205605354/ref=dp_ob_title_bk). Its a really small book, but still contains a lot of information. </p>
<p>If your son is looking for a bulkier read, I think my older brother had to use this one: [On</a> Writing Well, 25th Anniversary: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-25th-Anniversary-Nonfiction/dp/0060006641]On”>http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-25th-Anniversary-Nonfiction/dp/0060006641) when he was a freshman at yale. </p>
<p>Another option: if you have some money to spare, is to hire a writing tutor. You can find these locally or on the internet. One such site that I know of where you can do this is ■■■■■■■■■■. </p>
<p>A writing tutor should (ideally) provide your son with a methodology which he can use to go through the entire writing process, from going over ways methods which he might use to structure an argument, to techniques that he can use to revise and streamline his essays (my older brother had a job doing this when he was in school, and did this for me when I was applying to colleges last year. As a result, I think I learned more about writing as I wrote my college app essays than I did all semester in the most rigorous writing freshman writing seminar offered at my school). </p>
<p>Overall though, I think the other people here have a point. Unless your son is truly concerned about his writing or is really frustrated by how he compares to his classmates, the best course of action might be to let him pursue things that he might enjoy more. Sure writing is necessary in every subject, and it is a useful skill to have because it helps you structure arguments, but at the same time, you can learn to do that whenever you want. On the other hand, high school is a really great time to explore passions with little to no repercussions. </p>
<p>Speaking from my own experience, I did all sorts of random activities all throughout high school. By senior year I had some results from math research I had done which required me to put together a paper. That and college applications sort of forced me to learn something about how to write when I did. But I did the fun stuff first, and learned about writing only when I had to. I think that this makes sense because writing is a skill, and it only makes sense to learn when you have something to write about.</p>
<p>Sorry for the long post, and happy new year!</p>
<p>snow99- My 10th grade son has the same problem and I am worried about it as well. One reason being he is a voracious reader and does really well in his English class in discussions regarding critical reading but his writing is NOT very good for some reason so it holds him back. His English teacher and I have had a few discussions about it and she is trying to work with him on it this year, as she thinks it is critical. He has never gotten an A in English, although he scored 680 on the CR section of the SAT in 7th grade. I’m hoping he can improve this year as he will need to to make into English Honors next year… where his teacher thinks he belongs based on his reading skills. It is just puzzling to me that he has such a hard time with his writing since he reads SO much.</p>
<p>^With a voracious reader who engages in class discussion/critical thinking well, but doesn’t write effectively, I’d first suggest watching him on the technical side of computer use and word processing. He should be able to type very fast, ideally using his entire hand (not hunt/peck), be swift with his ability to sweep text and move around paragraphs. He needs to be able to type almost as fast as he speaks, then not hesitate to try out his paragraphs with new locations of words/phrases simply due to anticipated slowness or clumsiness on copy/paste moves. Computer programs or classes to increase his keyboarding speed and word processing skills, perhaps over the summer, might play a role. </p>
<p>In Middle School, one of my kids could talk like a logical whirlwind with great word choice, but when it came time to put words to paper, he was, um, boring. We had no writing tutors in our remote rural town. For many evenings, I sat with him and gave him writing prompts. He spoke his answer in a few interesting sentences, and I’d say, “Stop! Write that down.” I had to listen very carefully because he’d muddle a phrase or forget a key word that made it all so interesting when he spoke. Because I had listened, I could and did supply it back to him from my memory. At first I was his scribe, but eventually he scribed his own spoken words. I say “scribe” but we were typing at a screen at the time. We did that over and over with different prompts, a wide variety of stimuli. </p>
<p>I was trying to teach him to listen to the words inside his head. No pre-editing or hesitation. Once seen on paper, they could be edited a bit, or not. After several sessions, which were actually fun for us, something “clicked” for him. A few months later, his writing more resembled his academic conversational ability. It was “in synch” as your son’s l0th grade teacher hopes for your bright son. This is a very dynamic tutoring, possible 1:1. It isn’t what a fine English teacher can do, because s/he’s presented with a complete draft essay, then tries to correct or improve that product. A tutor (or you, if you have the courage) can interact more by chunking his speaking and writing into much smaller bits. </p>
<p>All that was based on when I taught First and Second Grade. I’d often tell my students, “Write it so it sounds like talking.” Or, “say it…good! now write that.” In a few cases, I’d tell them to pretend they were talking on a cellphone to their Auntie (complete with the hand-to-ear) far away, who wasn’t there when it happened. They should tell the story so she could understand it. (That was to get a clear narrative.) They wrote that part down. Then I’d pretend to be the Auntie, read their sentences, “dial” back and ask them for more details and interesting features to get them to embellish their story beyond the straight narrative. I guess I was using dialogue and interactive conversation to inform their writing style. Nobody taught me this, I just made it up. I suppose it exists in pedagogical textbooks but, after a while, I became too busy teaching to read textbooks 
