Talk to almost any teacher anywhere and unless they're teaching math, you will more than likely hear about the growing phenomenon of poor quality in student writing. There are always exceptions to the rule and there will be that one teacher who smiles knowingly and says that they have no problems with student writing. Those smiles are few and far between, however.
My personal belief is that students are not grasping the impact that good writing has on their future endeavors. As educators, WE know the importance because we use writing to communicate every day and we can see the direct impact of poor writing in the triple-spaced 15 point font five page research paper with a title page and no works cited page. It's more than just an information literacy issue - that topic will be covered in another blog post entirely - students seem to be missing the point of good writing. My fear is that they're also not reading their work before they submit it and are failing to comprehend what the requirements are to receive an A.
As educators, are we making full use of detailed rubrics to explain the expectations of a written project? By detailed, I mean more than just 'Correct grammar, punctuation, and spelling' as being worth ten points of the final paper. I mean the above point with more detail for the student who may not have learned about, didn't understand, or needs a refresher on the word 'punctuation.' Do we provide an example of what an A paper looks like? Do we explain why it's wrong to plagiarize and how not to do it? Do your students realize the internet is actually copyrighted material that cannot be used freely unless content is specifically labeled as free to the public?
It is my suspicion that at a certain point it is expected that students know all of the basics or should know how to refresh their memories to remember the basics of grammar, spelling, and citations. It is also my suspicion that we've got high hopes in some cases, especially where our students may not have gotten a particularly robust education in English composition, or who had no lessons in understanding what they were reading.
The fix to this may sound simplistic, but step out of the box with me for a moment. Creative writing.
When I was on the other side of the podium, I can honestly say I hated writing research papers. The mechanics of writing meant nothing to me because the topics of the research papers meant nothing to me. Had the reasoning behind the assignment been made more transparent, i.e. 'You will need this someday in the real world to effectively communicate with a future employer and for writing proposals' then I may have paid more attention. Instead I preferred to write stories with illustrations in a beat-up notebook. It wasn't until I took a creative writing class that all of the concepts of past English lessons finally clicked. That click led me to take a dramatic script writing course, and then to become a technical writer for a while. I used the lessons I learned in my creative writing classes when putting together my cover letter and even my resume. I used what I had learned about formatting in my dramatic script writing class to make sure the formatting was done consistently throughout my resume and to make sure it looked good from a distance, which would make it something people would want to read. I also made sure my cover letter hit the main requirements listed in the position description and highlighted my experience that catered to those requirements. I never sent the same resume or cover letter out twice. Each one was tailored and written specifically based on the research I had done on the company and the requirements of the job posting. In this day and age, that kind of writing skill and comprehension skill could mean the difference between successfully employed alumni who are happy because they picked the job they wanted, and an unemployed alumni struggling to figure out why his or her application never received a response.
So why not incorporate creative writing papers that require research on the topic? The student gets to pick the details of the story and write an outline for approval, he or she has fun with subject-verb agreement, grammar, and spelling instead of dreading it all, and afterward, the class can write constructive critiques of each story (so you KNOW your student will be reading his or her work before handing it in and having friends read it to make sure it sounds alright). It would be important to explain to students the purpose of each phase as well. They're adult learners who need to be able to see where the lessons apply to their everyday life and above all how it will help them achieve their goals and keep them engaged with the lesson.
Part 2 of the issue is reading comprehension. By writing a review of the stories submitted, the student would need to summarize what he or she feels was the main point of the story as well as construct a paragraph or two explaining why the story did or did not 'work'. This would be an excellent time to evaluate how many students are truly comprehending what they're reading.
How many of us are guilty of reading an email but not really READING the email? Try it out: send an email with a subject line that is totally different than the message, make the message three paragraphs long with each paragraph asking about three different things, and see how many recipients write back a response that addresses the email in its entirety and how many respond to just the subject or just the subject and the first sentence of the first paragraph.
In gradeschool, I clearly remember an exercise in reading comprehension. A sheet of paper was handed out, and on the paper was a set of 20 instructions. The first instruction was to read all the instructions, the second was to write your name on the top of the sheet. #20's instruction said 'Ignore all instructions above.'
While it may seem slightly basic, creative writing and a set of instructions that ultimately lead to handing in a blank sheet of paper may just be the jumpstart our adult students need to get back on track if they are struggling with writing and reading comprehension.
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