Writing cannot be taught explicitly

Parents Forum
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<p>I would like to bounce some ideas off you parents, and because it feels better to elucidate my thoughts. I was recently rummaging through some old boxes and came across several of my 8th grade short stories and essays that confirmed my suspicions: my writing had deteriorated all throughout high school. </p>

<p>Back in middle school, exploration was emphasized and each assignment was fresh and exciting. My naive eagerness to "prove something" may have played a large role as well. But certainly, I wrote with depth, conviction - maybe not maturity - but always with liveliness, an almost tangible voice that naturally begot the complexity and variety of syntax and diction. (Yeah yeah, roll your eyes, but my teachers would often jokingly accuse me of plagiarism back then).</p>

<p>Moving on to a high school in a different state, both my English class and my attitude changed, and I'm almost certain the two were interrelated. The stale 5-paragraph theme proceeded to dominate my writing landscape for the next 4 years. It sounds almost unbelievable, now that I look back on it, to write the same introduction, 3 body paragraphs, and conclusion for four straight years (they made up about 80% of our writing); indeed it sounds soul-crushing, and it was. It hurts to recollect how I settled in freshman year, content with the deevolution of my writing style. Sure I solidified my usage of paragraph transitions and managed to nail the statement of development every time, but the intrinsic aspects that could not be taught, the spirit that drives every well-written paper, languished to the point of non-existence. </p>

<p>By sophomore year, I had quit creativity. (Oh, what I learned despite my English teachers is that experimentation and imagination shouldn't be reserved just for those well-designated "creative" papers.)</p>

<p>By junior year, I no longer recognized what I lacked. My writing was dull and formulaic, and it seemed that writing with purpose and force, concepts that I had begun to grasp earlier but not solidified, had been buried under the muck of years of forced 5 paragraph theme repetitions. Not just in the areas of paper and paragraph organization, I could barely divorce myself from the same old sentence structures that I would use and reuse subconsciously, like I had a cast-iron reinforcing my old habits and preventing mental expansion. The more conscious effort I put into improving my papers, the more rigid my thinking became. (Oh, what I learned despite my English teachers is that freedom and ease is a lot more helpful than strict, harsh convention.)</p>

<p>It was senior year and my writing sucked. I knew it and my teacher knew it. Yet we kept up our self-deceiving dance, flirting around the real issues and instead beating the dead horse of "a little lack of evidence in paragraph 3, a misusage of quotation in that second sentence, etc." These were structural issues that would have resolved themselves if I could revert my mindset to my middle-school days. We continued receiving the well-packaged blurbs about the books we were supposed to write about, with all the nuances and themes, that they wanted us to include in our papers, explicitly given to us. (Oh, what I learned despite my English teachers is that it's almost impossible to conjure an authentic voice to convey a cliche message.)</p>

<p>Well here I am. Want to know what's improved my writing the most in all of high school? Posting long diatribes on Internet message boards. **** me.</p>

2

<p>Well, I don't think you'll have to write too many 5-paragraph essays at Swarthmore. I agree that they tend to create dull, monotonous writing. Part of the reason why my kids are not doing English classes at public school. We tried a couple of classes, and what you describe is exactly what I saw happening.</p>

3

<p>The purpose of high school writing (for college-bound students) is primarily to make students understand structure, grammar, organization, making sure that they have made clear what they are writing about, what the point of the writing assignment is, and that the writing actually supports what they are trying to prove. High school writing courses emphasize structure, organization, and content, rather than style.</p>

<p>The standard five-paragraph format works well for many applications, and the basic structure also allows itself to be expanded into a multi-page paper in high school or college assignments. Even within the five-paragraph format, there is much room for creativity (such as writing from a particular perspective or point of view). Excellent organization, structure and content are necessary but not sufficient components of excellent writing. Style, personality, flair, etc. that make writing more interesting and enjoyable to read would be much more difficult to teach, because each writer is different and also because raw talent plays much a greater role in this aspect of writing. A high school student who genuinely wants to become an excellent writer needs to read many works by excellent authors (which may depend on the student's preferences).</p>

<p>Most kids who graduate from high school will not be creative writers in their later careers. But they all would be far better off if they could communicate clearly and effectively. While writing that emphasizes only structure, organization and logical content may be somewhat dry to read, for most occupations such writing would be sufficient for clear communication between co-workers, colleagues, etc. Judging from what I have seen, I do not think high schools are currently doing an excellent job of instilling grammar, structure, organization, logic, and content in writing courses. I think that until this goal is achieved, teaching flair, style, or personality in high school writing is not the highest priority.</p>

