Why We Torment Students With Many Writing Assignments
Plus: How to Improve Scores Right Away
“AARGH! I don’t know what I am supposed to DO for this writing assignment! Why do I have to WRITE stuff for this class?”
It is that time of the year when the first big writing assignments are due in many Lukeion Project classes. Depending on the class, students have been tasked with all sorts of writing tasks ranging from short research pieces to creative genre-specific assignments, to solid five-part exam essays, to close readings of literature with exacting analytical style and careful citation.
Expect a bit of hair-pulling and griping. We instructors certainly do.
In an ideal world, students will be tasked with a gradient of writing tasks throughout their education. Starting in middle school they should see short objective investigative projects with basics in good outlining, thesis development, five-part essays, and other fundamentals. Students would continue to improve their skill set to include robust research and analysis by the time they finish out their high school years. If things have progressed smoothly, college writing assignments gently integrate themselves into the upward trend of a student’s writing development. BLISS!
In the real world, there’s no “gentle integration.” New college students too frequently experience something a bit closer to a painful writing crisis and sudden familiarity with red ink and the college writing lab. The more normal "gradient of writing tasks" in high school looks like this: Based on early opportunities to write subjectively and creatively in high school, many students will have too early subtracted themselves from membership in the “good writers club," much the same way that others consider themselves good or bad at chemistry, computer languages, or art. We might universally want a modicum of chemistry, COBAL, and cinematography but, in the real world we will certainly require the ability to write.
Over the course of middle through high school, students should conquer and practice various forms of writing proficiencies. Without a bit of structure, few are prepared to handle the tools of reason, logic, theory, and analysis, much less research, citation, style sheets, scholarly tone, outlining, argumentation, and persuasiveness. No wonder so many of us think we aren't good at writing!
One’s first college lab report, case study statement, or market research project will have no rubric for “strong adjectives” or “nice nouns.” That special request email to your professor better be persuasive. That first English paper better not include clichés and slang. That first extended exam essay better be comprehensive and comprehensible. Students must become proficient writers in a relatively short time. Not all of us are called to be Twain or Tolstoy but most of us can become reasonably good at many types of writing.
Writing is an essential life skill. Annoyingly, good educators know this. If they have your best interests at heart, they will keep requiring you to write more (and MORE!), to write differently, and to write better.
Students: Here are three pointers to help you get the best possible results from your efforts here and now (or, in medias res, to use the poetic device).
1. Writing has rules. Follow the ones that apply to your task.
No matter what you are writing, that writing project has rules. Want your boss to take your seriously? Don’t use text abbreviations and slang when explaining why you are late to work again. Want to write an A-grade history paper? Don’t write like the narrator from Ancient Aliens with Wikipedia as your main source. Want to receive top marks on your AP essay? There are rules. If your instructor tells you to never use rhetorical questions or “X is defined by Webster’s Dictionary” in a scholarly introduction, don’t put her to the test and use these things anyway.
You get the idea. Your personal journal, blog, vlog, texts, social media can all play by your rules. Everything else has rules: Find them, follow them closely, and practice them. If you your instructor merely said, “MLA format.” Welcome to writing at the college level! Those are the rules.
2. Writing is a cumulative skill. You get better at it by doing more of it and by doing it longer.
At The Lukeion Project we introduced a program called Skillful Scribbler for 8th-10th grade because we discovered that most of our students—at all levels--were poor at basics like developing a thesis, outlining, paragraph transitions, formal academic tone, basics of research, and five-part essays. In fact, most students had almost zero experience with these tasks even in 11th and 12th grade classes so we found all levels of students needing these basics. We also have College Composition and College Research Writing so students can develop important advanced writing skills by 11th or 12th grade as they work through AP classes and prepare for college writing. In the meantime, our literature, history, and upper level Latin classes task students with mastery of basic writing skills.
Students who may never have described themselves as “good” at writing should be given every opportunity to develop satisfaction at becoming competent and then even proficient at writing through practice.
3. Writing takes time.
This will come as a complete shock to many of you writers: Your educators can tell if you took time and effort to complete a writing assignment. Yes, LONG experience tells us if you sat down 52 minutes prior to the deadline to crash your way through the given task.
The more writing experience you have, the better you can perform under tense time constraints. Gained experience learning how and what to write contributes beautifully to how well you do with only limited time. Not only do you improve your writing skills with more practice, but you also improve your ability to write well quickly. This is why in AP Latin, for example, I grade beginning essays more lightly than later essays: you should develop skill and speed.
Every busy student can confirm that speedy writing skills are a bonus at college. While writing will always be improved with a bigger time investment—especially if you can get away from a project and come back later for final edits—writing gets better and faster with practice. No writing chore, task, or assignment is a waste of time. Getting good at writing AND fast at it, takes time.
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