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How to Teach Students to Become Good Writers
Students are not inherently good writers; on the contrary, they generally find writing is difficult and unnatural, and they dislike being asked to do it! But, as Flannery O'Connor pointed out, their taste isn't being consulted; it is being formed. Writing is an acquired skill. It is also a vital skill if one is to fulfill one's God-given potential in this world and mature into an effective member of His kingdom. Christian students need to become good writers.
Two principles
When you teach students to write, bear in mind two overriding principles: Students need a thorough foundation in English grammar, and they learn to write by writing. The first principle should be applied throughout the elementary and middle school years; the second should be applied from the time the child can compose sentences until graduation from high school. A good language arts curriculum should consist of large doses of grammar systemically taught from 2nd through 8th or 9th grade, and all students should write constantly about everything they are learning in every course throughout their school career.
Principle #1: Students need a thorough foundation in English grammar
When you teach grammar to younger students, remember that grammar is not an end in itself but a means to an end -- effective composition. Start with the sentence. Teach your child to recognize sentences and to recognize and correct fragments, run-ons, and comma splices. Teach the four sentence types--declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory sentences. You can then move on to sentence structure -- simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex; older students should prefer the two complex sentence types because these structures subordinate less important ideas.
Reinforce rules with writing
Never teach grammar in isolation; that is, you teach a rule and immediately reinforce that rule with a short writing assignment. There are several ways to do this: (1) Students compose a sentence that illustrates the rule. (2) Students compose a sentence that violates the rule, exchange papers with another student, and correct each other's errors. (3) You write on the board a sentence that violates a rule for students to correct. These methods reinforce grammatical principles more effectively and more permanently than pages of exercises in a workbook. Workbook exercises rarely translate into elegant writing, so do not feel compelled to complete 350 pages of a workbook. When you teach grammar, be sure that your child understands the rule being taught and that he can apply that rule to his writing.
Systematically teach the eight parts of speech
Teach the eight parts of speech to your youngest students. Start with verbs, the focal point of every sentence, followed by nouns and modifiers. Insist that students choose exact, graphic verbs and nouns. It is a good idea to have a "banned word list" displayed on your classroom wall --verbs such as said, walked, nouns such as building, person, and trite adjectives such as funny, big, and nice. Train your child to prefer action verbs and to avoid forms of the verb "to be." Older students should be taught to indicate a logical sequence of actions via appropriate use of tense and to prefer the active rather than the passive voice. When you teach nouns, emphasize the use of the appositive in order to condense ideas and the use of parallel structure to achieve elegant prose. Incidentally, children are more likely to understand the function of each part of speech if you point out its etymology: verb, word; noun, name; pronoun, for the noun; adjective, that can add to; adverb, to the verb; conjunction, joined by; preposition, placed before; and interjection, thrown between.
Require memorization
Memorization plays an important part in the study of grammar. Young children should memorize the definition of each part of speech, helping and linking verbs, the principal parts of irregular verbs such as lie and lay, frequently used prepositions, the questions adjectives and adverbs answer, and basic rules such as these: pronouns agree with their antecedents, modifiers should be used sparingly, and, to cite Strunk and White, omit needless words.
Principle #2: Students learn to write by writing
Here are three key ideas to bear in mind when you teach composition: students must write regularly, they need useful feedback, and they should always correct their own work.
Students must write regularly
Students should be given frequent and varied opportunities to write. The personal journal is one way to encourage reluctant writers because we all like to write about ourselves. Another effective way to improve student writing is to copy passages from literature. If your child has poor writing skills, he should do this exercise daily for about fifteen minutes. He copies any passage, perhaps half a page, from the Bible or a literary classic, writing it down word for word, and he should vary the authors he copies. Children learn by imitation, as did Benjamin Franklin when he used this way to improve his writing as a boy. If used regularly over an extended period of time, this method will improve your child's vocabulary, sentence structure, and facility with words. Writing will start to become a natural, even enjoyable activity for him.
Frequently, students complain that they cannot start a writing assignment. If this happens, tell them not to start! Instruct them to skip the introduction, leave a space at the top of the page, and begin writing the first body paragraph. They can return to a succinctly worded thesis later. There are several ways to overcome writer's block. One method is free writing. Give your child a topic about which he has a strong opinion and instruct him to write down his ideas about the topic quickly without stopping or evaluating his work. Other methods include clustering and list making.
Essay writing
Require your child to begin writing essays as early as possible. I see no point in having students concentrate on paragraphs for an extended period of time. The paragraph is incomplete; it is merely part of a longer composition. Students from elementary school through high school should write essays regularly for every course they study. They write to find out what they know. The topic and length will, of course, depend on the age of the child. Before they begin to write essays, however, teach them about structure -- an essay must include a beginning, a middle, and an end; the student writes an introductory paragraph that includes a thesis statement, several body paragraphs, each of which includes a topic sentence and possibly a summarizing sentence or clincher, and a concluding paragraph that provides a sense of closure but does not restate the thesis. Another important procedure is this: Whenever you assign an essay, require your child to make an outline or to take detailed notes about his topic before he begins to write. This method will free his mind to write well and at length about his topic because he has written down some key ideas.
Suggest essay topics that are meaningful to your child and avoid the pointless "What I did on my summer vacation" approach, which provides no sense of audience, no point of view, and nothing meaningful to communicate. If you assign such a topic, expect a boring result! Instruct your children to read their essays aloud. They will hear faulty grammar, wordiness, and awkward syntax, and they will be more likely to correct errors. And by all means, train them to proofread their work. They will resist this discipline, but insist upon it. In fact, you should be training your children every day to be their own harshest critics.
Students need useful feedback
Return your students' writing assignments in a timely fashion -- the next day if possible -- and give them detailed feedback. Find something positive to say about an essay before summarizing major weaknesses at the beginning or end of the essay. You must be able to justify the grade an essay receives, and the child must clearly recognize his flaws. Do not give failing grades for essay writing; instead, require a second draft if the writing standard is unacceptable.
Students must correct their own work
Do not correct your child's work. That is his job. Instead, write notes in the margin to indicate the corrections needed. The child corrects his writing assignment and returns it to you for further review. If your child repeats the same error in future essays, require him to write out the grammar rule he is violating. If he continues to make the same mistake, give him workbook exercises that reinforce the rule. In my opinion, this is the best way to use grammar workbooks. A workbook should be a resource not a vehicle for busy work.
Teaching a student to write well is hard work, but it is one of the most useful skills you will ever communicate to your child and well worth the time and labor it involves. When you glance back at the great men and women who have most impacted our country's history, you will notice that, for the most part, they are fine writers who understood the power of the written word.
Copyright 2004. All Rights Reserved. ElizabethMcCallum.com
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