<p>It’s common knowledge that reading improves writing skills. </p>
<p>However, is the reverse true? Does writing more help you read better? </p>
<p>If so, how?</p>
<p>Why would writing help??? Reading exposes you to other people’s skills at putting ideas on paper but putting your own ideas on paper won’t give you any insights to others or increase your speed/comprehension.</p>
<p>Ideas can come to us from conversations, telecasts, storytelling. Picking up a pen, using a keyboard and mouse, those ideas can then be recycled through the lens of a mind. Writing to read works. It goes both ways. Writing fine tunes ideas as does reading as does listening. (listening is the hardest skill to acquire!) It’s all the same though for a willful soul desirous of learning. Take drawing and ideas, for instance: reading follows. Who can be a reader, who does not desire it?</p>
<p>Doesn’t writing improve reading via empathy?</p>
<p>In other words, you become better able to understand what a reader is saying since you’ve tried to say it yourself. You know what it’s like for the reader.</p>
<p>[Writing</a> to Read: A Collection of NWP Articles - National Writing Project](<a href=“http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3150]Writing”>Writing to Read: A Collection of NWP Articles - National Writing Project)</p>
<p>My older son also participated in a Writing to Read program when he was in kindergarten. They basically stuck kids who could read a little in front of computers and told them to see what they could produce. Somewhere around here I probably have his masterpiece. </p>
<p>I HV A RABT. HZ NAM IZ SNOE. Or something like that.</p>
<p>A better reader is created by reading–especially aloud. Reading makes better writers by expanding vocabulary and also providing new ways to look at your world. Without the tools of the trade–words and experience, writing doesn’t usually go anywhere.
Mathmom: My D did the Writing to Read program also. I still have doubts about it overall as a concept (and its been a lot of years!). The program did however allow her to write with no fear of correction which I think helped fuel her creativity. She’s a great writer today but at the time she was a horrible speller and you couldn’t read her creations without an interpreter (and no teacher would correct anything–so she thought it was all okay). In HS she finally had a VERY strict english teacher (who circled EVERY error) and miraculously her writing turned into polished compositions.</p>
<p>In the very early stages, like the I HAV A RABT stage, there’s no doubt that writing builds reading. If you want to really understand phonics, and concepts like spaces between words, and the point of a period, writing is a great way to learn them. </p>
<p>I think that writing can help reading at upper levels in two ways. One is that when readers have to write about their reading it holds them accountable. Knowing that you’re going to need to write an essay about the causes of the civil war makes you read the related texts more carefully and fully, if you do that enough it becomes a habit. The other is that if you’re receiving instruction in writing, and exploring various literary devices such as point of view, you’re going to become more aware of them in your reading as well.</p>
<p>Having said that, I don’t think the connection between writing and reading skills is equal both ways. I don’t think it’s possible to become a good writer without having read lots of examples, whereas I think writing is just one way to develop a reader and you could become a fantastic reader without ever having lifted a pencil.</p>
<p>The studies I’ve seen suggest that what improves both most is exposure to lots of non-directive conversation between the ages of one and five.</p>
<p>My son hated writing, at five he was reading things like* Cam Jamsen* and was horribly frustrated by what he could see were his misspellings. He still loathes writing, though he’s reasonably competent at it, but reads all the time. I don’t know how many books he reads now, but his senior year in high school he read over 100 outside of class. And yes reading that much has very positive effects on SAT scores. 
So that’s my anecdotal anti-evidence.</p>
<p>I think reading improve writing more than the inverse, and like mini I’ve seen the studies that suggest that real conversations when the kids are very young are critical for producing kids who are ready to learn.</p>
<p>I think good writing comes from hearing the cadence of an English sentence in one’s head. Conversation is one way to do this. Reading is another. Writing is a third. As a teacher of writing on the college level, it does seem that some students have their Helen Keller water, aha experience from writing, and then they are more interested in reading.</p>
<p>Allowing students to actually express themselves in their writing is a good way to begin. Once someone actually listens to them, they become more interested in listening to someone else’s voice.</p>
<p>The most exciting moment is when a student learns that s/he has a voice of her/his own.</p>
<p>So yes, I would say this can be a reciprocal relation with each skill enhancing the other.</p>
<p>Writing novels has made me a better reader in some ways. In others, it’s like going behind the curtain in Oz. There are some things that are more magical when we don’t know how they’re made.</p>
<p>“It’s common knowledge that reading improves writing skills.”
