Secret to teaching writing
Time-honored strategies you can copy

When I began teaching writing, I wasn't a certified English teacher. Forty years later, I'm still not a certified English teacher, but a long line of students learned to write in my classes.

You don't need credentials from a government agency to help teenage and adult students learn to write. Whether you teach in a public school, a private school, or home school, you can teach writing.

I'm living proof.

After getting a degree in psychology, I went to graduate school. (Going to school was the only thing I knew I could do well.)

Desperate for freshman composition teachers, the English department offered me a teaching assistantship. I grabbed it.

Within a few days, I learned what doesn't work in teaching writing.

Learning what does work took a while longer.

What Doesn't Work

Students won't learn to write because you:

• give brilliant lectures about writing
• have them read high quality literature
• make them revise each paper at least twice
• devote a month to remedial grammar study
• provide rubrics that detail what quality writing is

The Secret to Teaching Writing

There is, however, a simple way to assure teens and adults students have writing skills they need for working and learning beyond high school:

You must teach nonfiction writing.

After I learned that secret by experience, I discovered it is printed in thousands of research articles and books.

So how come it’s still a secret?

Because many teachers are still looking for a way of turning out good writers that is easy, fast, and fun. (They also want thin thighs in 30 days without diet or exercise.)

Sorry, folks.

There is no easy, fast, fun way to turn out high school graduates with the writing skill required by colleges and employers.

Few English Teachers Teach Writing

With all due respect to the English teachers I've had over the years, many of whom I respect and admire, not one of those folks ever spent an hour teaching writing.

They taught me about writing.

They gave me writing assignments.

They encouraged me to write on topics that I enjoyed.

But they never taught how to write.

I learned to write by having to write on demand and on deadline about topics that had no interest for me beyond the paycheck I got for the writing.

You Can Teach Writing

No matter how well you're prepared for teaching writing, it always takes a frustratingly long time to bring students to competence level at which they can write with minimal help from you.

I'll crack a few jokes along the way to keep up our spirits as we do the heavy lifting.

This Site Will Help You

I've organized this website into sections that correspond very roughly to what teachers do in teaching writing.

The list below details the heavy lifting needed in teaching writing.

Prepare Yourself

A huge amount of what's typically taught in English language arts is material students don't need to know unless they do graduate study in English.

This section of the website will help you sort that English stuff you could teach from what you must teach to prepare students for life beyond high school. Main topics in this section are

• Writing Objectives
• Expository Writing (terms defined)
• Types of Essays
• Best Teaching Practices

Prepare Writers

Teachers should prepare students to write expository nonfiction effectively and efficiently when they are compelled to do so. By focusing on writing strategies, which are easy to teach and learn, you reduce writing to short tasks students can master. Main topics in this section are

• Strategic Nonfiction Planning
• Thesis Statements
• ELA Writing Prompts

Guide Novice Writers

Talking about the writing process or grammar rules before plunging students into writing is a waste of time. Most composition and editing skills need to be just-in-time tutorials for small groups or individual students who have just tripped over a problem in their writing.

Topics for guiding novice writers are

• The Writing Process
• Paragraph Writing
• Teaching Grammar

Assess Progress

As a writing teacher you need to assess progress (yours and your students') on a daily basis. Most writing assessment should be informal and formative; a smaller portion should be formal and summative.

• Writing Assessment

Teach Booster Skills

Many skills that writers need are not confined to use in writing. The trick for ELA teachers is to teach cross-disciplinary skills so they support ELA teaching instead of replacing it.

• Reading Comprehension
• Critical Thinking
• Other Literacies

Teach All Students

This section is your resource when one or a few students in a class need different kinds of help than others in order to learn well. A particular student may need techniques to compensate for a learning deficit or to make better use of her writing time, for example.

• Struggling Writers

Teaching Writing Blog

The site's blog looks at wider issues in education which impact the writing teacher. You can subscribe to the blog feeds using RSS and your feed reader or get updates delivered by email.

Get More Help

This section is the place to find information that doesn't fit anywhere else on the website.

• Professional Development forums, books, and workshops to help you teach writing
• Teacher Resources guides you off site to free and inexpensive teaching aids
• Writing Points ezine signup, archives, and subscribers-only resources
• About includes sitemap, publisher bio, contact information, FAQs, policies

Just for Students

Just so I don't forget how frustrating teaching writing is, I offer two services to students. One is a free forum in which students can ask questions that I typically answer with some variation on "read the directions." The second is online writing courses, live or via email, for a fee.

• Essay Help forum
• Online Writing Courses