[转贴] You Can Teach Your Child to Write - Just Don't Rush It

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Part 1: Readiness, Reading, Copying, and Narration

    Writing - the art of communicating thoughts to the mind, through the eye - is the great invention of the world. Great, very great in enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space; and great not only in its direct benefits, but greatest help to all other inventions.
    Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

I have often been asked why students, especially young children, seem to dislike writing assignments. After talking with the parent, I usually find that it is a case of "too much, too soon." Parents often feel that if child can read fluently, he should also be able to write fluently. However, reading and writing require different mental processes and motor skills. While reading is primarily a mental process of decoding and comprehending words that have been put together by someone else, writing is much more complex. Not only must the student be able to comprehend words, he must draw upon his own limited knowledge or experience for a subject, organize his thoughts, choose appropriate words (and try to spell them correctly), and use his budding penmanship skills to put it all on paper. It's no wonder that children are overwhelmed by the task!

Readiness

    How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live! Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

It is necessary that children learn to write, but when should they be taught, and how? The timing varies for each child, depending on his mental and physical maturity level and his home life. A child who grows up in a home where books hold a place of honor and television is rarely or never watched will usually be light-years ahead of a child who spend his free time being mindlessly entertained by television or video games. Children who see their parents read and write for pleasure are likely to imitate them at a very young age, thereby increasing their readiness skills. Parents who spend time in conversation, enjoy a variety of creative pursuits, interact with nature and read aloud with the family, are providing for their children a content-rich atmosphere and sensory input that will help the children write with vividness, depth, and insight. Laura Ingalls Wilder is a wonderful example of the effectiveness of this "life-style learning." She was able to translate her rich childhood experience into prose that brings that period of history to life. I doubt that she wasted much of her childhood filling out workbooks and answering often-trivial comprehension questions.

Even though life in the twenty-first century is very different from the life recorded in Little House on the Prairie, the requirements for developing writing ability are the same for our children as they were for Laura Ingalls Wilder or any other writer: exposure to language and high-quality literature early in life, conversation and interaction with adults, personal experience with nature, time alone for developing thoughts, and much penmanship practice so that lack of fluency does not limit creative expression. Ideally, all these things (except penmanship practice) will be part of a child's life from the day he is born.
Reading: The First Step in Writing Instruction

    The Six Golden Rules of Writing: Read, read, read, and write, write, write. Ernest Gaines (1996)

Even if reading and conversation haven't been a regular part of your home life, it's never too late to unplug the television and begin reading aloud and discussing good books with your child. This is the vital first phase of writing instruction - the construction of a sound foundation of literary experience - and ideally it should last from birth through high school, and even beyond, if the family enjoys it. Hearing good literature read aloud does several things:

    It allows the child to hear words put together in a way that is more powerful and expressive than ordinary conversation;
    It exposes the family to vocabulary they may not normally use;
    It often introduces people and places the family would never encounter in real life, opening an opportunity for exploration and understanding of other people and cultures;
    It provides an opportunity to internalize correct grammatical structures in an informal context;
    It often helps to create an atmosphere of emotional intimacy in which personal issues can be discussed in the context of the book's characters and situations.

Reading aloud is foundational, but if for some reason it is not possible to do it regularly, at least provide your family with books-on-tape. These can be borrowed from the library, rented, or purchased. Thousands of titles are available, including fiction, biography, poetry, and non-fiction. Books-on-tape usually have the added benefit of being read with perfect diction, which is not only helpful to understanding, but can also improve personal pronunciation.
Build Skills Through Copying and Narration

    We are what we write. Michael Wood (1995)

Most children launch naturally into the second phase of writing instruction with very little prompting from the parent. Fingers clenched around a fat pencil, they work hard to copy the letters of their name, or a title for the drawing they have just created. At this stage, you will often hear, "Mommy, can you write [something] for me?" as they realize that letters put together in a certain order mean something. This is also the stage when they will want to re-tell (often at great length) a story you have read or they have heard on tape. Copying and re-telling, often called narration, are critical to the development of writing skills, as they develop many of the mental processes necessary to good writing.

