Developing Effective Writing Skills
This document was last updated on 17-Aug-1995
Reprinted on the English Teachers Database with Permission of the Author
Abstract: COLLEGE PLANNING FOR GIFTED STUDENTS
ED307768 EC220277
College Planning for Gifted Students. Second edition.
Berger, Sandra L.
Council for Exceptional Children, Reston, Va.; ERIC Clearinghouse on
Disabilities and Gifted Education, Reston, Va. 1994
154p.
Sponsoring Agency: Office of Educational Research and Improvement (ED),
Washington, DC.
Contract No: RI88062007
Report No: ISBN-0-86586-184-6
Available From: Council for Exceptional Children, Publication Sales, 1920
Association Dr., Reston, VA 22091 ($21.95; member price, $15.35; Stock No.
P330R).
EDRS Price - MF01/PC07 Plus Postage.
Language: English
Document Type: NON-CLASSROOM MATERIAL (055); ERIC PRODUCT (071)
Geographic Source: U.S.; Virginia
Journal Announcement: RIENOV89
Target Audience: Practitioners; Parents; Students
The guide offers information on undertaking a comprehensive,
well-organized, programmatic approach to college planning. "The College
Search: Defining the Problem" provides an overview of college-planning
problems and offers solutions.
A comprehensive, systematic 6-year time line is included. "Planning for
Gifted Students: What Makes Them Different?" provides a conceptual
framework for understanding the intellectual, social, and emotional
characteristics of gifted adolescents, and offers suggestions for meeting
their needs. The framework can be used to develop student profiles and
plan specific programs that meet individual needs. "The College Search: A
Matter of Matching" provides recommendations and resources to help students
be aware of and understand their personal learning styles, values,
interests, and needs. "Learning About Colleges: What Have They Got That I
Want?" guides students in collecting information about potential colleges
and helps them integrate self- understanding with an understanding of
college offerings. "The Application Process: What Have I Got That They
Want?" explains how a student's credentials are evaluated by a college, and
includes specific information on the college interview, writing an
effective essay, enhancing applications, and college costs. Appendices
include glossaries; a guide to college guides; a list of contests,
competitions, and activities; resources on gifted students; and an
application used commonly by over 100 colleges. (JDD)
Descriptors: *Admissions Counseling; College Admission; College
Applicants; *College Choice; *College Preparation; College Students;
*Decision Making; Educational Counseling; *Gifted; Higher Education;
Secondary Education; Student Needs
The following excerpt is from COLLEGE PLANNING FOR GIFTED STUDENTS, 2nd edition,
(1994) by Sandra L. Berger.
DEVELOPING EFFECTIVE WRITING SKILLS
The trouble with bad student writing is the trouble with all bad
writing. It is not serious, and it does not tell the truth. Eudora
Welty
Write with information. The reader doesn't read because of an
insatiable need to applaud. Donald Murray
Developing effective writing skills assists students in clarifying
their thoughts and discovering the meaning of their experiences, but
many gifted students lack experience in writing about their lives or
feelings. They may see little that is unique about themselves. What
can they say that would interest the all-important stranger in the
college admissions office?
There are two compelling reasons for English teachers to build
processes into their curriculum that help to answer this question:
Most selective colleges and universities require applicants to write
highly personal essays or describe their experiences in a way that
demonstrates that the college and the student are a good match.
Only by writing down their ideas and feelings and then rereading,
rethinking, and revising can many gifted students find out what they
really think about themselves or about any other topic.
Even if students have not had extensive experience in writing, there
is much a high school English teacher can do to help them learn to
write about themselves honestly and effectively. A free-writing
journal is a good place for students to examine their values,
aspirations, goals, and attitudes. To promote fluency, students should
write at least two or three times a week in a class or at home on both
self-chosen and assigned topics. To encourage honesty, students should
be certain that no one will read what they do not wish to share.
Students can reread their journals to find ideas or stories to expand
into rough drafts to be shared with peer reading and writing groups.
These papers may be revised and then evaluated by the teacher. If
gifted students are frequently sent back to these journals, not only
can they learn to evaluate for themselves their progress as writers,
but also they can notice and document the growth of their interests,
ideas, and attitudes.
The activities and processes discussed in this book readily lend
themselves to exploratory personal writing. For example:
Gifted students who take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) or the
4-MAT Learning Styles Inventory (LSI) can write out their reactions to
what they have learned about themselves. Was this new knowledge
surprising? Was it what they expected? Was it pleasing? Disturbing?
After hearing a speaker from a college or after a college visit, they
might speculate in writing about what attending that school would be
like. They could consider what aspects of the school appeal to them
most strongly, what is not attractive, how their qualifications match
what the school expects from its applicants, and whether or not the
school offers programs that match their interests.
Students might write about the admissions officers they met. These
people will be the audience for one of the most important pieces of
writing that a gifted student will do. The college application essay
may be just a bit less intimidating if the student has a word picture
of a real person to write to.
It is useful for students to read these "college-bound" writings to
each other. One student may notice an aspect or drawback that another
student has missed. Varied reactions to writings about the same school
are useful to hear because students are then forced to question and
rethink their original assumptions.
