If your student was a poor writer in high school, don’t give up hope. There’s still time for improvement.

By Marion Franck

Many parents lament their children’s high school writing experience. The student didn’t write much or wrote every paper at the last minute, including that all-important “personal statement” on the application to college. Many parents remember pacing in the next room as the clock ticked and the student tore up drafts.

Is someone to blame? Some parents fault high school teachers for not giving enough assignments or enough instruction; some fault students for treating writing as if it didn’t matter at all.

College is a chance to start over or, in the case of students who did try hard in high school, to learn new skills. But what happens in college writing classes? Is there such a thing as the “next level” of writing—or is it just more of the same?

The starting point

Writing is a cumulative skill, like learning to play the piano, not an inborn talent like having a good sense of direction. Some people have an aptitude for writing, just as some people have a musical bent, but with good instruction anybody can improve as a writer.

“Good instruction” means teaching in logical steps, so secondary school teachers give very specific directions. Unfortunately, some students conclude that producing a piece of writing is a rigid process, like filling in bubbles on a test.

Cynthia Bates, director of the Subject A Program (now known as Entry-Level Writing) at UC Davis and a college writing instructor with 25 years of experience, explains it this way, “When students are first learning how to write an essay, teachers often provide some kind of structure, like the ‘five-paragraph essay’ because it helps students to see what elements are required. The problem is students often think, ‘Oh, writing is a formula.’”

They rush toward a solution (a page full of words) without taking time to think hard or to activate their creative juices.

The “big tests” that precede college, such as the SAT or Advanced Placement exams, also encourage formulaic writing. When a student has to write fast, it helps to have a formula, such as introduction (including a thesis), three supporting paragraphs, conclusion.

Not so rigid, after all

If you page through a book of essays, however, you quickly discover that good writing does not appear in five paragraphs. It is less obvious, but equally true, that good writing requires clear thinking and time.

“When students see a published piece, they think, ‘I could never write like that,’” says Bates. “Well, true, they can’t just sit down and write like that. But if they spent the hours that the writer did, they would likely produce a very strong piece of writing.”

Good high school teachers try to convince students that writing requires lots of planning, writing and revising, but many teens are not ready to hear them.

Bates reports that when she was involved in a Subject A collaborative project with high schools in the 1990s, the remark she heard most often from high school English teachers was, “Oh, thank you for saying that to the students. I’ve been saying it, but they don’t pay attention to me.”

Even in college, some students seem to aspire to the badge that says “got through without writing a single paper,” but many others are ready to learn.

New methods

College writing instructors encourage students to write in a variety of disciplines, to experiment with different goals for their writing and to aim at a variety of audiences.

The idea that there might be more than one audience is often new to students. Bates reports that she sometimes asks freshmen, “Who is your primary audience?”

“The students often look at me as though I’m crazy,” she says. “They reply, ‘You are, of course.’”

But college writing instructors want to prepare students for careers in which they’re writing for other professionals or the public, not merely for their teachers. They want students to know that writing differs, depending on who’s reading. They do this by setting up peer review exercises or by purposely devising an audience other than the teacher. Bates might say, “For this assignment you will be writing for a lay audience—people who are interested in your topic but don’t know much about it.”

She also encourages students to explore their own writing process.

Bates says, “I’ll often ask students, ‘In high school, when you were assigned a paper, what did you usually do?’ And the answer is something like, ‘Wait until the night before it’s due and then write it.’ And they laugh because they realize that’s not how you do your best writing.”

College instructors ask students to pay attention to their optimum writing environment. Do they need a quiet place? Or music? Do they write better in the morning? At night? What sort of pre-writing exercise gets their juices flowing?

Lights come on in class as students realize that if they examine their own previous methods of writing and make changes, the task can become more rewarding and more pleasant.

Sprinters, plodders and bleeders

Bates has found the work of Maxine Hairston, a composition theorist, particularly helpful. Hairston divides writers into types she calls sprinters, plodders and bleeders.

A sprinter gushes ideas like a faucet but must then spend extensive time revising. Plodders work more slowly, tinkering with sentences as they write them but maintaining forward movement. Bleeders are perfectionists who come to a full stop at every sentence until they get it right.

Hairston recommends that everyone try “sprinting” because it gets the juices flowing. She cautions against “bleeding,” which often leads to writer’s block and missed deadlines.

The next step is important, but not every student is ready to take it. The student must be willing to revise his or her work. Composition instructors usually insist that students submit multiple drafts. This simulates the writing process of professional writers, who know that you can’t think clearly about a topic, develop new ideas and frame them so that readers will understand, all in your first draft.

College is a time when some students become more willing to try revision. They are in a new environment, living on their own for the first time. Their minds are active, even if what they’re thinking about is not always academic. Composition instructors seize this opportunity to show them that writing is a way of thinking and of expressing what’s important to them, academically and personally.

What courses are offered

At UC Davis many students begin their writing experience in a class that helps them meet the Entry-Level Writing (Subject A) requirement. Non-native speakers of English may need to take other classes before they reach that level, and more accomplished writers may skip these classes entirely.

One of the strengths of the UC Davis curriculum is that most students must also fulfill an upper-division writing requirement. At that point, students are thinking about graduate school or a first job, and many understand that they need to write well, if for no other reason than to produce the cover letter for a job application.

Students often arrive at the university thinking that if every sentence in the paper relates to the main topic, that’s good enough. But in upper-division classes, students are taught that, to create clear, persuasive writing, they must connect their ideas and help readers follow a logical progression of thought.

Can a parent help?

It’s hard to know if your student’s writing is improving, especially if you have to base your opinion on e-mails that say “too busy to write.”

And yet it never hurts to inquire about the student’s exposure to writing.

Bates recommends that parents encourage students to take classes specifically devoted to writing and, when they do, to go to the instructor’s office hours to discuss their papers in person.

“What’s especially exciting about the world of writing that awaits students in college is that they can expand their own understanding of their power as writers,” explains Bates. “That’s why I never get tired of teaching writing.