As a mother of college graduate who has always been a very strong writer and who does not like to read at all, I have to disagree. More so, my kid’s skills are totally reflected in ALL of her standardized tests. English was the highest score on ACT (35) and reading was lowest (28), even after college, Verbal section was still the lowest score on her MCAT. She writes very well and very fast. She has been writing a lot in her HS. There were no improvements in Reading.<br>
Based on this experience, it looks that lots of reading improves reading skill and lots of writing improves writing skills. Others might have opposite experiences.</p>
<p>mathmom,</p>
<p>That was an excellent resource. Thanks for sharing that link.</p>
<p>In my comp classes, we do a lot of writing *about * the stuff we’re reading, which is generally pitched at a higher, more complex level of difficulty than what the students have previously read. Having to write about their understanding of the reading, whether in short response papers, in-class guided writings, more formal essays, etc. all helps the students formulate their understanding of the readings–what they get, what their confused by, what questions they’re left with, what connections they can make to other writers and their own ideas-- as well as clarify the rhetorical moves the writers they read are making, in order to both increase understanding and learn to create arguments in similar fashion. </p>
<p>And I think what is true of students can be true for anyone wrestling with comprehend complex ideas. I often write to help myself understand the thoughts of others and to clarify my own thinking.</p>
<p>Imagine you are trying to write a story from an alternate point of view, for example. How would you go about it? Very often, teachers help students understand how to write a specific technique by reading a story where that technique is used. Ever read, Two Bad Ants?</p>
<p>Does the reverse hold true? Absolutely. The next time a student is reading a story from another’s POV*, you can bet those reading skills have improved. To that point, that’s why so many different types of essays & poems are being assigned all throughout the grades. Fiction, non-fiction, historical fiction, science fiction, informative essays, persuasive essays, how-to, etc, etc, etc. It works both ways. Just like listening/speaking work together, reading/writing work in unison.</p>
<p>The primary purpose in reading anything is comprehension. Understanding what you’re reading, in all its various styles and formats, takes an educated mind. And, if you understand better by doing it first, then so be it.</p>
<p>
Excellent point!</p>
<p>Exposure helps one understand other points of view better, but it doesn’t necessarily have to come from formal education, imo. </p>
<p>I guess “educated mind” is a phrase that only sits so well, smacks too much of indoctrination for my taste. I know that can’t be the connotation it evokes for you, Lima. Just a different perspective here.</p>
<p>Frankly, everybody is reacting differently to school reading and analysis of various novels. If D. was reading somewhat before HS, after AP English Lit., she seemed to be done…possibly for the rest of her life. She said, that all the analysis turned her off, she cannot pull herself to read for entertrainment any more, she has tried, but feel that reading novels is not entertaining any more. She has polished her writing skills considerably thru this class though. To the point that Honors English at college was real waste of time but very easy A, except for time consuming reading of tons of novels that D. was not interested at all. Writing skill has served her very well though, even in something like scince lab reports, not mentionning various essays for various reasons, even speeches. Good writing skills can improve grade in any class. Slower Reading is also beneficial in understanding complex material.</p>
<p>
Indoctrinate? Oh, not at all, unless you feel that all elementary teachers are trying to indoctrinate their students. OTOH, the goal of an expansive curriculum is to expose students to all sorts of forms of literature, so as to broaden their minds.</p>
<p>We homeschooled.</p>
<p>The world outside a classroom offers plenty of opportunities for people of all ages to broaden their horizons. That’s not to say one can’t gain further understanding by reading works of skilled writers, or even by reading works of less skilled writers.</p>
<p>Whether public schooled, private schooled, or homeschooled, the idea of equating the phrase “an educated mind” with indoctrination strikes me as idiosyncratic to a high degree–the connotation really seems kind of out-there to me.</p>
<p>“Educated mind” sounds a little snooty to me. <em>To me.</em> I’ve spent plenty of time around educated minds, which on occasion are the most closed. I think your view of my view as idiosyncratic speaks to with whom you have associated, not the degree to which my view is unusual. ;)</p>