I must admit, I haven’t always enjoyed writing or considered myself to be a good writer. Part of the reason for this statement is that in previous years I had a questionable understanding of the writing process. Meaning, while I understood the steps in the process to include prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing, I lacked strategies to engage in each stage and I didn’t know what to do when I experienced challenges at any stage in the process.
To develop my understanding, I read writers manuals to gain essential insights, watched videos where skilled and published writers shared their writing processes, and recalled the lessons I learned from good teachers from all levels of my education. What I’ve learned from these collective experiences is that navigating the writing process is contingent on a host of other factors I had yet to consider. Some of them include the genre, the purpose of the writing composition, the intended audience, the length of the piece, the background knowledge and evidence required to support claims, a robust vocabulary, competent spelling skills, and proficient transcription skills. In essence, I grew to understand that writing is a much more complex contextual interconnected and iterative process than I anticipated and that even the most skilled and successful writers, those who write and publish their work often, experience challenges.
Reflecting on the challenges I experienced with writing and learning to improve my writing skills as an adult and in service teacher, coupled with witnessing the students I taught in prior years struggle through the writing process due to what I perceived to be a questionable understanding of how to navigate it, motivated me to now prioritize explicit writing instruction and practice in my language program and advocate that other teachers do the same.
When I work with students in junior/intermediate grades who are developing their writing skills or teachers who want to improve their writing instruction, I begin by sharing the insights above to provide what I believe to be a more comprehensive overview of the writing process. I then explain that that students require explicit instruction in all parts of the writing process and lots of regular practice to become confident competent writers. I conclude by debunking the myth that writing is easy or straightforward and remind audiences that challenges are a natural part of the process; yet a clear knowledge of what I believe to be the comprehensive writing process, useful strategies to navigate it, and regular practice will help to alleviate some of the stress and perhaps anxiety associated with teaching writing and learning to write.
In, What the Science of Reading Says about Writing, authors Jennifer Jump and Hillary Wolfe support this approach. They write, “Research confirms that students need strategies to successfully engage in each of these stages. They need modeling and explicit instruction, with a gradual release of responsibility to boost their confidence and foster perseverance. When students are taught how to engage in the process of writing, their compositions become longer, full, and qualitatively better”.
I now enjoy writing and consider myself to be a competent writer because I have a variety of strategies to engage in the writing process and I know what to do when I experience challenges. While my hope is that the students I teach learn to enjoy writing because in part, they develop the knowledge and skills to engage in the writing process. The real lesson that I hope to impart is the value of good writing; that is writing that is coherent and cogent, in addition to the importance of developing competent writing skills and how those skills increasingly become an asset as they progress through life within and beyond school.