Perhaps some of these ideas translate for your older kids? </p>
<p>Sometimes they need to loosen up becayse there’s something in their brain processing that is bumping into a fence somewhere between their head and their fingertips. Especially with voracious readers (like my own kids and yours), they need to develop their own voice inside their own head, HEAR it, and have no technical impediments to putting it onto paper for their own review. </p>
<p>Good writers tap into their own “writer’s voice” as it’s called. My homemade methods were attempts to
elicit that from my own nurtured children, as well as my less fortunate students in a rural poverty school.</p>
<p>Being a great reader is extremely helpful to writing, so you are wise to consider your son’s reading habits an asset. I once heard a radio interview with the President of Bard College, where the teaching of writing is a prized strength. He said the writing faculty agreed to eliminate much of the “peer review” time in college classrooms for their creative writing courses. They believe the way to write very well is to READ great writers, break apart why those pieces work. Then they have a model. They felt that students bringing in student-level work, with other students tearing it apart to “improve,” kept everyone at a low level. The students were good at peer review, but the faculty felt this was not optimal use of college classroom time. After their changeover, half of the assignments for Bard Writing courses were devoted to reading and discussing examples of great writing. </p>
<p>I thought often about this interview. I know that, after we moved to this nice suburb, my next younger son’s quality public H.S. school English teachers were all about writing/correcting/re-writing their students’ compositions. It’s not enough. Students needed to read outside of school assignments to search out a wide variety of fine writers for models. The high school English classes themselves assigned a few novels per semester to discuss endlessly, chapter by chapter. Too few authors, too few exposures to styles. An independent reading habit was essential, even with a fine high school. </p>
<p>Your son may be able to identify things in the great works he reads, tear them apart and tell you why they work as writing. Short stories might be easier to manage for this than whole novels. Break apart the model. Talk about it as you drive. Don’t call it tutoring. </p>
<p>I hope you find some of these tips helpful. Best wishes.</p>
<p>One thing to consider is that he may just need better writing discipline. It might be helpful for him to practice writing following a strict format and then once he is comfortable organizing his thoughts that way, he can become more creative. </p>
<p>At my high school, they took kids from all over the city and from all different school programs and taught us all to write the same way. In 9th grade, they made us practice the “chunk method” over and over until we could structure an essay with our eyes closed. Chunk method is basically constructing paragraphs out of two, three sentence chunks. You begin with two brief intro sentences, then thesis. Then you start paragraph one with a topic sentence, a sentence of concrete detail (usually a quote from the text) and two commentary sentences. Then you give another “chunk” of one sentence of concrete detail, two of commentary. That’s one paragraph. Repeat for however many paragraphs are required and finish with a conclusion that is NOT a summary of what has gone before, but rather leads the reader forward to ask more quesitons about the text. </p>
<p>It was really stifling doing this at first, I was a good writer, but had no clue how to write analytical essays that were college prep or college level. Once we were good at chunk essays, we we were allowed to deviate from the format, but for the whole first year we had to stick to it exclusively. I found though, that in college, hwile I no longer used the format strictly, I would return to it when I got stuck and couldn’t figure out how to put my argument down on paper. Having a rigid framework to build off of helped me be a more creative writer, with greater security that I would have osmething to fall back on when talent and eloquence failed</p>
<p>What kind of writing does your son find frustrating? The 5 paragraph essay format was very difficult for my D, who is now a creative writing major in college. She is a very gifted writer but could never muster a decent essay. She had tons of very good help from her teachers but it was really like trying to train a dog to speak. </p>
<p>She took creative writing workshops over summers when she was in HS, and she loved them. If there is one in your area for teenagers, I highly recommend it. The ones she took were mostly writing “games”, based on fun, interesting prompts, and it helped even the most reluctant kids to loosen up and just go with it. It might help your son especially if he is feeling stuck.</p>
<p>
Every time I hear something like this I get a little angry. If the teacher recognizes this, then it is the teacher’s responsibility to fix it. That is what they are getting paid for. My DW is a principal and insists that her teachers take responsibility for improving a student’s performance. They have a very successful school. Students come to them often quite behind and leave them well ahead of grade-level. </p>
<p>I have found these books to be very helpful: Analyze, Organize, Write by Arthur Whimbey and Elizabeth Lynn Jenkins </p>
<p>and </p>
<p>Analytical Writing and Thinking: Facing the Tests by Myra Linden and Arthur Whimbey</p>
<p>I’ve never heard of a writer actually using one of those textbook style monstrosities. They’re a relic of 8th grade English teachers.</p>
<p>On Writing by Stephen King isn’t bad, but it talks more about style and inspiration. The only way to truly improve writing ability is to read. If your son doesn’t like reading, he’ll probably never become a skilled writer. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.</p>
<p>Suggest that he read more, but I would caution you away from anything more firm than a suggestion. Many parents have a tendency to control and micromanage their children and do them a great disservice.</p>