Thoughts on Writing part 1

People learn to write by writing

As is the case with many other things people do, getting better at writing requires doing it -- a lot. This means actual writing, not merely listening to lectures about writing, doing grammar drills, or discussing readings. The more people write, the easier it gets and the more they are motivated to do it. Writers who write a lot learn more about the process because they have had more experience inside it. Writers learn from each session with their hands on a keyboard or around a pencil as they draft, rethink, revise, and draft again. Thinking about how to make your writing better is what revision is. In other words, improvement is built into the experience of writing.

What does this mean for teaching?

Writing instruction must include ample in-class and out-of-class opportunities for writing and should include writing for a variety of purposes and audiences.

Writing, though, should not be viewed as an activity that happens only within a classroom’s walls. Teachers need to support students in the development of writing lives, habits, and preferences for life outside school. We already know that many students do extensive amounts of self-sponsored writing: emailing, keeping journals or doing creative projects, instant messaging, making Web sites, blogging and so on. As much as possible, instruction should be geared toward making sense in a life outside of school, so that writing has ample room to grow in individuals’ lives. It is useful for teachers to consider what elements of their curriculum they could imagine students self-sponsoring outside of school. Ultimately, those are the activities that will produce more writing.

In order to provide quality opportunities for student writing, teachers must minimally understand:

• How to interpret curriculum documents, including things that can be taught while students are actually writing, rather than one thing at a time to all students at once.
• The elements of “writing lives” as people construct them in the world outside of school.
• Social structures that support independent work.
• How to confer with individual writers.
• How to assess while students are writing.
• How to plan what students need to know in response to ongoing research.
• How to create a sense of personal safety in the classroom, so that students are willing to write freely and at length.
• How to create community while students are writing in the same room together

by the Writing Study Group of the NCTE Executive Committee, November 2004

http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/writingbeliefs