Why you'll want to start paying attention to sentences if you're going to beat out Jack and Jill for the job.
The Slog
Teaching the Essay to Secondary School Students
In 2012, The Department of Education released “The Nation’s Report Card,” which stated that only 24% of twelfth graders were proficient in writing. The following year, CNBC’s Kelley Holland caused a minor sensation with her article “Why Johnny Can’t Write and Why Employers Are Mad” in which she addressed the poor writing skills of college graduates and the economic effects of this deficiency on corporate America. A quick internet search of “the costs of poor writing” confirms Holland’s thesis: thousands of sites detail the enormous financial losses caused by employees unable to write in clear, concise language those letters, reports, and memoranda their work-place demands.
As Holland points out, employers and researchers are divided regarding the cause of this problem. Some point to technology, claiming that the texting, twitter, and online chatting are damaging the abilities of students to form coherent sentences. Others fault the schools, decrying the scant attention paid to spelling, grammar, syntax, and rhetoric.
Though I am too ignorant to support either side in this debate—I suspect both are correct in their analysis—I do know of a way to train proficient writers. This method is arduous, time-consuming, and painful, for student and for teacher, but it works. Let me explain.
For the last fifteen years, I have offered seminars in Latin, history, and literature to home-educated students here in Asheville, North Carolina. These students meet with me for two hours per week and then return home where, if they are diligent, they will work another four to seven hours on their assignments, depending on the seminar in which they are enrolled. The students range in age from eleven to eighteen, and the subjects studied run from middle school composition to Advanced Placement literature, history, and Latin. With the exception of the lower level Latin courses, writing the essay is at the heart of all these classes.
Because students often remain with me for four, five, and six years of study—a few brave ones have attended seven years—I have the satisfaction of watching these young people mature academically. The girl who comes to me in seventh grade uncertain of her talents departs for Chapel Hill a young woman prepared for the rigors of college; the boy who once cried with frustration over his writing skills soon towers over me as he reports winning a scholarship to Covenant College.
Many of these same graduates later send emails or stop by the classroom to thank me for teaching them to write well. (My favorite story of success in writing comes not from those students who attend college, but from a former student, Will, who joined the Marine Corps and now serves in Marine Recon. His sergeant asked him to submit a written report and then called him into the office to ask him if his girlfriend had written the document). Below, for example, is a paragraph from an email sent by Tenley Garrett, a former student now studying at the University of North Carolina-Asheville. For her religious studies class, Tenley submitted a paper titled “Holy Ghost People” on Pentecostal Christians and wrote to tell me of her professor’s response:
“About a week later, he sent me an email asking a ‘favor,’ which was whether I would allow him to use my essay as an example to future students. He said he was really pleased by the quality of my writing, and he wanted to use the paper as a model to other students who might be struggling with essay structure. I was thrilled. And just last week, after submitting my second essay, I received an email beginning with: ‘Once again, I find myself deeply impressed by the quality of your written work.’ This kind of reassurance is what gets me through the rough patches of the semester as a student.”
Tenley then proceeded to thank me for teaching her to write.
But here’s the thing: I didn’t teach her to write. No—like all my other students, I forced her to write.
Don’t get me wrong. I do help equip my students with tools for composition. They read good books; they memorize a certain number of poems each year; they memorize weekly vocabulary lists; we review, again and again, certain rules of grammar; they study my four page guide, “The Asheville Latin Seminar Writing Guide,” that explains to the students the fundamentals of designing and writing the essay. Again and again, I tell students that the essay, whether written by a senior at Harvard or by a dual-enrolled freshman at our local community college, follows the same format. The essay, I tell students, is like ballroom dancing: the man is the frame, the woman the picture. In an essay, the frame is the structure—the introduction, the body, the conclusion—and the picture is whatever beauty and grace the student may bring to that frame.
As Holland points out, employers and researchers are divided regarding the cause of this problem. Some point to technology, claiming that the texting, twitter, and online chatting are damaging the abilities of students to form coherent sentences. Others fault the schools, decrying the scant attention paid to spelling, grammar, syntax, and rhetoric.
