What colleges expect of writers
Academic writing skills are basic literacy

High schoolers must learn academic writing skills that will keep them afloat in college.

Will all high school graduates go to college?

No. 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 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

The academic writing skills colleges expect are not very sophisticated. College requirements include such writing skills as:

• Writing in complete sentences.

• Starting a sentence with a capital letter.

• Using correctly commonly confused homophones like their and they’re, its and it’s.

• Spelling correctly the words students regularly use in their writing.

• Writing a paragraph developing a single topic sentence.

• Speed drafting a 400-750 word informative/persuasive essay in an hour.

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 writing skills ought to be within the ability of every sixth grader. You don't need to be a Shakespeare or a 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 in grades 7 through 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.

Go as far beyond the basics as you can, but make sure each of your students can write a sensible, 400-500 word expository essay in an hour, complete with correctly spelled words, reasonably correct grammar and punctuation, and normal capitalization.

Return to best teaching practices from this page on academic writing skills.