Your kids' homework

Damn, slap. You're quick.

 

Just curious, how many of your kids use Word, WordPerfect or the like for writing their papers?

 

I agree with that to a point. There are some for whom it's a natural gift. But I think most people can be taught/trained/pick a synonym to write credibly.

 

Good luck with that!





Seriously though, I agree with BYH. I think 21 is right in most cases, but I know that I don't "hear the language" but have still been able to carve somewhat of a career out of this field. It's done by trying, by working and by experimenting. Do others have it easier? Most likely. But you can do it if you want to. [/heartwarming music]

 

fuck off!!! My mom says I'm the best writer in the world, in addition to the most handsome and least smelliest boy!

 

I was appalled at what I read when I volunteered to critique the personal statements of a few anonymous people who were applying to law school and graduate school. The first guy's stuff was so bad I didn't know where to start, so I just ended up humoring the guy and suggesting he correct the most obvious flaws in his paper.

The worst part? Toward the end of the paper the guy starts talking about why he chose to be a print journalism major.

 

Great topic, BTW

Writing is one of those latent traits that some people may have, but it takes either a bolt of lightning or a great teacher to bring it out.

In my case, it was this crusty, ex-Marine bastard named Wilbur Smith (not to be confused with the author of the same name). I had this guy for three out of my four years of high school, including AP English. He once bragged to our parents at Back-to-School night that after he was done with us, we wouldn't be taking bonehead English in college.

He wasn't kidding. By the time Smith got done with me (having gotten Cs as a freshman, Bs as a junior and mostly As as a senior), I had easily passed the AP English test (thus exempting me from having to test into Cal State Fullerton's comm program), got nothing lower than a B-plus on any paper I wrote in college and found out I had an aptitude for this kind of stuff when I started stringing for papers in college.

That said, I think READING is a big part of that. To write well, you have to read and a lot of youngsters don't read anything that's not on a computer screen, my 12-year-old being Exhibit A. He's got a loaded bookshelf of interesting books that he's barely skimmed, since nowadays, it's not tied into World of Warcraft.

He's not a bad writer; hell, he's written some poems that are incredible, better than anything me or my Masters-degree-owning wife could write. But his spelling and syntax are problematic, largely because he hasn't written enough and because he doesn't read enough.

 

It's not what she tells me about you...

 

This discussion has been on the board before, and I am completely convinced that most people can be taught to write well enough to put something in the paper. With singing, you have a pleasant voice and vocal range. With drawing and hitting a fastball, it is the ability to take what you see and make something happen with your hands.

Writing doesn't involve any natural ability. It is teaching and repetition. In any form of teaching, if you have 100 students, some will pick it up the first time and somebody is going to be the last person to learn it. That is what teachers have to deal with and why it is a difficult job. I'll grant that some people do it easily, but think about the writing courses you have taken. Ever heard "Writing is rewriting"? That, to me, is proof that writing is a learned skill rather than a given talent.

 

Somewhat agree, Gold, but I think writing well is a talent that can't be taught. You either can do it or you can't.

Oh, you can develop basic skills through teaching and improve your natural abilities to a more refined level through practice/repetition. (And sometimes, it takes a while for the natural ability to come out.) You can certainly teach a child to write at a functional level to be articulate in the adult world.

But what you've got is what you've got -- I'm never going to be Roger Kahn or John Updike, no matter how long I live or how much I write.

Gold, I think you made my point when you said some students will pick it up and some students won't. Some can "hear the language," and some can't. Doesn't mean they can't all be taught to write functionally. But some have a higher skill level, naturally, than others.

 

I was sooo happy to hear my 5-year-old correct my grammar the other day.

I said "I'm good" when asked how I was by some lady at the grocery store. My daughter replied "I'm well" with a little sarcasm that told me she had recently been taught that little lesson by her kindergarten teacher.

 

Our PR director, a former college journalist herself, can't write her way out of a paper bag. I dread editing her stuff and our marketing director's copy because it's so absolutely horrid. I make the pages bleed.

I'm talking shit like improper capitalization, and not just titles after names. There's also way too many commas and other improper punctuation. It makes my head hurt sometimes.