Teens ready for college writing?
Check the college degree requirements

Many students who enter college never complete their college degree requirements. They can meet the college admission requirement but cannot meet college course requirements in reading and writing.

Some kids who did well in high school may do poorly in college because they are deficient in English writing skill.

Many other students do poorly because they expect college writing to be like high school writing. By the time they realize their mistake, it may be too late — or too expensive — for them to catch up.

Mistaken expectations

In the first-year composition classes I teach, probably 20 percent of recent high school graduates express the mistaken beliefs that

• College instructors want students to express their feelings.

• College English requires them to produce imaginative writing.

• Correct grammar, punctuation and spelling and use the of capital letters are unnecessary; readers will know what they meant.

• Research means pasting chunks of web pages into a paper.

• Collaborative projects are fun activities like making posters or videos.

My students are shocked to find the writing-related college degree requirements are vastly different from that they expected.

Teach with college in mind

High schools need to teach students the writing skills they need to fulfill their college degree requirements.

You are setting Caitlin and Josh up to become college dropouts if you think first semester college English will teach them all they need to know to make a success of the papers they write in all their first semester classes.

You can find out what colleges expect by visiting the online writing labs (often called OWLs) run by colleges and universities. Since the Owls serve a diverse population in disciplines across the curriculum, you can be pretty sure their suggestions will be appropriate to all students, regardless of the programs they wish to study.

Three sites I recommend are:

OWL at Purdue University, the granddaddy of all Owls, includes on its site a section for teachers of grades 7-12

The Academic Writing section of the Rice University website

The Doyle Online Writing Lab at Reed College (Portland, Oregon) includes a list of writing prompts for a first-year college course HUM110. If you teach teens, you should take a good look at those writing topics.

My pamphlet Is Your Teen Ready for College Writing? is an overview of the writing skills implicit in the typical college degree requirements. Use the form at the bottom of this page to get a free copy.

Interact with college in mind

An overlooked but highly important aspect of teaching students to be ready to meet their college degree requirements is teaching appropriate use of social communication media: email, social media sites, blogging, wikis.

When colleges say that students must adapt to different writing situations, they don't mean just that chemistry lab reports shouldn't be written in haiku. They expect, for example, that students know not to use texting shorthand in an email to an instructor, an online class forum, or a public blog.

Useful sources:

Netiquette (the web version of Virginia Shea's book)

Etiquette for student emails to an instructor, by a college prof who is also a former homeschooler.

Incidentally, appropriate use of social media is high on the list of workplace and college requirements.