Developing a Confident Writer

[author][author_info]This is an excerpt from an article by Donna Crawford, a former education consultant with SHARE. Donna taught for more than 30 years in the US and Taiwan. This article was originally published in SHARE’s Fitted Pieces, and is used with permission[/author_info] [/author]

Often when parents think about their child writing, they envision him sitting at a table, handing him a blank piece of paper and asking him to compose a paragraph or story. However, writing does not happen in isolation, but from providing a rich background of motivational experiences for the child.

Creating Motivation

This background begins with their early reading experiences. Children love books and will listen to stories from infancy on. The stories they hear build a bank of information and ideas from which they will draw when they begin to write themselves. They respond to these stories they have heard through speaking, pictures and eventually writing. At first, they dictate their stories to an adult who writes them down for the child. Then they learn to memorize them and are able to “read” these back. This experience introduces them to a very important concept – writing is simply talk written down. It helps them to understand that writing is not some special or restricted process unrelated to their thoughts and speech.

Language Art Skills

Once we have motivated children to write, we need to make sure they have the language arts skills needed to accomplish the task. These fall into five major categories: literature, speech, spelling, grammar and handwriting.

It is necessary to provide a rich environment of literature and resource books for children to read and use as references. In the area of speech, parents should encourage their children to talk about the stories that have been read to them and to dictate their own personal stories to be written down by an adult. Of course, as children get older, speech can be used for drama, or to entertain others with poetry and expressive reading.

Spelling skill is obviously necessary and can be taught in several different ways. Parents can use a formal, commercial program, but should always leave room for special word lists developed from the child’s reading and work in other content areas.

We all know that good grammar is needed to produce good writing, but parents should avoid making rules the focus. It is better to get children involved in meaningful writing activities which create the need to learn the rules of grammar and their application in writing rather than simply memorizing a list of rules or picking out errors on isolated worksheets.

Finally, legible handwriting is needed for the writing process. Modern programs for teaching handwriting have progressed away from the “old” circles and sticks method toward newer programs that are more connected, which smooth out the manuscript printing providing and easier transition into cursive writing.

There are many ways to teach writing and many skills that must be developed. Some people claim these skills are best developed by exposing the child to a background filled with classical literature and good models of writing. The hope is that they will learn to write with the skill and style of those whose famous works they read. This approach may work very well for some children, particularly for gifted students or those with above average language arts skills. Most children, however, still need to be taught the writing process and the specific skills required to be a good writer.

What are the best strategies you know to work for developing confident writers?

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