<p>I made my 14 year old son show me two of the essays he was responsible for writing over the summer. Egads, the kid’s grammar and writing is atrocious! S doesn’t understand how to use a comma or the tradition of writing in complete sentences. He switches verb tenses without reason. He rambles. Buried in his essays, there is a fair amount of content, but one must dig deeply. </p>
<p>Let me give you an example, he wrote “A Catcher in the Rye should have been an easy book to relate to my life. It is about a high school boys life and mainly his perceptions of the people around him. But this boy, Holden Caufeild, seemed to have such a different and more extreme perception of the world then I did. But though his personality and perceptions of the world seemed so unlike my own I discovered one of his character flaws to be one of everones.”</p>
<p>I am not sure what to make of this. Yes, his public schools are pretty lousy, but he is bright and seems to be doing very well on all standardized tests. His vocabulary is excellent. Is this simply a boy thing – something that I don’t understand and his older sister didn’t prepare me for? Is this developmental and he will snap out of it? Or does he need intevention and what do you suggest? </p>
<p>I plan to work with him over this weekend on his essays, but know that there are limits to the willingness of a 14 years old boy to listen to his mom.</p>
<p>I am not an educator, so will just speak from my personal experience with my boys. I remember that when my oldest in high school, I would swear he was writing at 6th grade level. Even though his vocab. seemed adequate, he couldn’t construct sentences in a meaningful way. My younger son always seemed to have some kind of writer’s block and agonized over everything he put on paper. Both boys, as yours does, had good content somewhat buried. Interestingly, both boys were diagnosed with ADD (one at 18 and one at 19). My daughter on the other hand could sit down and whip off a paper that had both good content and a pleasing flow to it (and proper punctuation). None were avid readers so I can’t attribute differences to that. On a positive note— The oldest who is finished with college, improved dramatically while in college. I recently read an article he wrote for a business publication and had a hard time believing that it came from him. I’m still waiting on the younger son to become more comfortable with his writing–his mechanics improved greatly during high school, but he still seems to have a fear of writing.</p>
<p>I think it’s a boy thing … but that’s an explanation, not an excuse. Most boys have to work harder on their writing skills. I think people who read more find it easier to write well, but that can be like pulling teeth with boys. </p>
<p>To be a good writer, it’s important to have something you want to communicate. Help your son find a subject he is interested in and be creative in developing his communication skills. For instance, in grade school, our son loved (and still loves) sports. He wasn’t interested in writing but he enjoyed pretending he was an ESPN reporter doing commentary for a game or interviewing an athlete. To do this, he had to organize his thoughts logically and persuasively. This was good preparation for learning to write well.</p>
<p>Might be a boy thing but my very math/science D wrote the same clunky way.</p>
<p>It was if there was a disconnect between her brain and hand which didn’t exist between her mouth and hand. She excels at interviews. So, when college app time came up (and I realized she was not a strong writer :eek: despite the testing data to the contrary) I suggested she use my old dictaphone and talk her essays and edit later. She felt self conscious dictating so she would just talk , then transcribe what she said. </p>
<p>It helped her find her written voice. Try it . It might work. </p>
<p>And yes, he’s 14 . I’m betting the maturity of 2-3 extra years will help a lot.</p>
<p>Both my s and d are strong (but very different) writers. With each, however, I remember having to teach some fairly basic grammer during their late middle school years. In part, I think the ability and demand to think complexly suddenly exceeds the grammatical structures that have been taught/used to date.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what makes a better writer. Both of my sons love to read but are not exceptional writers. My husband is an engineer, only reads newspapers and magazines and is an excellent technical writer. I love to read and I love to write! I think it may have something to do with patience and just doing a lot of it - writing and re-writing. My sons tend to whip off essays but not re-write them or even look them over again. I will write something, let it sit, and then come back and re-write it. My daughter enjoys reading and is a very good writer and I’ve noticed (she took a couple of on-line classes this summer) that she will do and re-do her college papers until they are acceptable to her.</p>
<p>My ex boyfriend was the same way. I took a class with him in high school, after never realizing that writing wasn’t his strong suit, and I remember how long it took him to write a paper that was so much worse than mine. It wasn’t really that he didn’t know how to write, he was just never taught how to write a good paper, which comes in steps over many years. What I’ve found about public schools is that they throw you in the shark pool a little bit when it comes to writing papers.</p>
<p>His papers didn’t improve much even with my tutelage, and his writing is still pretty atrocious. Some people just “don’t have it” when it comes to writing their thoughts in an organized, coherent fashion. I love my ex, but even just writing an email or message his wording is terrible. I’m sure I’ll get some calls this year to help him with a paper. </p>
<p>At 14 some of my papers were pretty bad, and I can write an A college paper now, so sometimes these things take time and practice. He may very well get to school and start doing in class revisions and other things that will help him think through his writing more.</p>
<p>I had a real issue with my son’s school, specifically his language arts teacher when he was that age. S was generally a good student, but the writing was poor. Not many writing assignments were given that year, and even fewer made their way back to me. When one did, I was appalled. Not only was the paper poorly written, it was virgin of any teacher’s comments or corrections. Just a big red A blazoned on the front. When I saw that “scarlet letter”, and read that rag, I immediately asked to meet with the teacher. When I saw him, I gave him the paper, and asked him to please read it aloud to me. He didn’t even get past the first sentence (or non sentence, I should say) when he looked at me and said, “Clearly, not his best work”, and then proceeded to excuse himself with how tired he was that night and the , oh, so many papers he has to read, and how S’s work is really among the best of the group (that was truly scary). It compromises the parent’s ability to work with the student on clear shortcomings when a jerk like that puts a grade on a paper with no comments, no corrections, particularly when the grade is an “A”.
