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, 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 things as:
such 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.
-
Writing the first draft of a 400-500 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 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' demands of incoming students is 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: 06-Sep-2008
