The Public (employers, teachers, themselves) Views on Young Writers

The observation of students’ writing skills can come from a bounty of sources; almost everyone has opinions on specific writing practices, and skills both in higher education and grade school. However, the views of teachers on students’ writing cannot be ignored. The instructors are working with students; these opinions are those that inform television, radio, and literary media. There are also students’ and their parents’ views, which are important to the development of these students’ writing, because they can only attempt to improve their weaker points, they need to know what their weak points are first.

The position that employers have will make a great difference in the careers of students who posses or lack these positive skills. Employers’ most desired skills include “writing news releases”, “critical thinking”, and “problem solving” (Perceptions of Public Relations Education). All of which some would argue are in the WRT205 curriculum

Researching the Topic

Although the sources I have found are relevant, but there is also the research process, which can relate to the reader the range within this topic. Public media does deal with issues of education and writing, but these topics have a huge range and hardly any are relevant. The fact that these topics arise implies the fact that writing is important, but the underlying question, “How do college students write?” is not brought to the forefront. The topics that the media covers include, but not limited to are grammar, plagiarism, the SATS, class sizes, economics, literacy gaps, minorities, Ebonics, and writing standardized tests. These mass media topics reach the surface, while the educational magazines can cover a more localized area. These educational magazines, like the “Chronicle for Higher Education” can range from personal accounts of teaching writing, to the impact that technology and television play. However, even in these sources a researcher must wade through the depths to find the miniscule details that actually describe, what college writers’ lack. Although these articles illustrate in negative terms, we might locate conclusions to the strong points of college writers as well.

Technology’s Impact on Writing and Education in General

In “Reflections on a Shimmering Screen”, the author, Bronwyn T. Williams, conveys the affect that television has had on how students manipulate ideas and their work habits The first change is the way students work, they have less focus and attention for their activities; because students are raised by a television watching culture, they use varying levels of concentration for different situations. In a house setting, a sitcom may be viewed as background, while doing some other activity(ies), contrasted by an intense movie that demands the main focus and the watchers will concentrate on the movie. Varying levels of concentration effect students; they have problems concentrating on what they trying to accomplish.

Students raised watching television and using computers tend to think nonlinearly, but in academia the emphasis is placed on linear items like books, and research. Television is also seen as a “distraction” to students, who tend not to place much importance on the seriousness and concreteness of written works, as their instructors do. Television has it’s own genre, it references itself, and it constantly mixes irony, comedy, and real events in programming. Within this hodgepodge of validity and humor it becomes hard for viewers to know what is true. Shows that are “based on a book”, or “based on a real person” mix fact and fiction, and the two blur together. Students lose the ability to detach themselves, and think critically.

Students also have lost the pleasure that people formerly received from literary works. Since there is consistent pleasure in watching television, and sparser pleasure in reading, students find it complicated to analysis written works or appreciate them. The concept that writing and reading are pleasurable never reaches them; perhaps they are too impatient and want immediate gratification. The author discusses ways of teaching that focus on the positives of television culture and how to alter or apply the skills they have already learned to literary works. She says “As teachers we can make students aware of how to experience with any form of communication, be it television or print, leads to a deeper, critical enjoyment of that form and ability to use it more efficiently for their own goals.”(Williams)

Perceptions of Writing as Students leave High School

The article, issued by Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), refers mainly to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. In this assessment high school juniors are evaluated by various academic standardized tests, one of these is writing, through which many conclusions were drawn. The differences in opinions, found through the survey part, demonstrates that parents and employers have different views on how well high school graduates can write. Teachers and employers believe that students have inadequate writing for their future in either college or a career; students and their parents believe that the students’ writing is “good writing.”

These preconceptions that the students and parents have could be based on the kind of criticism teachers give. Most teachers give an abnormally high percentage of students A’s and B’s, while their criticism focuses on the positive aspects of the student’s writing, not on the improvements that they could be making.

There is also the matter that writing is not considered that important in high school. Only eight percent of students write a three or more page paper a week in English class; in other subjects there hardly any writing either. (Office of Educational Research and Improvement) In this survey of eleventh graders’ tests, the frequency of papers written for school was in a direct positive relationship to their scores on this national assessment. Students should be writing both in and out of school, but it is not the norm; if they are not writing were it should be required, why would they write on their own.

According to the ratings of the instructors marking the eleventh grade assessment test students rated between nineteen and sixty eight percent adequate in different writing genres, these writing types included: a summer job app, a haunted house article, a historical frontier piece, a persuasive argument about space program funds, a submission about community approval of a bike lane, and the students views on the creation of a recreational center in their town (Office of Educational Research and Improvement).

The study also suggested ways to improve students’ writing skills before they enter college, or the work force. These suggestions included: more assignments of many varying writing types, examples shown in class, structure emphasis, revisions and reworking, and to encourage high standards (i.e. Not giving most students A’s).

What does this Mean to College Writing

Teachers and employers think that students are writing poorly, they probably thought that the student’s parents were not writing well either. Many educators believe that students do not have the concentration to focus on texts anymore. If the common belief is that students are bad writers then it is only logical to demand the students take more writing classes in college. The world is changing, and representation of ideas must change as well. Students are beginning to change were their strengths lie, and maybe it is not the ideal media for their instructor’s spheres of influence, but the students may have the correct strengths for the world that they inhabit.

Work Cited

“Perceptions of Public Relations Education.” Public Relations Review Spring 1999. http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~cbotan/pr_education.html (accessed February 2003).

United States. Office of Research, Office of Educational Research and Improvement. What’s Wrong with Writing and What Can We Do Right Now. Washington: U.S. Department of Education, April 1993. http://www.ed.gov/pubs/OR/ResearchRpts/writing.html (accessed February 2003).

Williams, Bronwyn T. "Reflections on a Shimmering Screen: Television’s Relationship to Writing Pedagogies" The Writing Instructor. 2001. http://www.writinginstructor.com/areas/englished/williams.html (accessed February 2003).

Works Consulted

“American Higher Education: Behind the Emrald City’s Curtain” Hudson Institute Briefing Paper. No. 188 April 1996. http://www.edexcellence.net/issuespl/subject/highered/emerald.html (accessed February 2003).

Howard, Rebecca Moore and Sandra Jamieson. The Bedford Guide to Teaching Writing in the Disciplines: An Instructor’s Desk Reference. Boston: Bedford Books of St Martin’s Press, 1995.

Power, Brenda Miller. Long Roads, Short Distances: Teaching Writing and Writing Teachers.Portsmouth, NH: Hienemann, 1997.