I did get the lazy teacher to read and correct S’s work from now on, since the guy was now aware that I was monitoring the situation. Not that he gave many writing assignment, and not that he read anyone else’s paper, bringing my son’s grades down in those assignments.</p>
<p>This thread is making me foam at the mouth. My kids went to a K-8 public school and between the inventive spelling, philosophy the kids should feel good about their writing (no matter how terrible it is) and lack of an writing curriculum have suffered greatly in this arena.
I thought there would be some instruction when eldest child entered 7th grade and finally had a designated English teacher. Hah, all he had were spelling drills, some abridged novel reading and short answer responses. In 8th grade, the math teacher was morphed into the English teacher and there was no writing whatsoever. That year he applied to a dual enrollment HS, he had to submit an essay from a history test with the application since he had no graded paper to submit!
This private intense HS was overwhelming at first because son could not write at all. Fortunately, two years of intense Latin taught him the grammar he never had. He didn’t have much use for the reading (this is a kid who curls up with Popular Mechanics) but the expectation was he formulate an argument and actually use some adjectives and adverbs. He had to write, rewrite and write more in most of his subjects. This was torture for him, but he stuck it out. Senior year he took the freshman writing program at the university. What a difference, there is hope. He picked focussed courses in areas he was interested and became excited about writing and put the skills he learned in HS to use. Worked very hard, but did quite well and I’m floored at his work.
We whipped my daughter out of the public school and she entered son’s HS for 8th grade. She worked so hard, catching up on writing too, but at the end of the year decided this school was too tiny for her and entered the public HS. She has gotten A’s on all papers there, says at the other HS would beC+ at best. Truly puts no effort into them.
As a public school nurse, several years ago I needed to take the state literacy exam for teachers. This is a controversial exam, the failure rate is quite high. Lot’s of review courses are offered to help pass. I’m not a writer, let alone a teacher. Went in cold and ended up with an almost perfect score. Found this so disturbing. Just had vocabulary, a dictation, not difficult CR and had to write a persuasive essay. Basic, Basic stuff. Geez. We have teachers in the class room with temporary licenses who need to retake the exam. Teachers who have to take courses in how to pass this exam. They are our kid’s writing instructors and can’t write themselves. very scary</p>
<p>“It was as if there was a disconnect between her brain and hand which didn’t exist between her mouth and hand.”</p>
<p>This is my soon to be 14 year old S. He is a voracious reader, has an extensive vocabulary for his age and is extremely verbal. He hates the physical aspect of writing, and typing, although a little less so. I understand it: When I write/type I leave out words, and even see the phanthom words when I proofread, because they are there in my head.</p>
<p>We are looking for a good voice recognition software package. There is a coherent essay in there somewhere; we just need to help it find a way out.</p>
<p>In the excerpt you posted, what did you find most problematic? The misspelling? the vagueness of the statments? I’ve never seen “everones” before, but the misuse of “then” for “than” is rampant, as are misplaced apostrophes, including by parent posters. Does the essay become more focused or is it characterized by similar vagueness throughout? You will find that college students have trouble starting essays. Many don’t know what a thesis statement or topic sentence is and some attend top 10 schools.
Was the essay a first draft? Did the teacher provide comments and opportunities for revising?
