Ch. 11 Developing Content Area Writers

On page 307 our book states that many students that graduated from high school were not well prepared for the kinds of writing's which are expected in college and in the workplace, and I agree with this statement because, when I graduated from high school my writing skills were lacking in every area. I still do not feel comfortable writing GREAT papers today, but I have learned to write decent papers since I have been in college. It is sad that we are not taught how to write lengthy (5 - 10 pages) essay's or other types of papers in high school. I remember doing one research paper in the eleventh grade and it consisted of five paragraphs. We should be able to learn how to write good papers before we leave the high school setting.

I think that if teachers would use a similar guide to the one on page 314 in our book, then students would more capable of learning how to write and organize a good, or even great, paper before leaving high school. Experience is the best teacher and if students learn to write a great paper before they graduate from high school then they are more likely to write an excellent paper in college.

In order to prepare students for writing it is important to allow them the opportuntity to discuss their experiences (or lack of) in writing. In order to know where to begin helping students learn to write excellent papers you must know where they are lacking. This can be done through quick writes(is a form of impromptu writing that stimulates briainstorming), brainstorming and goal setting(the purpose of brainstorming/goal setting is to make writing much more informed and goal-directed right from the start), guided writing procedure(is designed to activate studnets' prior knowledge and thinking about a topic before they write), and finally stop and list(was developed to teach students with learning disabilities how to analyze writing assignments and how to plan and organize their responses). All of these steps build off of one another to help us become better writer's and thinker's as well. It is important to really think about what we are writing about so that we can tell our reader's exactly what we mean when they finish reading our writings.