Featured School
T
oday, 50 billion What-
sapp messages, 5 billion
Facebook posts, count-
less tweets, blogs, and
comments will be made online.
The ‘information age’ has turned
into the ‘authorship age’. People
aren’t just consuming informa-
tion, they are creating and pub-
lishing it online. Unfortunately,
this
“user-created
content”
mostly takes the form of poorly
written words.
Writing is a skill that serves us
in school and beyond. Studies
conducted by Berkeley and the
College Board found that writing
was the second most effective
predictor of college success
(Geiser 2007; Kobrin, 2012). In the
workplace, 90% of professionals
stated that writing skills were
critical in their work (Light 2001).
Even in the search for love,
30 |
Sep - Oct 2017
|
|
women judge writing skills as one
of the most important criteria
when choosing an online date
(eHarmony, 2014).
60% of US college freshmen
enroll in developmental or
remedial courses because they
lack sufficient writing skills
(CCRC, 2010). Writing centers at
universities in the Middle East also
have to provide a lot of academic
writing support. Clearly, work
is needed to improve writing in
schools globally.
How can high school teachers
better support students in
becoming skillful writers?
Students become better at
writing by writing. Derek Bok,
former President of Harvard
Class Time
University, states that students will
“never learn to write with clarity,
precision, and grace, unless they
have repeated opportunities to
keep on writing and get prompt
feedback.” Schools must create
opportunities for students to
write and ensure that they receive
well-timed, high-quality feedback
on each writing assignment.
Research confirms that feedback
is one of the top strategies for
raising student achievement
(Hattie, 2011; Deat et al. 2012).
For students to remain engaged
with a writing assignment, they
must receive pertinent feedback
in under a week. Additionally,
effective feedback cannot be
delivered to students all at
once, but must be broken down