I want to speak up for my S’s public school teachers who commented copiously on both grammar, syntax and content and pushed each student to revise. I know my S’s writing improved a great deal from one draft to the other. But I recall that S had trouble analyzing works that had a high psychological content and writing papers that involved talking about his feelings or reactions to things or events. He had no trouble at all writing a paper on Dickens’ Hard Times, but the one assignment he had real difficulty with entailed describing his reaction to a particular building. He could describe the building pretty meticulously, but disliked being asked to describe his feelings.</p>
<p>A good writing tutor can make the difference. My son now goes to a private school where the emphasis is on writing. He was abysmal in that subject and "F"ed his first two writing assignment, a real eye opener for him since he came from a school where the teachers did not read or correct the papers with more than a cursory glance. Those failure grades, earned him a mid quarter warning note and referral to academic assistance. The chair of the English department worked with him three days a week, made him write and rewrite. Talk about too much homework, well, in a school where there is an emphasis on writing assignments, research papers, the homework load has to be heavy. There is no shortcut for learning to write well, learning to write papers with every fact substantiated by a good source, support for every opinion.<br>
He is still not a superb writer, but he has learned the standard rules and formats, which is really what you need to get your ideas across and defend them. Teaching someone to be a terrific, interesting writer can be very difficult. Teaching him the basic tents is not. A big obstacle for my son was the years of the “write as you think” that his elementary school started. Creativity can come later and in different venues. What the schools need to teach is format and procedure in getting basic info across.</p>
<p>“What the schools need to teach is format and procedure in getting basic info across.”</p>
<p>How True! When my children were in elementary school, whole language was the rage. They were encouraged to write creatively with no thought to syntax, grammar, spelling or punctuation. The creative thought process was not to be stifled. As a consequence, the basic premise of their papers was often good; but it was difficult to appreciate as one waded through the incomplete sentences, misspellings, run-ons, etc.</p>
<p>I homeschooled both my boys through 8th grade and partly through high school, and, with both, there was a major growth in writing ability between 7th and 9th grades. My younger son, in particular, was an atrocious writer up until 8th grade. We were pretty relaxed with writing up to that point, but in 8th grade I used a writing curriculum that moved very sequentially through different steps in writing. The change was amazing. When he decided to take English at the public school for high school, he submitted writing samples and was accepted into Honors English. But you never would have believed that had you seen his writing before 8th grade. I have heard from other homeschooling moms, as well, that boys (in particular) tend to shoot forward in writing ability around that time. Just one of those developmental things, I guess. (This son never did learn to spell that well, but makes good use of Spell Check. He credits his good grammar skills to the fact that he always heard correct grammar spoken at home, and thus knows what “sounds right.”)</p>
<p>Your boy doesnt reed. If he read a lot grammar would be natural. Have him read the newspaper, essays, and other intellectual works on top of lots of books. I was a horrible writer, but grammar rules came easy to me becasue it is logical like math. Over the years, and a few good english teachers, I was able to become a pretty strong writer (11 on SAT essay if that means anything). If he is not a C student in english writing like that, your school has failed.</p>
<p>After a fair amount of discussion, it seems like the following is true.</p>
<p>First, he hated the writing prompt and felt as if he couldn’t write his own thoughts. Thus, the mushy language (which is what I objected most to) reflects his mushy, “get me out of here,” thinking. </p>
<p>Second, his grammar problems are real. He was been raised in a “spell as you wish” world and it hasn’t served him well. He has only a passing understanding of the rules of punctuation and has lapses in verb conjugations. My s has agreed to work with me on this. He is also starting to take Latin next semester, which I hope will serve him well. </p>
<p>Last, my s showed me some writing that is considerably better (albeit still with grammatical problems). Most importantly, he did seem to want to be a decent writer, so that is good.</p>
<p>Clearly, this is something I will need to monitor. . . .</p>
<p>It sounds like you are a good parent since you have taken the time to idenfify specific problems, track down the reasons for these problems, focus on what’s important and what’s extraneous, and formulate a workable plan of action. Your son sounds like a good kid, too, since he recognizes his strengths and weaknesses (at a young age) and is willing to work so he can improve his skills. Good job all around.</p>
<p>I am sitting here correcting papers on capitalization from the first 2 weeks of school and I am cringing because I know that some parents are going to be very angry that their kiddo didn’t get all of them right. Ironically, I was noticing that my boys did much better than my girls on these packets. </p>
<p>Anyway, I sent home a year-long plan for the parents before school started. It clearly had the study of capitals for the first 2 weeks of school, and yet the parents are getting irate when their kids get common nouns that are capitalized marked wrong or when the random capitals in the middle of words are marked. I have even been told by other teachers that marking errors will “Hurt their hearts.” Whatever. </p>
<p>It is great to see that some parents actually WANT their kids to be taught. Believe me, the kids are frustrated at first, but SO happy when they can finally read their own work and know that it is real quality. </p>
<p>Thanks for giving me a shot of courage regarding this. :)</p>
<p>We recently read two essays from my d. The first was her college essay RD. I found it interesting, organized, and for the most part well-written, with only occasional errors. I am NOT a great writer myself, so I realize my qualifications are limited. My h. has far greater skills, but he too, was pleased with her first try. The second was a summer homework assignment. In contrast, it was awful. Grammer errors were abundant. Descriptions were weak. The use of slang was rampant. </p>
<p>It appeared that the second paper was written in haste, without any interest. My hope was that it was an anomaly. My fear is that the first essay we read was the exception. </p>
<p>Obviously she is a senior (writing college essays). She has always received high grades in English. She even received a score of “11” on her ACT. We rarely read any of her school assignments, and the teachers would assure us that she was performing at a high level. We assumed all was well. I do not accept that now. We will be reading (and correcting) future English papers. </p>
<p>On one hand, we feel this intervention is too late. We also want to make sure that we are not doing the work for her, but rather pointing out the mistakes so that she can learn from them. Of course the danger is that we will be teaching her our mistakes! She is also resisting our intervention.</p>
<p>Far better that you read your childrens’ papers at a younger age!</p>