Improving Students' Writing

by Carol Brown Dodson

In this column, over the past few months, we have analyzed components of the reading and writing Ohio Graduation Test. We have shared strategies for improving reading and writing and have included ORC resources for teaching the strategies.

Ohio tenth-grade students have now taken the OGT, and so it's time to push the specifics of test preparation to the background and bring the overall teaching of writing to the forefront. This month the column features specific ways to improve the teaching of writing and highlights resources that support each technique. For a review of the Ohio standards for written composition, read last month's column in the archives of Adolescent Literacy In Perspective.

Writing Suggestions

Writing Tip 1: Write frequently
You don't have to grade all their writing, but students do need feedback if their writing is to improve. Feedback can be provided by peers during writers' workshop or in other revising and editing groups, by the teacher in teacher-student conferences, or through comments on drafts in the portfolio. Responding to students' early drafts is often more important than responding to their final drafts because writers still have the opportunity to change the early drafts. Once the writing is final and submitted for a grade or publication, changes are not likely to be made.

Choosing the Best Verb: An Active and Passive Voice Mini-lesson
For most students, speech and informal writing flows naturally. Yet, students often struggle with formal or academic writing. This mini-lesson explores verb choice in a variety of online resources and then encourages students to draw conclusions about verb use which they can apply to their own writing. Students begin by identifying verbs in a variety of contexts, determining whether constructions rely on active or passive voice. Following classroom discussions about verbs, students apply the strategies they have learned to their own writing by revising verb choice to match audience and purpose. (author/ncl)

Writing Tip 2: Write for many different purposes and audiences
Becoming a good writer involves much more than writing essays or other school assignments. According to the Ohio Writing Applications Standard, students should write letters, essays, and narratives. Multiple purposes may be presented for these applications―purposes that include persuading an audience, requesting information, entertaining the reader, exploring a topic, or explaining a process.

Writing for varied audiences allows students to work with word choice, tone, and voice as they produce writing intended to appeal to a specific audience. They soon learn that they must express ideas differently for a group of parents or other adults than for their peers.

Frequent writing, whether in the form of text messaging, weblog commentary, reading response, or formal writing, leads to improved writing. Christina McCarroll wrote recently in the Christian Science Monitor (3/11/2005), "Many experts insist that teenage composition is as strong as ever―and that the proliferation of writing, in all its harried, hasty forms, has actually created a generation more adept with the written word."

The "printing press" activity in the following lesson lets students choose from a variety of writing purposes and styles. Templates are included in the activity, and students are guided through the process for developing such varied publications as brochures, newsletters, flyers, and booklets. Although the title indicates the lesson is appropriate for middle school students, the activities and content of the lesson are aligned to Ohio Standards for grades 9-12.

Leading to Great Places in the Middle School Classroom
The lead of a story is the beginning, and yet it can be the end if the reader is not engaged in the writing. This lesson examines examples of leads in young adult literature such as setting, action, character, reflection, event, and dialogue in a shared reading experience. Subsequently, students are asked to generate different leads for a read-aloud book in the classroom. Finally, students complete the reading-writing connection by creating or revising a lead in one of their pieces of writing. (author/ncl)

The Electronic Messages Rubric included in the next lesson is a useful assessment tool for looking at word choice, audience awareness, and ideas in the context of the audience.

Audience, Purpose, and Language Use in Electronic Messages
With the increasing popularity of e-mail and instant messaging among teens, a recognizable change has occurred in the language that students use in their writing. This lesson explores the language of electronic messages and how it affects academic writing and more formal communication. Students construct communications appropriate for specific scenarios. Furthermore, this lesson validates students' freedom and creativity for using Internet abbreviations for specific purposes and examines the importance of a more formal style of writing based on audience. (author/ncl)

Writing Tip 3: Read and think like a writer
Students should read daily. As they read, students should be encouraged to think about the writer, asking themselves some of the following questions:

• How does the writer organize her thoughts?
• What is the author's style?
• What words does he select to provide emphasis and create a desired tone?
• Why does the writer choose the verbs she uses?
• Why does the author select concrete nouns?
• What are some other conscious decisions the writer makes?

