Introduction to "Write On!"

By Terri Hessler

I'm a bit of a writing freak, as any of my former students (college, high school, or middle school) will tell you. I think it is a critical skill for two reasons. First, effective communication is just plain efficient. Say what you gotta' say (or in this case, write what you gotta' write) and if you do it with correct usage and mechanics, you save the reader time and effort in receiving the message. With the advent of electronic communication, that concept has not changed. If anything, it is more important because writing as a form of communication is more commonplace than it ever was. Sure, my parents wrote letters to each other once a week while Dad was stationed in Germany at the end of WWII, and people regularly sent various other kinds of mail (what we call snail mail now) but nowadays, people blog, email, text, chat, and greet (with electronic greeting cards) daily or in many cases, hourly! These participants in the modern-era writing community are more numerous and younger than they ever were in the era of snail mail. Though the mode of writing has changed, as well as its form, it still serves the same function: communication. And now, more than ever, people write what they want to communicate in more concise ways. Text messaging is the perfect example of this. I love it that text messaging seems more popular than phone calling! The "power of the pen" may have been replaced by the non-QWERTY cell phone keypad, but the word still rules, even if the word is now a mishmash of letters and symbols.

The second reason I think writing is a critical skill is because I believe that writing is a tool for learning. I know this to be true from my own experience as a student (and I've got many, many years of that experience) and as a teacher (11+ and counting). There is nothing more useful to me when trying to get my brain around a concept than writing about it. Writing helps clarify my position/viewpoint/understanding (or lack thereof) on complex—and maybe not so complex—topics. I can't explain how it does, but it does. I would guess that writing makes me use a cognitive function not otherwise accessed or maybe use cognition in a different way. All I know is that writing about something leads me to a fuller understanding of whatever it is I am writing about. It is because of this reason (that writing is a tool for learning) that my research focus is improving written expression in children with deficits in that area, particularly students with learning disabilities and those at-risk for being identified with learning disabilities.

I learn a little bit about writing by the research I do, but I learn a lot more by reading the existing research literature in my field. I like it that I can share what I learn with people I know so that it can help them if they have children who struggle with writing. This blog is another opportunity for me to do that. Every month or so, I'll share a strategy that can help improve written expression specifically, and academic performance in general.

In this column, I'll share that the commonly accepted adage that "practice makes perfect" applies somewhat to written expression in as much as it's perfect practice. Thus, my mantra is "perfect practice makes perfect." It's not very efficient to practice errors, which is what students do who produce a lot of writing but do not get any or much feedback. So, while it's good to write a lot when you're learning how to write, someone needs to be giving lots of positive feedback as well as targeted corrective feedback. Since church leaders have consistently encouraged journal-writing, members have the perfect opportunity to have their children practice a gospel principle while improving an academic skill. Maybe you could have a family journal that everyone takes a turn writing in, perhaps a different person each week. During family home evening, that person can read their journal entry aloud to their natural audience. Later in the week, in private and one-on-one, a parent can give lots of ebullient praise and target one item for improvement. Perhaps there's a word that was misspelled, or a comma misused, or a word not capitalized. Have the child correct the error right there in the journal and encourage him or her to pay attention to that skill the next time.

Many people are uncomfortable with this kind of attention to correction, to which I say, "Pshaw!" If you were teaching that child to play the piano, you would correct a note delivery error. If you were teaching that child to swing a baseball bat, you would correct his or her swing form. Why are academic skills any different? I say they are not, and in fact, are more critical. We don't need to fear harming our child's self-esteem with correction as long as it's delivered matter-of-factly and with kindness. I argue that a child's self-esteem improves with success, not vice-versa.

That's all for this month; write on!