Though I am too ignorant to support either side in this debate—I suspect both are correct in their analysis—I do know of a way to train proficient writers. This method is arduous, time-consuming, and painful, for student and for teacher, but it works. Let me explain.
For the last fifteen years, I have offered seminars in Latin, history, and literature to home-educated students here in Asheville, North Carolina. These students meet with me for two hours per week and then return home where, if they are diligent, they will work another four to seven hours on their assignments, depending on the seminar in which they are enrolled. The students range in age from eleven to eighteen, and the subjects studied run from middle school composition to Advanced Placement literature, history, and Latin. With the exception of the lower level Latin courses, writing the essay is at the heart of all these classes.
Because students often remain with me for four, five, and six years of study—a few brave ones have attended seven years—I have the satisfaction of watching these young people mature academically. The girl who comes to me in seventh grade uncertain of her talents departs for Chapel Hill a young woman prepared for the rigors of college; the boy who once cried with frustration over his writing skills soon towers over me as he reports winning a scholarship to Covenant College.
Many of these same graduates later send emails or stop by the classroom to thank me for teaching them to write well. (My favorite story of success in writing comes not from those students who attend college, but from a former student, Will, who joined the Marine Corps and now serves in Marine Recon. His sergeant asked him to submit a written report and then called him into the office to ask him if his girlfriend had written the document). Below, for example, is a paragraph from an email sent by Tenley Garrett, a former student now studying at the University of North Carolina-Asheville. For her religious studies class, Tenley submitted a paper titled “Holy Ghost People” on Pentecostal Christians and wrote to tell me of her professor’s response:
“About a week later, he sent me an email asking a ‘favor,’ which was whether I would allow him to use my essay as an example to future students. He said he was really pleased by the quality of my writing, and he wanted to use the paper as a model to other students who might be struggling with essay structure. I was thrilled. And just last week, after submitting my second essay, I received an email beginning with: ‘Once again, I find myself deeply impressed by the quality of your written work.’ This kind of reassurance is what gets me through the rough patches of the semester as a student.”
Tenley then proceeded to thank me for teaching her to write.
But here’s the thing: I didn’t teach her to write. No—like all my other students, I forced her to write.
Don’t get me wrong. I do help equip my students with tools for composition. They read good books; they memorize a certain number of poems each year; they memorize weekly vocabulary lists; we review, again and again, certain rules of grammar; they study my four page guide, “The Asheville Latin Seminar Writing Guide,” that explains to the students the fundamentals of designing and writing the essay. Again and again, I tell students that the essay, whether written by a senior at Harvard or by a dual-enrolled freshman at our local community college, follows the same format. The essay, I tell students, is like ballroom dancing: the man is the frame, the woman the picture. In an essay, the frame is the structure—the introduction, the body, the conclusion—and the picture is whatever beauty and grace the student may bring to that frame.
Like any other skill, however, writing is learned not from classroom lectures or from books, but by constant practice. The students write essays through the year, and I read and mark those essays. They write essays at home, and sometimes they sweat through forty-minute essays in class. The younger students must keep journals. All the students write and write, and I mark and grade. Hence, the title of this piece: The Slog. The process is laborious, time-consuming, and from my standpoint, sometimes dreary as ditch-water, but the pay-off comes when they score well on their Advanced Placement test or return home from college at Christmas amazed by the response of their professors to their written work.
In this program, I use various approaches in training the students. The younger students and I focus on the structure of the essay, on getting the grammar correct, on learning to use evidence to support arguments. The older students frequently copy the style of other writers. (One helpful text is Gregory Roper’s The Writer’s Workshop: Imitating Your Way to Better Writing). They study syntax and style, and work with some of the classical rhetorical tools. (Joseph Williams’ Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace, is particularly helpful here). We have frequent recourse to the dictionary during class, and the students read essays outside of class.
And of course, I teach the tricks of any writing course. I explain why the passive voice can sometimes destroys a sentence, why an overabundance of adjectives can damage an argument, why the arrangement of words, sentences, and paragraphs creates strength in writing.