<p>It sounds like ee33ee had lousy writing teachers in high school. While it is certainly possible for a wonderful 13-year-old writer to become stagnant and a mediocre writer after four years of high school, if the student reads a lot, then even bad teaching can be overcome.</p>

4

<p>ee33ee,</p>

<p>Based on your post, you are still a very good writer.</p>

<p>(5-paragraph essays nearly killed my daughter in HS. She just graduated from Swarthmore with "highest honors". You'll be fine there. Try to get a WA job.)</p>

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<p>pa father is right: The purpose of the 5 paragraph essay is to teach structure, mechanics, logic, organization etc. That said, your teachers should have been encouraging you to move beyond that once you demonstrated mastery. By Jr year at our tiny rural public, very few students are writing the formulaic 5 p-graph essay. Though the type of writing they are asked to do is perhaps not what you would call "creative."</p>

<p>Another thing to consider is that at public schools there are state adopted standards which a teacher is mandated to cover. These standards include essay types: Persuasive, Argumentative, Autobiographical, Analytical etc. With state testing steering curriculum more and more, there isn't a lot of room for creative writing in a class room. However many schools do offer a separate creative writing class for that purpose.</p>

<p>I know that it is frustrating for the above avg. writer to have to work their way through the stodgy hs writing curriculum. However, as was pointed out in in post 4, it doesn't seem to have damaged you. ;)</p>

6

<p>I hated doing 5-paragraph essays too...but historymom has hit it right on the nose. The teachers don't have much room to improvise since everything got so standardized.</p>

<p>I was extremely blessed to have amazing English teachers that taught me how to write very well. We did very few 5-paragraph essays, because a majority of us demonstrated mastery.</p>

<p>Perhaps my favorite teacher I've ever had was the teacher I had for 10th and 11th grade English (I also was her Teacher's Aide this year). At one point last year, she simply told us, "Write whatever you want about whatever you want. In any form you want, as long as it is at least a page in length." </p>

<p>This assignment produced some of the best writing I've ever seen from my peers. </p>

<p>I think this is also why when we get to senior year, we have to take English Electives instead of regular English classes. Because by that point, we're so sick of the regular old English curriculum, if we just sat in the same old English class, half of us would probably fail just out of sheer boredom. So we can take:</p>

<p>-Speech and Debate
-Film Analysis (this, though, is known as the "slacker course")
-AP Lit
-Bible as Lit (what I took ^_^)
-Creative Writing</p>

<p>If there are others, they slip my mind at the moment.</p>

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<p>I think that there are two huge impediments to developing a good writing style for high schoolers. The first is that "good writing" is almost always equated with academic writing. Unfortunately academic writing is of almost no use to anyone, anywhere, anytime outside of academia, and most of it is, as the OP noted, dull and pedestrian. Who'd be interested in writing well at all when there's more to lose by incorrectly formatting your footnotes than to be gained by risking unconvential ideas or formats? </p>

<p>I have yet to meet a HS teacher who would emphasize that structure, grammar, footnoting, and all the rest, are just the foundation of good writing, not the aim of it. </p>

<p>Suggest that all along kids should learn how to do those things AND be interesting, and the teacher will look at you like you've landed from Mars. </p>

<p>This is not a paen to "creative writing" either. No one expects the typical tenth-greader to be the next Rushdie or Morrison. And no teacher wants a stream of papers written a la Finnegan's Wake. But there should be a consistent expectation that strong writing is more than just typing up your ideas in the right order. </p>

<p>Which brings me to the second point. Kids would be better writers if they were exposed to more really intersting writing. I am amazed at how little quality non-fiction writing High Schoolers--at least in the schools I've seen-- are consistently exposed to. Its all textbooks and like, original sources from the 18th century for the most part, with an occassional memoir thrown in. OTOH, there are tons of contemporary magazines, news articles, books and essays that could be jumping off points for developing quality writing among students. These sources are infrequently used for that in most schools. They may be too controversial, or not on an approved reading list, or, worst of all, the teacher understimates what students could pick up from them. Frankly, you could learn more about how to write well by taking a year to analyze a big story in Time or Vibe or The Washington Post or a dozen other places than by reading the tripe most HS'ers are exposed to in school. </p>

