MISUNDERSTOOD MINDS: Let Us Help Solve Academic Writing                 Problems Faced by Today’s Students!

In today’s society, the ability to read and write is crucial for communication with the surrounding environment. With the increasing volume of electronic messaging, online news stories, and other printed sources of information, strong literacy skills are more important than ever. Unfortunately, despite this apparent need, assessments consistently report ubiquitous student underachievement in the literacy domain.

Like all learning problems, difficulties in writing can be devastating to a child's education and self-esteem. As children progress through school, they are increasingly expected to express what they know about many different subjects through writing. If a child fails to develop certain basic skills, he will be unable to write with the speed and fluency required to excel as these demands increase. Indeed, for a child struggling with a writing problem, the writing process itself interferes with learning. Students faced with such difficult odds have trouble staying motivated.

Writing is a complex intellectual task involving many component skills, some of which students may lack completely, some of which they may have only partially mastered. These skills involve, among other things:

•        Reading comprehension
•        Analytical skills
•       Writing skills, including:

             -writing mechanics: grammar, sentence structure, spelling, etc.

             -planning a writing strategy

             -communicating ideas clearly and concisely

             -constructing a reasoned, demonstrable argument

             -effectively marshaling evidence and using sources appropriately

               organizing ideas effectively

 

When students lack skills in these areas, their writing may be unsatisfactory in multiple ways – from poor grammar and syntax to unclear organization to weak reasoning and arguments. Complicating matters is the fact that many students’ reading skills are also poor. For example, if they cannot recognize the main point of an argument in their reading, they obviously cannot respond to this point in their writing. In addition, students often lack the meta-cognitive skills to recognize the areas in which their prior knowledge and skills are insufficient – and thus which skills they need to work to improve. 

 

We, the students of Araceli National High School want to raise this issue, because as the school year started after 2 years of modular and distance learning the writing skills of the students, which also affects their reading comprehension, has always been the problems of the teachers especially those who teach in senior high school. Most of the students were not writing with the frequency, we, especially the teachers might expect, nor were they doing the types of writing that will be required to them until their college years. As the school year started the most frequently assigned high school writing tasks required them to offer and support opinions, with a secondary emphasis on summarizing and synthesizing information. Students were rarely required to criticize an argument, define a problem and propose a solution, shape their writing to meet their readers’ needs, or revise based on feedback. Furthermore, according to a survey conducted on the high school teachers, especially those who teach English, language, and literacy subjects in senior high school, most of them said that their students have never written a paper that was more than five pages and most of them have many grammatical and spelling errors, wrong construction of sentences, and have a poor vocabulary. As a result, students have not had enough practice to develop a set of sophisticated writing skills.
When students lack skills in these areas, their writing may be unsatisfactory in multiple ways – from poor grammar and syntax to unclear organization to weak reasoning and arguments.

These academic problems are quite common among nowadays’ students. So what is the way out? The first one is improving the knowledge, supplementing the vocabulary and practicing the language. Second, educational institutions should take into consideration the peculiarities of all students. Dyslexic, dysgraphia and ELL students have special needs that should be met. For example, additional writing and reading classes or class accommodation would be of great value. Third, teachers and the school itself should take additional programs to learn how to teach writing. Finally, students themselves should take action to improve their writing. Practice makes perfect, as we all know. There are numerous techniques: freewriting, copying articles or essays, journaling and reading. In addition, it’s important to have someone who can give feedback on students’ writing.

Educational leaders must act now to ensure that educators have the resources they need, especially in the most disadvantaged school districts. In addition to providing targeted funding, it will be important to identify the practices that accelerate learning for students that have fallen behind, and to build policy and support structures for implementing these practices at scale.

 

 

Reference:

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2015/04/15/next-generation-standardized-tests-face-major-technical-barriers/