Copying

    True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those who move easiest who have learn'd to dance. Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

The importance of copying is often underestimated, and it is discarded as soon as a child is able to write a few words on his own. This is unfortunate, for frequent copying of well-written sentences or paragraphs provides several benefits:

    The opportunity to see and reproduce properly written and punctuated writing many times before attempting to do it independently;
    The opportunity to become familiar with new words in a low-stress learning situation;
    Practice in handwriting without the distraction of trying to create content and remember how to format, spell, and punctuate it.
    Multi-sensory input tends to be memorable. If a child sees a word written, says the word to himself as he writes it, he has engaged several senses, and is likely to internalize the information after following the process over time.

The easiest way to approach copying is to use a piece of the child's lined paper - I like the size of the lined paper designed for third and fourth graders - and write a sentence, verse, or quotation, using the style of printing you are teaching your child. Skip a line between each line that you write, so that the child can form his letters directly beneath yours. This is much more practical than simply writing line after line of the same letter. It allows the child to see and copy proper letter and word spacing as well as proper letter formation, capitalization, and punctuation. Do this daily until the child is able to copy neatly and easily - a stage that girls seem to reach earlier than boys. If you want your children to learn italic writing, a beautiful and natural style, you can either learn it yourself in order to make the copy masters, or you can use a handwriting program such as Fluent Handwriting by Nan Jay Barchowsky. The logical, easy-to-use textbook is accompanied by a CD with installable fonts for the beautiful Barchowsky writing. It's fast and efficient to type in double-spaced text for your copy sheet, using a point size that is manageable for your child, then print out as many copies as needed.
Narration

    Writing and speaking, when carefully performed, may be reciprocally beneficial, as it appears that by writing we speak with great accuracy, and by speaking we write with great ease. Quintillion (circa A.D. 35- 100)

During this stage of learning, you can use narration to begin working on the writing readiness skills of thought organization and sequencing. Read a story to your child and have him re-tell or narrate it back to you in sequence. Charlotte Mason, the nineteenth-century educator whose methods have been adapted for homeschooling by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay, Penny Gardner, and Karen Andreola, used retelling as a major learning tool and a means of evaluation. As the child listens to a story he chooses those parts that seem the most important, mentally organizes them, and chooses the words with which to narrate the story back to you. Just as writing helps an adult or older student detect gaps in his or her knowledge, so narration helps younger students to discover their strengths and weaknesses in listening and comprehension. Narration also allows the teacher to immediately detect and correct comprehension problems. Once a child has mastered the skills required for verbal narration, he will find it much easier to move into written narration than a child who has never had to organize and focus his thoughts in order to convey specific meaning.

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Dictation Sharpens Writing Mechanics


When the child has gained skill in copying and narration, it is time to begin working with dictation. If you prefer to work with carefully planned and sequenced lessons, there are several good writing curricula such as Imitations in Writing and Language Arts Through Literature that use dictation as a foundation. Otherwise, you can simply choose a brief verse, rhyme, or quotation from a good book and dictate it to the child. Allow him plenty of time to write, then go over the paper with him, helping him to evaluate and correct the piece. You may be shocked to discover that the neat, careful handwriting the child has developed over the past few months of copying has almost completely disappeared! As the child turns his attention to capturing on paper words he cannot see, he will be distracted from his former focus on careful letter formation. Don't be alarmed - this is normal and with encouragement and practice will soon correct itself.

