Making it Write

Why Writing Matters

Writing is one of humankind’s most important achievements. Without it, civilization as we know it would not exist. Writing allows us to share information with each other across distance and time, making our acquired knowledge and wisdom accessible to anyone who can read (Graham, in press a). This information is encoded in books, scientific reports, newspapers, magazines, travel guides, web sites, product labels, encyclopedias, memos, power points, personal correspondences, blueprints, faxes, religious texts, and government documents to name just some of the available sources. Such documents allow us to carry out everyday activities like reading directions on a can of soup to more transcendent pursuits such as sharing the latest research on the nature of the universe.

We use writing to explore and tell who we are. We do this when we describe what happened today in a diary, complete a personal journal entry, and use a signature to identify ourselves. We use writing to chronicle and tell who we were. We do this through autobiographies, biographies, obituaries, and even funerary inscriptions.

Writing provides a powerful means for communicating and socializing with each other. We text, tweet, blog, email, and instant message family, friends, acquaintances, and even those we do not know. This allows us to create and maintain social connections and communities. Writing connects more than just our circle of loved ones, associates, and contacts, as it can create a sense of heritage and purpose among larger groups of people. The adoption of a standard system of writing in China 2,300 years ago served as the glue that promoted a sense of national unity.

Even when it is not visible, writing provides the structure and the substances for the movies, plays, television shows, and songs we love, making us laugh, cry, think, feel, dance, and sing along. It provides a medium for creating imaginary worlds and lives, providing not only an artistic outlet for expression, but a place where we can escape our ordinary lives.

Writing is therapeutic. When we write about the challenges we face, it helps us cope with them. Writing can provide emotional, psychological, and physical relief (Smyth, 1998).

We use writing to persuade others, influencing their thoughts and actions through such outlets as editorials, op-eds, advertisements, white papers, treatises, reviews, proposals, and written speeches. Pamphlets, such as Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, inflamed revolutionary sentiments in colonial America, serving as one of the sparks that led to the creation of the United States. The persuasive power of writing can create so much fear that some governments ban what they view as “subversive” documents and jail offending authors.

Writing makes us smarter. It is an indispensable tool for learning. Writing makes it possible to gather, preserve, and transmit information widely with great detail and accuracy. The explicitness of writing encourages establishing connections between ideas; its active nature can foster the exploration of unexamined assumptions; and its permanence makes ideas readily available for review and evaluation. Writing about science, social studies, and mathematical ideas and concepts makes them more understandable and memorable (Graham et al., 2020).

Teaching writing not only makes students better writers, but it also makes them better readers (Graham et al., 2028; Graham & Hebert, 2010). When we increase how much students write, they become better at comprehending text. When we teach writing skills and processes, word reading skills and reading comprehension improve.

Writing is an intellectual juggernaut. It is not an optional skill that students need to learn, but an essential one.

The Challenge

One of the most important contexts in which writing and the teaching of writing occurs is schools (Bazerman et al., 2018; Graham, in press b, 2018). This is a central goal of schooling, just like preparing teachers to teach writing should be a primary objective of teacher education programs. Many teachers and some teacher education programs are doing a good job of meeting these goals, but this occurs too infrequently.

Our failure to provide most students and perspective teachers with the instruction they need and deserve is evident in multiple ways. One, many students do not develop the writing skills needed to be successful in school (and out of school). For example, on the last national assessment of writing in the United States, two-thirds of grade 8 and 12 students scored at or below the basic level (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2012). This means these youngsters evidenced only partial mastery of grade-level writing skills.

Two, many students spend too little time writing at school, and many teachers spend too little time teaching writing. In an examination of 28 survey, observation, and mixed method studies involving the writing practices of over 7000 teachers, I was able to draw two basic conclusions about writing and the teaching of writing in schools (Graham, 2019). Some teachers and schools deliver a solid writing program, with a smaller number of teachers providing exemplary instruction. Much more commonly, however, writing and writing instruction in most classrooms is insufficient, as students write infrequently, and minimal writing instruction is provided. This cuts across all grades and disciplines.

Three, many teachers do not receive the preparation they need to teach writing effectively. In the national surveys my colleagues and I conduct (e.g., Brindle et al., 2016), teachers commonly complain that teacher education programs do not prepare them to teach writing. This concern is reinforced by teacher educators, who indicate writing receives little attention in the preparation of prospective teachers (Myers et al., 2016).

Four, to complicate matters even further, the primary audience for students’ writing is too often the teacher, time spent preparing for high stakes writing tests is excessive, available classroom resources for teaching writing are inadequate, formative evaluation occurs infrequently, writing involves little collaboration between students, motivation for writing is largely ignored, and the writing needs of students with disabilities or who are learning the language of schooling are not sufficiently addressed (see Graham, 2019).

Making It Right

For those of us who believe that writing is essential, the task confronting us is substantial. It is naïve to think that all we need to do is change teachers. Meaningful educational change is not possible without addressing “both sides of the reform coin: better teachers and better systems” (Bransford et al., 2005; p. 38). If we are to make it right, we need to change schools, teachers, and teacher education programs as well as convince the public and policy makers that writing is the intellectual juggernaut I described earlier. While no single resource can address all of these factors, this book, Making it Write: The Lost Art of Writing Instruction, provides a powerful tool in the contest before us.

The authors who contributed chapters to Making it Write are not only esteemed scholars, but more importantly (in my opinion), they are in the trenches leading the charge to change and improve how writing is taught. They provide clear-eyed and accurate conceptualizations of the current state of teaching writing in both schools and teacher education programs. More importantly, they offer viable solutions to the challenges confronting us. Finally, the book addresses the most critical issues facing the teaching of writing today. This includes, but is not limited to, artificial intelligence, standardized testing, inflexible literacy programs, inauthentic writing tasks, culturally responsive instruction, multilingual learners, teacher identity and efficacy, as well as the need to connect better the science of reading and the science of writing. At each turn, the authors provide reasonable solutions to the problems confronting schools, teachers, and the colleges who prepare them.

I hope you enjoy Making it Write: The Lost Art of Writing Instruction as much as I did.

Steve Graham

Arizona State University