<p>And this is the type of writing that would work well in both the academy and in real life. ( Ok, so you'd have to know how to footnote for college. YEcchhhh!). Its easy to see why litearacy is on the decline. Its not the Internet or TV either. There's plenty of good writing out there, but chances are you'll never see it in high school and if you do you'll never have the chance to learn from it. </p>

<p>OK. Off my rant. And to ee33ee, don't be discouraged. Dare to risk writing out the box and you may pleasently surprise yourself--even in an academic setting. Frankly, judging just by this post, you're no slouch right now.</p>

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<p>Writing really can't be taught in class. Neither can spelling, or grammar. We get most of this from our environment. Unfortunately, someone who doesn't know how humans master language has got hold of the HS English curriculum, and focused it almost entirely on what is best described as the "Write 5 paragraphs because that is what will be looked for on the AP exam" model.</p>

<p>This summer, pick up a copy of the book The Power of Reading, by Stephen Krashen.</p>

<p>Wishing you all the best.</p>

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<p>ee33ee:</p>

<p>You might enjoy Swat Professor Tim Burke's blog entry, Beyond the Five-Paragraph Essay:</p>

<p>Easily</a> Distracted Beyond the Five-Paragraph Essay</p>

<p>I second the recommendation to consider becoming a WA (Writing Associate). Swarthmore's peer review Writing Associates program is considered to be the model program by other liberal arts colleges. Wannabe WAs take a special advanced writing course fall of sophmore year (it's this level of training that other colleges comment on), then spend three years getting paid for reviewing other students' writing and making suggestions.</p>

<p>Swarthmore</a> College :: Writing Program :: Writing Associates Program</p>

<p>The program is widely used at Swarthmore. Some courses have their own WA assigned and mandatory WA review of all papers. Students just get in the habit of getting their papers WA'd. The best piece of advice a senior gave to the parents at first-year orientation was urging parents to urge their kids to use the WA program. This graduating senior said that she had gotten every paper she ever wrote at Swarthmore WA'd, including senior year.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
The stale 5-paragraph theme proceeded to dominate my writing landscape for the next 4 years.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>You poor thing. My son has never had a five-paragraph essay assignment in a school class in his life. His most recent paper was an eight-to-ten page paper about modern philosophy, so at least some high schools don't crush a young person's desire to write.</p>

11

<p>
[quote]
Writing really can't be taught in class

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I thought so too. Stanford proved me wrong. Their IHUM and PWR classes turned my son into a good writer. (Not a Writer with a capital "W"(that is something I believe you have to be "born" to be), but a good one never the less...)</p>

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<p>My oldest got taught to write as a freshman in high school. The first essay he wrote for the class - on the summer reading - received a 65. (One of the better scores by the way!) The teacher had them rewrite it until the score was in the 90s. They started with five paragraph essays, but it was made clear that was a starting point not an ending point. They wrote longer papers before the year was out. </p>

<p>I think most things can be taught. I used to think that you were born being able to draw until I took a class in college which turned non-drawers into competent draftsmen (and women).</p>

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<p>Writing can defintely be taught, though as with everything else, some kids will have more of a natural talent at it than others. The differences is that few take the time to teach even the basics well. Most HS will let kids know about the five graph style, for sure. But how many will take the time to talk about the things that can really help, like avoiding awkward sentence structure and wordiness, making appropriate word choices, killing off the the passive voice, establishing the right tone, etc.? And doing all that over more than 500 words? Far too few what i've seen. every kid will not be Hemingway or something. But the shame is that a lot more could be taught than ever is.</p>

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<p>BigAppleDaddy wrote:</p>

<p>"I have yet to meet a HS teacher who would emphasize that structure, grammar, footnoting, and all the rest, are just the foundation of good writing, not the aim of it."</p>

<p>And how many HS teachers have you actually engaged in such a conversation? What is the size of your sample? Seriously your disdain is palpable but at least back it up with something.</p>

<p>He also wrote: </p>

<p>"Suggest that all along kids should learn how to do those things AND be interesting, and the teacher will look at you like you've landed from Mars."</p>

<p>And to how many have you made this suggestion? Clearly you must have had a bad experience with high school teachers but can you stop please painting us all with the same brush? Your experience in not universal.</p>

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<p>Hear, hear, historymom.</p>

<p>Great teachers are out there, teaching writing exactly the way you are wishing they would, BigAppleDaddy. Sorry neither you nor your kids have met them. </p>