Another way English teachers can help students write about themselves
and clarify their thinking about themselves and their college and
career choices is to link personal writing to the reading of
autobiographies or fictional autobiographies. For gifted high school
students, reading Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn," James Joyce's
"Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," Carson McCullers's "The Heart
Is a Lonely Hunter," or any of a host of other works can be an
exercise in analyzing literature as well as an avenue for exploring
personal thoughts, beliefs, and experiences. Students can discuss
and/or write about how their lives, choices, attitudes, and
experiences parallel or diverge from the lives of the literary
characters. Gifted students can read these works with a writer's eye,
considering the choices the authors made about how to tell their
stories, what details were included, and what experiences were
revealed.
Writing Units for Gifted Students
One unit, called "Coming of Age," has been used successfully to link
literature and personal writing at the Thomas Jefferson High School
for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia, USA. Developed by
English teachers Susan DiMaina, Mary O'Brien, and Pamela Curtis, the
unit was designed to be taught in the spring of the 11th grade, not as
a practice in writing college essays, but as a way to broaden gifted
students' experiences in writing autobiographical material. The unit
aims at achieving the following goals:
* Through practice in writing about themselves in a variety of
styles and for a variety of purposes and audiences, students will gain
fluency and comfort with autobiographical writing.
* Students will accumulate writings they can refer to when
writing college application essays.
* Students will read and respond to an autobiography or an
autobiographical novel.
Students are given an annotated list of approximately 40 novels that
portray adolescents growing up. Since the course is in American
humanities, all works are by Americans. Students choose any book from
the list to read independently and are given 4 weeks to read the book
and respond to the following instructions:
1. Keep a list, by page number, of events or characters that may
prove pivotal in the development of the main character. The list will
serve as an index and save time on subsequent assignments.
2. After reading, review the list and choose a person or event that
had a great impact on your character's life. Describe the person or
event and analyze the impact.
3. Stylistically, how does the author reveal himself or herself or
the main character? Consider the following categories:
* Organization: chronological, topical, chapters, and so forth.
* Kinds of material selected for presentation: large events, small
things that add up gradually, people rather than events, or vice
versa.
* Perspective: Is there an adult's voice? Does the author tell the
story from a distance? Does the character tell his or her own story,
and so forth?
* Background: Does the book describe a setting or period of time?
To help students start their writings on the "Coming of Age" unit and
to broaden their perspective on autobiographical writing in general,
the teacher or students might read excerpts from other autobiographies
out loud. Actual college application essays are also useful. Gifted
students enjoy analyzing these "real" essays and trying to decide whom
the college would accept or reject on the basis of such writings.
While students are reading outside of class, they do the following
writing assignments in class:
* List some people, events, or places that are important to you.
List at least 7 to 10 (5 minutes).
* Review the list. Try to feel what each experience, place, or
person was like. Check two or three items you could write about right
now (5 minutes).
* Narrate in writing the story of the item you chose (15
minutes).
As homework or on subsequent class days, students may add to the list
and write about other personal "stepping stones." Writing about at
least one item from different points of view or in different styles is
useful. It forces students to experiment with forms and consider
incidents from a viewpoint other than their own, thereby enlarging
their repertoire of ways to write about themselves.
After students have handed in the "Coming of Age" writings, they can
use what they learned from reading the book to help them focus on
their own personal writing.
By now, students will have quite a thick folder of
personal/autobiographical writings. At this point they go back through
the folder and pick one writing to revise into a polished
retrospective piece that the teacher will evaluate. This writing might
take the form of a vignette, an internal monologue, a personal essay,
a memoir, a dialogue or script, or a narrative. Criteria for
evaluation might include the following:
Does the writing show, and not simply tell, the author's story? Is
there plenty of detail and texture in the writing? Does the reader
respond willingly to the writing, or does the author tell the reader
how to respond or what to think?
Does the writing reveal some of the author's significant and unique
characteristics?
Does the writing give the reader an idea of how the author reacts to
or solves problems in his or her life?
Is there an honest voice in the writing? Does it sound like the
author, a gifted high school student, or does it give the reader the
impression that it was written by a pompous "little professor"?
Is there evidence of careful revision and attention to mechanical
details?
Once students have written about the steps they are taking toward
college and have accumulated their folders of personal and
autobiographical writings, which they have shared with peers and the
teacher, they should know themselves better. They should also be more
confident of their ability to respond to the all-important college
application essay.
(Note: Many selective and highly selective colleges now wish to see
early drafts and versions of students' original writings submitted
with college applications. Students must therefore be encouraged to
retain all these materials in their personal writing folders.)
Resources for Teaching Writing
Elbow, P. (1981). Writing with power. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Macrorie, K. (1984). Searching writing. Upper Montclair, NJ:
Boynton/Cook.
Macrorie, K. (1984). Writing to be read. Upper Montclair, NJ:
Boynton/Cook.
Murray, D. (1984). Write to learn. New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston.
Developing Effective Writing Skills, a teaching unit, was developed
and written for this book by Pamela Curtis, English Teacher, Thomas
Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, Fairfax County
Public Schools, Virginia.
From: Berger, S. (1994). COLLEGE PLANNING FOR GIFTED STUDENTS. Reston, VA:
The Council for Exceptional Children, 1920 Association Drive, Reston, VA, 22091
USA.
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Sandra L. Berger
ERIC Clearinghouse on Disabilities and Gifted Education
The Council for Exceptional Children
1920 Association Drive
Reston, VA 22091
Voice: 703/264-9471 Toll Free: 800/328-0272
FAX: 703/264-9494 Internet E-Mail: sberger@inet.ed.gov
ERIC/EC Clearinghouse Internet address: ericec@inet.ed.gov
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