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Composed,
SAWP Newsletter
key research about improving writing in our schools
Students Need to Write More in All Subjects. According to a 1998 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading report card, students in grades four, eight, and twelve who said they wrote long answers on a weekly basis scored higher than those who said they never or hardly ever did so. Yet many American schools are not giving students much time to write. On average, according to the NAEP, only 3 percent of fourth graders spent three or more hours per week on writing activities. To improve writing, schools need to begin with a realistic assessment of how much and what kind of writing students are actually asked to do.
White, S. The NAEP 1998 Reading Report Card: National and State Highlights (NCES 1999-479). Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, 1999, p. 10.
Teaching Writing as Process. Researchers have long questioned the assumption that instruction in grammar, usage, and punctuation by itself will yield better writing. The issue was addressed in a groundbreaking 1985 National Institute of Education report. In addition, decades of research have shown that instructional strategies such as isolated skill drills fail to improve student writing. Cognitive and sociocultural approaches to teaching and learning explored processes of composition and subsequent research found that writing could develop higher-order thinking skills: analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating, and interpreting.
National Writing Project and Carl Nagin. Because Writing Matters: Improving Student Writing in Our Schools. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2003: p. 22.
The Reading-Writing Connection. Writing supports reading development in three ways:
- Readers and writers use the same intellectual strategies (organizing, monitoring, questioning, revising meaning).
- The reading and writing processes are similar (first you activate prior knowledge and set a purpose).
- Children use many of the same skills in both reading and writing (phonics to decode words, phonics to "sound out" spelling of words and apply spelling rules).
Tompkins, Gail E. Literacy for the Twenty-First Century: A Balanced Approach. (2nd ed.) Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Merrill Education, 2001.
The Changing Landscape of Writing Instruction. In the 1980s, Art Applebee studied the status of writing in American schools and found that students "wrote infrequently within a narrow range of genres for limited purposes." Mostly students filled in blanks or completed exercises. By 1998, the NAEP found that 57% or more of teachers reported that writing process instruction and integrated reading and writing were central to their teaching, and 51% reported similar emphasis on grammar and skill-based instruction. All but some teachers reported some emphasis on both (skill-based and integrated reading and writing).
Applebee, Art. Writing in Secondary School: English and the Content Areas. Urbana, Ill: National Council of Teachers of English, 1981.
Applebee, Art. "Alternative Models of Writing Development." In R. Indrisano and J.R. Squire (eds.), Perspectives on Writing: Research, Theory, and Practice. Newark, Del; International Reading Association, 2000, p. 91.