Organizing Your Writing
Writing is one of the basic skills
which students are not mastering. According to The Writing
Report Card (the most recent report from the National
Assessment of Educational Progress) only 25% of 11th graders
write well enough to receive a rating of "adequate" in the
type of writing required for educational advancement or
business and technical work; 75% write inadequately.
The inability of schools
to prepare students adequately for employment is forcing
businesses to spend $25 billion a year teaching employees basic
skills. Ford is spending $50 million a year on education,
including teaching 8,000 employees how to read and write.
Motorola spends an equal amount teaching half of its hourly
employees seventh-grade English and mathematics. Chrysler spent
$11 million in 1988 alone to teach literacy skills. And General
Motors advertises that it now has the largest private education
program in the world, a joint effort with the United Auto
Workers union.
More money for education
is not the sole answer. But two new methods for teaching writing
skills may be a major part of the answer. Two recently developed
methods for teaching writing skills have been found not only to
improve all aspects of writing - ranging from spelling and
grammar to logical organization - but also to strengthen reading
ability, which could have enormous benefits for our entire
educational system. The two methods have been developed within
the past 20 years but are not yet widely used because of
traditions and misunderstanding. This course will explain the
two new methods. It will also explain why some methods still
widely used for teaching writing in our schools have proven
ineffective.
You should find this
course interesting and useful if you are a teacher, parent,
taxpayer, or employer concerned with American education, and
writing and reading skills in particular.
You will also find this
course worthwhile if you are reading it to improve your own
writing skills. You will learn which approaches to use and which
to avoid, which build skills quickly and which have proved to be
just boring busy work. Furthermore, doing the sample exercises
will strengthen your writing skills and provide a solid
foundation for your life-long program of language growth.
Grammar in Writing
Why Learn Grammar
Combining Sentences
Combining Sentences:
Exercises 1
Combining Sentences:
Exercises 2
Reading Ability
Selecting Essay Topic
Freewriting
Writing Strategies:
Process Approach
Process Approach:
Teacher's Feedback
Revising Your Paper
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