Continue practice with dictation, increasing the length and difficulty of the dictation pieces until you feel that the child has mastered the skills involved. Once the student is comfortable with dictation, he will be able to use writing as means of communication, not only in birthday lists and captions for his drawings, but also for letters and stories. If you would like to provide supplemental practice in recognizing and correcting errors in punctuation and grammar, the Great Editing Adventure and the Editor-in-Chief workbooks are good resources.
Composition: Creative and Expository Writing

    Next to the doing of things that deserve to be written, there is nothing that gets a man more credit, or gives him more pleasure than to write things that deserve to be read. Pliny the Younger (circa A.D. 62-113)

    The essence of writing is to know your subject. David McCullough (1933-)

Once your child has achieved fluency in copying (penmanship), narration (mental organization, sequencing, word choice), and dictation (spelling, punctuation, proof-reading), he is ready to add the skill of composition. This is the writing stage in which the student pulls together all the skills he or she has learned, and applies them to either creative or expository writing. Creative writing, which includes the composition of poetry, stories, and personal essays, usually seems to come more easily to girls than to boys, and it is a skill which has limited use in the adult world, except for the talented few who will become published writers. Expository writing, on the other hand, is useful in many situations throughout life. Expository writing includes reports and articles, descriptive, informative, and persuasive essays, and other non-fiction writing. The composition stage begins earlier for some children than for others, but most students are ready to begin sometime in the middle grades.

There are many textbooks available for teaching composition, but it is possible for a motivated student to become an excellent writer using what I call the 'Ben Franklin method.' In The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Franklin relates how, after his father pointed out his lack of "elegance of expression," he taught himself to write more elegantly and expressively:

    "About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator - I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With this view I took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, try'd to compleat the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come hand. Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them. But I found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and using them. Therefore I took some of the tales and turned then into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again. I also sometimes jumbled my collections of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the best order, before I began to form the full sentences and compleat the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts. By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language" (35).

Franklin apparently pursued his self-education in writing during his early teens, and this is a reasonable age for students with a strong foundation in reading and dictation to begin working with more challenging assignments. There are several points to remember when teaching the composition stage of writing:

    It is not a speedy process - a completed composition sequence includes establishing a topic, gathering and organizing information, creating a rough draft, evaluating and improving the rough draft, and presentation of a final draft;
    Much of the writing process is mental - leave time for brainstorming, and mental organization of ideas;
    Work with the student's natural learning style - some students enjoy visual organizing methods such as mind maps, others like the structure of an outline, and some prefer to do most of the pre-writing process mentally;
    It is not necessary to go through the entire composition sequence with every assignment, particularly if the student is writing frequently for other class work;
    Integrate writing lessons with other subjects by using the composition sequence for history, literature, or science topics;
    Early composition assignments should be brief - don't spring a five-page essay assignment on a student who is accustomed to dictation of no more than a page at a time;
    The writing process can be made less painful for reluctant writers by permitting them to choose topics they find interesting;
    A rich vocabulary is best developed through reading good literature, but extra instruction can be useful. Vocabulary from Classical Roots is by far my favorite of the available vocabulary workbooks series.

Evaluating Writing Assignments

    Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. William Strunk, Jr. (1869-1946) From The Elements of Style.

The evaluation process is very important in helping the student learn to write. Ben Franklin apparently evaluated his own writing, using published writing as a standard of comparison. I would not expect most students to be motivated enough to do that, but parents can learn to evaluate by reading extensively. If you are not comfortable with your skill in evaluation, you may be able to find another homeschool mom or a friendly English major to evaluate your student's work and provide feedback. You can also seize the opportunity to improve your own skills, and learn to discern good writing by reading books such as On Writing Well by William Zinsser, Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White, or Evaluating Writing by Dave Marks. Writing is the most permanent form of communication, and when you take the time to improve your own skills, you demonstrate to your students that you believe writing is important.

Finally, remember that the process of teaching writing does not begin with composition, but with reading. Without adequate input, a student cannot be expected to produce quality output. In order to avoid frustrating students and causing them to feel that they hate writing, you must provide plenty of information in the form of books to read, plenty of practice with the mechanical skills of copying, narration, and dictation, and plenty of time for the development and organization of ideas. It is just as difficult to wring water from a dry sponge as it is to extract meaningful writing from a child who has not been saturated in the written word. As a homeschool parent, you have the opportunity to gently shepherd your child into a world of literary delight, so relax and enjoy the process. You can do it!