High
schoolers must learn academic writing skills that will keep them
afloat in college.
Will all high school graduates go to college?
No. Nor should they.
But all high school graduates ought to have the basic skills
for college anyway. That's because the academic
writing skills colleges expect are not really any different from
what employers expect of high school graduates.
The only real difference is that colleges lay out their expectations
in excruciating detail so dummies can understand them, while the
manager at Piggly Wiggly expects you to be smart enough to identify
basic writing skills on your own.
Writing skills colleges require
What colleges insist students to be able to do is not anything
very sophisticated. College requirements include such skills as:
Not one of those items requires writing talent or great intellect.
They also don't require mental maturity. Each should be well within
the ability of every high school graduate.
What am I saying? Those basic writing skills ought to be within
the ability of every sixth grader. You don't need to
be a Shakespeare or Faulkner to write a complete sentence.
Colleges want basic written literacy
Although colleges expect incoming students to have basic skills,
I consider myself lucky if half my first year composition students
can write at the eighth grade level. I have had students in my
college classes who wrote at the third grade level.
For years, I took high school graduates considered not yet ready
for college writing and got them ready in anywhere from five to
15 weeks.
If I could prep those kids for college work in that short amount
of time, there’s no reason you can’t do it before they
get to college. You've got six years in grades 7-12.
You may feel, with some justification, that giving students only
basic skills is hardly doing enough.
However, if you don't provide a solid foundation in basic writing
skills good enough to land Joshua a job at Piggly Wiggly, he won't
have good academic writing skills either. The same basic skills
are required in both arenas.
Created 15-Mar-2008; updated: 29-Dec-2009
