Developing
Good Writers
By Nancy Doran
Good thinking precedes good writing.
As an editor, writing tutor, and homeschool teacher of twenty ears, I am frequently asked for advice about improving
children’s writing skills. Most of the calls
I receive are from parents of high schoolers, while some calls concern college-aged students. Although it is never too
late to improve skills, there are some
ways that young parents can ensure that
their children have the best start and the
greatest chance at writing success.
First, all children who are not yet reading independently should have books
read to them on a daily basis. This may
sound obvious to many, but a lot of
modern-day parents do not read and do
not understand its value. My daughters
have babysat in homes where there are
no books—and I am not exaggerating,
as shocking as that may be. It is simply
unfathomable to me that there are any
parents in this country who do not have
a stockpile of books for their children to
peruse. This does not have to be a bud-get-breaker, either, since our country has
thousands of libraries full of books available for borrowing at no charge.
The importance of this cannot be over-
stated: Children who are read to develop
a love for books and tend to have greater
and more active imaginations. They are
also more curious and ask more ques-
tions, and they are more able to discern
good literature, especially if what is being
read is well written. In addition, parents
who take time out of their busy sched-
ules to read to their youngsters are dem-
onstrating, in a concrete way, that they
highly value books and reading. This is
the first and most basic step that must be
taken if parents want to ensure academic
success later.
. . . All children who
are not yet reading
independently should
have books read to them
on a daily basis.
was in public school kindergarten (our
first and last year in the public schools),
the philosophy at that time was to encourage pupils to write, even if they were
not ready. The thinking was that somehow, if the child created something, such
as a “book,” he would feel good about it
and be proud of the achievement. The
problem was that the child was applauded for a story that might have lacked
basic sentence structure and could be
riddled with spelling errors. That philosophy never made sense to me; I always
thought it made more sense to teach
a subject the right way from the start
rather than letting the child do whatever he thinks is right and then having to
fix problems later. What happens to the
child’s self-esteem then?
The best way to start a child in writing lessons is by having him do copy
work. The student or the teacher reads
a brief passage from an excellent children’s book, not more than two or three
sentences, and then the student copies
those sentences. The teacher should then
look to see if there are any errors, but she
should not mark the copy work at this
point, because the next step is to ask the
child to try to find any mistakes. This
teaches the child to be a keen observer,
which is essential when proofreading later on. It also gives him a chance to catch
mistakes and fix them before his teacher
gives the work a final inspection.
The next step in training your child
to be a competent writer is dictation,
which should be started when copying
starts to seem too easy or too childish.
The teacher dictates a brief passage of
literature or poetry, going slowly and repeating as necessary so that the student
is able to write it all down. Then, the student checks his work for obvious errors,
such as omitted periods or names that
accidentally had not been capitalized.
Once that is done, either the student or
the teacher can check the work against
the original. Even if the child looks first
and corrects errors, the teacher needs to
pay careful attention in case the same
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