Make students aware that their reading can serve as a model for their own writing. The ORC resource described below asks students to read an article and look for examples of how the author tells the reader about the person in the article by including:

• what the person says
• what others say about this person
• a description of the person's personal life
• a description of the person's professional life

Prize-Winning Profiles: Reading and Writing Profiles of Noteworthy People in the News
In this lesson, students read an article in which a famous person is profiled. After analyzing the techniques used by the author, students research and write a profile of a well-known person. Using the news article as a model, students integrate specific writing techniques into their pieces. This lesson may be adapted to a variety of learning situations. Instructors may alter the assignment by having students write profiles of historical figures, authors, local personalities, or other noteworthy individuals. (Author/ncl)

Writing Tip 4: Write about what they know and care about
Although it's not always possible for students to choose their own topic for writing, they will likely take the most interest in their writing if they care about the topic. Students usually can make choices within the boundaries of a prompt; for example, if they are asked to write about their favorite season, they can choose not only the season but also the examples they will use and the incidents they will describe.

When students are engaged in researching a topic, they can choose a part of the overall assignment to focus on. For example, writing about the fauna and flora of New Mexico may not appeal to a student from southeastern Ohio, but researching the fauna and flora of the Ohio River Valley connects to what the student already knows from personal observations. When selecting a topic for writing, students need to be guided so that they pick a topic with which they have some background knowledge.

Writing Tip 5: Focus on eliminating one type of error at a time
Mina Shaughnessy, in Errors and Expectations (1977), classified typical student errors into groups, illustrating that many errors are simply extensions of one basic error type rather than individual mistakes. For example, the student who misuses "there," "their," and "they're" isn't making a separate mistake each time the wrong form is used. Instead, the student doesn't understand the difference between the homonyms.

The same is true of errors in subject-verb agreement. A student who writes four sentences in which subject-verb agreement is faulty isn't making four errors. This student needs to work on subject-verb agreement. Thus there is no need to mark each error of the same classification. Let the student know he or she needs to work to correct the errors in subject-verb agreement. Specific lessons should address the error classification to help the writer eliminate the mistake.

According to a 1992 study titled "Frequency of Formal Errors in Current College Writing," by Andrea Lunsford and Rob Connors, 91.5 percent of all grammatical errors can be attributed to a list of 20 specific kinds of errors. The list of the 20 most frequent errors, along with full explanations and suggestions for each, is included in the ORC resource below. The list, along with a few common ESL (English as a second language) errors, may also be found at http://www.eng.odu.edu/techwriting/20mostcommonerrors.pdf.

Twenty Common Errors
According to a 1992 study, completed by Rob Connors and Andrea Lunsford, over ninety percent of all grammatical errors found in students' academic writing can be attributed to twenty specific kinds of errors. This website provides a brief overview of those twenty common errors and areas of confusion for students. While this resource does not offer specific teaching strategies, teachers may use the list provided to guide their instructional decisions. A downloadable list of the twenty common errors is also available online. (author/ncl)

The ORC resource below is also useful for teachers and students who are interested in improving the quality of writing.

Guide to Grammar and Style
This content resource, while assembled by a Rutgers professor concerned primarily with bettering his own students' writing at the college level, provides a detailed grammar and style reference guide appropriate for high school use. Divided into seven sections for getting an "A" on an English paper―thesis, research, close reading, style, and mechanics, this resource both explains the concepts that elevate a student text beyond the ordinary, and links to other relevant sites that address mechanics, citations, grammar, and stylistic nuances. The author lists advice for students to generate good writing, and comments specifically about those elements of writing that influence audience, purpose, and style. (author/bcbrown)

There are many reasons for placing major emphasis on written composition. Teachers need to help students understand the importance of writing. Give students adequate time to compose, and provide them with many purposes for writing. You'll discover that students who improve their writing also improve their thinking and thus their work in other parts of the curriculum. The process of thinking, including analyzing and reasoning, is invisible. By writing what they are thinking, students can make the process visible.

Carol Brown Dodson is the outreach specialist for the Ohio Resource Center. Dodson was an English language arts consultant for the Ohio Department of Education and is past president of OCTELA (Ohio Council of Teachers of English Language Arts). Dodson, formerly a high school English teacher, department chair, and supervisor of English language arts in Columbus Public Schools, serves on the Ohio Graduation Test Reading Content Committee.

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References

Connors, Rob, and Andrea A. Lunsford. (1992). "Frequency of college errors in current college writing." In Robert Connors and Cheryl Glenn (Eds.), The St. Martin's Guide to Teaching Writing (New York: St. Martin's), 398.

McCarroll, Christina. (2005, March 11). "Teens ready to prove text-messaging skills can score SAT points" [electronic version]. The Christian Science Monitor.

Shaughnessy, Mina P. (1977). Errors and Expectations. (New York: Oxford University Press).