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Strong Writing Skills May Enhance Students' Chances for Success

"Writing isn't easy--let me just make that perfectly clear. Anyone who tells you that writing is easy is either lying to you or doesn't understand what quality writing entails. Writing requires careful thought, a great deal of planning, constant review of your work-in-progress, and a great deal of skill, which can only be gained through experience and practice."

Mike Alexander in Good Writing Leads to Good Testing

By Barnabas Emenogu

It is well established that reading is an instrumental part of learning. When a student does not understand a question he or she would not be able to provide the right answer to the question. Comprehension therefore is very important for doing well on examinations.

There is evidence that reading helps comprehension. It is through reading and listening that students acquire vocabulary. A large repertoire of vocabulary will have positive effect on both comprehension and writing. That said, the influence of writing on student learning and achievement has received far less attention. The report of the National Commission on Writing in America's Families, Schools, and Colleges, titled The Neglected "R": The Need for a Writing Revolution argues that despite the best efforts of many educators, writing has not received the full attention it deserves. In fact, the report states: "most fourth-grade students spend less than three hours a week writing, which is approximately 15 percent of the time they spend watching television".

In discussing the importance of writing to learning, Suleiman (2000) asserts that "writing is a central element of language. Any reading and language arts program must consider the multidimensional nature of writing in instructional practices, assessment procedures, and language development." Examining this multidimensional nature of the writing process helps understanding of writing fundamentals.

As the National Commission on Writing stressed, writing allows students to "connect the dots" in their knowledge, is central to self-expression and civic participation and is essential to educational and career success. The report recommended that the amount of time and money devoted to student writing should increase and writing should become an important focus in schools at all grade levels. Increased writing skills helps students express their thoughts and provide deeper and more meaningful answers to examination questions.

As Cunningham argues, knowledge may be power, but the ability to communicate knowledge is the primary material for learning within society. Writing skills are the primary tools for communicating knowledge. The ability to communicate precisely may prove to be an advantage in life chances.

According to Jetton, "You can have the greatest technical skills in the world, but without solid communication skills, who will know and who can understand?" This raises a concern about the progression of ESL instructions from oral conversations to written prose.

In a recent study, Hand, Hohenshell, and Prain (2007) found that using multimultiple forms of writing significantly supported effective student learning. Similarly, Poock, Burke, Greenbowe and Hand (2007) found that explicit instruction in science writing was very effective in improving the students' learning process and achievement in science. This tends to support the attention that the Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat is giving to non-fiction writing.

Equally, there may be a strong relationship between writing frequency and intellectual capacities. Gay (2002) contended that organizational, critical thinking, logic and reasoning skills are fostered in writing exercises and these skills tend to pour over into other areas of problem solving or creativity. Writing has also been linked with critical thinking, particularly journal writing has been associated with promoting students' critical thinking and learning skills.

Writing in their journals helps students apply, analyze, synthesize and evaluate information beyond just knowing it. Therefore, one effective way of making students write seems to be asking them to write in a daily journal. Journals can be used across subject areas to develop writing skills in different content areas. A student might have a journal for science, math, art, physical education, music and social studies thereby learning to use the language and thinking associated with these subjects.

In using board and school level data of the EQAO Assessments of reading, writing and mathematics I found that there is a very strong relationship between writing scores and scores in other assessment areas. Interestingly the relationship between writing scores and mathematics scores in Grade 6 assessment is much stronger than the relationship between reading and mathematics or writing and reading.

In addition, writing had very strong relationship with other subjects across grades. For example, success in Grade 3 writing had very strong relationship with success in Grade 6 mathematics (stronger relationship than between Grade 3 reading and Grade 6 reading or between Grade 3 mathematics and Grade 6 mathematics). These findings hold true for both 2005-06 and 2006-07 results.

In looking at the school and board performance over three years, I found that school and board success in Grade 3 writing in 2002-03 was the strongest predictor of success in Grade 6 reading writing and mathematics in 2005-06. Similarly, school and board success in Grade 3 writing in 2003-04 was the strongest predictor of success in Grade 6 reading writing and mathematics in 2006-07.

Amongst other things, I have suggested that a key benefit of getting elementary students to start writing early is that the amount of writing they do during their school years has a strong impact on the way they think, the amount they read, and the quality of their writing as adults. Motivating students to write in many forms for many reasons will enhance not only their achievement but quite possibly their life chances. In this sense, writing early moves from an issue that is solely pedagogic and curricular to an issue that is also moral.

References

Alexander, M. Good Writing Leads to Good Testing retrieved on March 26 2008

Gay, G. (2002). Developing Dimensions of Written Language. Adaptive Technology Resource Centre. Retrieved March 26, 2008

Hand, B., Hohenshell, L., & Prain, V. (2007). Examining the effect of multiple writing tasks on Year 10 biology students' understandings of cell and molecular biology concepts. Instructional Science, 35, 4. 343(31).

National Commission on Writing in America's Families, Schools, and Colleges (2003) The Neglected "R": The Need for a Writing Revolution. Report. Retrieved March 26

Poock, J. R., Burke, K.A., Greenbowe, T. J. & Hand, B. M. (2007). Using the science writing heuristic in the general chemistry laboratory to improve students' academic performance. Journal of Chemical Education 84.8 (August 2007): 1371(9).

Suleiman, M.F. (2000). The process and product of writing: Implications for elementary school teachers. ERIC Digest, ERIC Identifier ED 442299.