But mostly what the students do is write. And it is here, I suspect, why our schools are failing to teach writing. To force students to write an essay every couple of weeks, to require sixth and seventh graders to end the year with a fifteen hundred word essay, to require some of the upper-level students to submit twenty-five hundred word essays, to insist on high standards of writing from juniors and seniors: these tasks demand hard work and grit from the students and teacher alike.
Doubtless the grind of marking and grading of papers has caused many teachers to reduce the number of student essays. In my own case, I have approximately 130 students in composition-based classes, which means that in a typical week I am marking sixty essays in addition to grading tests and checking homework. To cut down on some of my labors, I hire Advanced Placement students to help with the marking. This practice hones their editorial skills and eases my own burden. About once a semester, I also require the AP students to grade one of their own forty-minute essays, using a rubric as their guide. Otherwise, on a typical weekend, I carry home for grading a stack of papers, folded lengthwise and bound with rubber bands, ranging in height from three to six inches.
My point here is not to bemoan my workload, but to demonstrate that clear, concise writing comes with a price tag. To produce competent writers—and I am of the opinion that nearly anyone can learn to write reasonably well—involves mucking about with words and sentences and paragraphs. It involves writing essays that instructors then correct. It involves learning the rudiments of editing, of reading one’s work aloud for errors, of sharing the work with others in hopes of constructive criticism.
And that’s it: there is no magic, there are no easy roads. Beginning in elementary school, teachers who want to produce writers must require their students to write, and must then mark and correct these assignments.
Do these things, and students will become writers.
Do them not, and students will continue to graduate from our high schools and universities lacking the ability to put sentences together in print.
In this program, I use various approaches in training the students. The younger students and I focus on the structure of the essay, on getting the grammar correct, on learning to use evidence to support arguments. The older students frequently copy the style of other writers. (One helpful text is Gregory Roper’s The Writer’s Workshop: Imitating Your Way to Better Writing). They study syntax and style, and work with some of the classical rhetorical tools. (Joseph Williams’ Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace, is particularly helpful here). We have frequent recourse to the dictionary during class, and the students read essays outside of class.
And of course, I teach the tricks of any writing course. I explain why the passive voice can sometimes destroys a sentence, why an overabundance of adjectives can damage an argument, why the arrangement of words, sentences, and paragraphs creates strength in writing.
But mostly what the students do is write. And it is here, I suspect, why our schools are failing to teach writing. To force students to write an essay every couple of weeks, to require sixth and seventh graders to end the year with a fifteen hundred word essay, to require some of the upper-level students to submit twenty-five hundred word essays, to insist on high standards of writing from juniors and seniors: these tasks demand hard work and grit from the students and teacher alike.
Doubtless the grind of marking and grading of papers has caused many teachers to reduce the number of student essays. In my own case, I have approximately 130 students in composition-based classes, which means that in a typical week I am marking sixty essays in addition to grading tests and checking homework. To cut down on some of my labors, I hire Advanced Placement students to help with the marking. This practice hones their editorial skills and eases my own burden. About once a semester, I also require the AP students to grade one of their own forty-minute essays, using a rubric as their guide. Otherwise, on a typical weekend, I carry home for grading a stack of papers, folded lengthwise and bound with rubber bands, ranging in height from three to six inches.
My point here is not to bemoan my workload, but to demonstrate that clear, concise writing comes with a price tag. To produce competent writers—and I am of the opinion that nearly anyone can learn to write reasonably well—involves mucking about with words and sentences and paragraphs. It involves writing essays that instructors then correct. It involves learning the rudiments of editing, of reading one’s work aloud for errors, of sharing the work with others in hopes of constructive criticism.
And that’s it: there is no magic, there are no easy roads. Beginning in elementary school, teachers who want to produce writers must require their students to write, and must then mark and correct these assignments.
Do these things, and students will become writers.
Do them not, and students will continue to graduate from our high schools and universities lacking the ability to put sentences together in print.
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