<p>And ee33ee, sorry you haven't had any such teachers yet either. You'll enjoy Swarthmore, and interesteddad's suggestion that you look into WAing is a good one.</p>

<p>Others will disagree but I think much of what ee33ee and some other posters are complaining about is absolutely valid - but has more to do with the exponential increase in standardized testing in the public schools (do the mods block NCLB? or do they not agree that it's tantamount to an obscenity?) than with incapable teachers.</p>

<p>S1, my middle kid, was in fourth grade when he first met the standardized-test version of the five-paragraph essay. His teacher took points off, with this explanation: "You brought outside knowledge into your work." Blown away, I went in to talk to the teacher, who first of all apologized for putting the comment that way, but then went on to explain that within the grading rubric for the standardized test, there was no room for any information except that which was gleaned from whatever little article the kids had been assigned to write about. So he was trying to show S1 how to do well on the test. . . .</p>

<p>Fortunately, S1 didn't develop an aversion to bringing outside knowledge into his work (though the phrase definitely entered our household lexicon). </p>

<p>Really gifted teachers - and I know lots of them - can and do still go way beyond "teaching to the test." But all the mandated standardized testing is no boon to anybody - especially not aspiring writers.</p>

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<p>HM: </p>

<p>Granted my examples are anecdotal, both from my own experience, my friends' kids, my kids', and that of extended family members in different school systems. And granted that there are undoubtedely dedicated and smart humanities teachers who will seek to use writing to expand a kid's mind, not limit it. Those who do so, and even those who want to do so but don't yet know how, are to be saluted. </p>

<p>But on the whole? I stand by my assertion that the teaching of writing MOST of the time in MOST high schools is terrible. You can Google for lack of literacy or writing skills in the U.S. and most of the articles you'd find, I bet, won't be about how wonderful U.S. kids' writing is. The OP here probably went to a fine high school and is a smart kid if he/she is at Swarthmore--and he still got thrown crap about writing. Which is my point. </p>

<p>Perhaps teachers are trapped by declining standards that have been imposed by educrats from on high. But the result is that instead of trying to teach our kids to aim for the best, they are willing to have them settle for the merely good. So many kids can't write well (or at least as well as they could) because they don't even know what good writing is. Do the five grafs and get an A. Yuck.</p>

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<p>BigAppleDaddy, I don't think our views are all that far apart. I do think it's incredibly important to salute the teachers who are gifted, dedicated, smart, able, and willing.</p>

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<p>Thanks Harriet for that^^^ and also for this:</p>

<p>"Others will disagree but I think much of what ee33ee and some other posters are complaining about is absolutely valid - but has more to do with the exponential increase in standardized testing in the public schools (do the mods block NCLB? or do they not agree that it's tantamount to an obscenity?) than with incapable teachers."</p>

<p>When I first started I had so much autonomy. I loved the degree to which I could design my own curriculum. There was a framework and we were assessed at the end of the year but there was none of the test score mania you see today. It has taken a huge toll on the pet projects, simulations, what have you that many of us dreamed about being able to freely implement in our classrooms. We both know that the obsession with trying to quantify even the intangible aspects of learning is just part of the scurge of NCLB...sigh I am waiting hopefully for the pendulum to begin to swing back.</p>

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<p>I don't see ANY contradiction between what BigAppleDaddy and HarrietMWelsch have said. Two teachers from D's HS past:</p>

<p>D at end of first day of Lit class: "Ma'am, I just transferred in from XXX high school, and last year we covered every book on your reading list."
Teacher: "Well you're going to cover them again." Result? B-O-R-E-D.</p>

<p>D toward middle of AP Calculus: "Mrs. XXX I just don't think I'll get this material."
Teacher: "Well we have a long way to go and I have great respect for your abilities. Let's take a few minutes at the end of each school day to go over the things you're having trouble with." Result? A 5 on the AP test.</p>

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<p>BigA: While you are checking into literacy figures why don't you go ahead and find out the number of languages spoken in an average urban California public elementary school. Statistis may tell you that our kids are below average in writing ability, but those same stats aren't gong to tell you that the 5th grader whe entered downtown public today has a spotty literacy education in her home language and is reading at the second grade level in that language. They don't tell you that though her teacher is fairly-fluent in this child's home language, the State of California prevents her from using that language to instruct. </p>

<p>Again, sorry for your luck. But the picture you paint of English teachers is unfair.</p>