{"id":59,"date":"2018-03-12T01:11:00","date_gmt":"2018-03-12T01:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/collegewritingclinic.com\/?page_id=59"},"modified":"2018-07-10T07:19:14","modified_gmt":"2018-07-10T07:19:14","slug":"home","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/collegewritingclinic.com\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWhy a clinic? What are you saying about student writing?\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

This website shares what I\u2019ve learned so far about teaching college students to write better sentences.<\/p>\n

Why focus on sentences? Students should be able to write acceptable sentences by the time they reach college, shouldn\u2019t they?<\/p>\n

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George Orwell, Paragon of Clarity<\/p>\n

As my wife says, Should shmould. The fact is, many college students write awkward, error-filled sentences. (You\u2019ll find some examples below.) And, though we may wish it were otherwise, errors and awkwardness are the first thing most readers notice. If students don\u2019t learn to write competent sentences, they\u2019ll be handicapped for life\u2014in their college classes, when they apply for jobs, and when they have to write emails or reports at work.<\/p>\n

As you may have discovered, though, this is a very hard skill to teach. Grammar lessons alone don\u2019t improve student writing. You can teach all of the key concepts, but if students don\u2019t use them in their own writing, you haven\u2019t accomplished much.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s difficult to teach sentence skills, but not impossible. Drawing from the ideas of Jeff Anderson, Doug Lemov, and others, and experimenting with some of my own, I\u2019ve devised a method that has helped my students write more clearly and gracefully. This is a work in progress, but I wanted to share it with instructors seeking new ways to teach these skills more effectively.<\/p>\n

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Writing instructors:<\/strong> <\/em><\/h2>\n

If you\u2019ve found effective ways to help students improve their sentences, please share your ideas. <\/em>Go to the \u201cOther Teaching Strategies\u201d page and post your suggestions. We all thank you!<\/em><\/p>\n

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Q&A, for those who want to know more<\/strong><\/h2>\n

What about all the research showing that teaching grammar does little or nothing to improve student writing\u2014that, in fact, it can have an adverse effect?<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m aware that I\u2019m stepping into a minefield, and contradicting many of my colleagues\u2019 strongly held beliefs. Most research consigns teaching grammar to the category of Harmful, Backward Practices, which also includes bloodletting and lobotomy. But there are different ways to teach students how to handle sentences, and recent research shows that non-traditional approaches can be effective. (See the 2012 paper, \u201cGrammar for Writing: An Investigation of the Effects of Contextualised Grammar Teaching on Students\u2019 Writing<\/a>,\u201d by Debra Myhill, et al. As the authors observe, \u201c[E]xisting research is limited in that it only considers isolated grammar instruction\u2026\u201d This study investigated, instead, \u201cthe impact of contextualized grammar instruction on students\u2019 writing performance,\u201d using what the authors call a \u201cmixed-methods approach.\u201d)<\/p>\n

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Why devise a new method? Don\u2019t instructors already know how to teach these skills?<\/em><\/p>\n

Somewhere, perhaps, skillful professors are working miracles, but I haven\u2019t found them. There are some promising approaches, which I\u2019ve drawn from\u2014but I\u2019m not convinced that any of them will transform the writing of students who arrive at college with weak sentence skills.<\/p>\n

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What results can you show?<\/em><\/p>\n

Comparing Before and After writing samples from the 2016-17 school year, I found that nearly half (43%) of my students improved a great deal after one semester, and all but an eighth of them improved at least somewhat. I wish I had more dazzling results to show, but this outcome is much better than my students achieved before I adopted this method.<\/p>\n

My approach seems most effective with students who take the assignments seriously, and who can tell the difference between a well-written sentence and an awful one. It doesn\u2019t work for those who don\u2019t put in the effort, or whose innate sense of English is so weak that they can\u2019t see anything wrong with a terrible sentence.<\/p>\n

Students at different skill levels need different kinds of instruction. I\u2019ve included a list of Recommended books<\/a>\u00a0for instructors whose students need either more basic or more sophisticated instruction than this website offers.<\/p>\n

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Is it possible that you\u2019re holding your students to unrealistically high standards?<\/em><\/p>\n

Judge for yourself. Here are some sentences written by my past students:<\/p>\n