Here’s a great idea for your 4th-8th graders: Challenge them to write 100-word stories! Not only will this activity appeal to your more reluctant writers, it helps drive home the importance of writing descriptive, concise sentences.

Directions

1. Read a few familiar folk tales, fairy tales, or fables together.
2. Have your children choose one of their favorites and place it in a new setting (in the past, the future, outer space, or a laboratory, for example).
3. Next, have them add characters such as a robot, scientist, detective, or superhero.
4. Instruct them to write a story that has exactly 100 words. It must have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
5. Try doing this exercise several times. Then, ask your children to pick one of their stories and turn it into a polished final piece. At this point, feel free to let them use more than 100 words, but only as long as they don’t repeat main words and the extra words are really necessary to the story’s success.

I love that NaNoWriMo also has a Young Writers Program that’s open to children 17 and under. The challenge? Pump out a novel in 30 days.

According to the website, “The only thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The high-velocity approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.”

Free Resources

NaNoWriMo offers some great resources to help your students along their writing journey—”new and improved, 100% awesome, non-lame” Young Novelist Workbooks.

You can download the workbooks here absolutely FREE! Choose from:

• Elementary Student Noveling Workbook
• Middle School Student Noveling Workbook
• High School Student Noveling Workbook

Ready for a crazy, roller-coaster November? Register here for the NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program!

The Good

I love the deliciousness of certain words—the way something as ordinary as chocolate can take on an entire new personality when dressed up with adjectives like warm, rich, thick, gooey, chilled, creamy, or frothy.  

Such descriptive words bring everyday foods to life.

Magazine writers, cookbook editors, food bloggers, and restaurant reviewers all know the value of a well-turned phrase. Using appetizing words like simmering, hearty, robust, browned, and spicy, they tempt the reader to try a new recipe or visit an out-of-the-way cafe with enticing offerings like these:

The cake looked like a homespun masterpiece.  It was fluffy as a pillow, toasty brown, and shot through with plum-colored swirls. ~Serious Eats

This cream of mushroom soup hasn’t lost one jot of its butter-laden, cognac-kissed suavity. “Soup” is too prosaic a term for the pungent, earthy silkiness in every bowlful. Fungi beg for the honor of giving their lives this way. ~239 Best Dishes to Eat in Philly

Plump shrimp, sautéed with chile flakes and served with a salad of oyster mushrooms, cucumber and corn, turned out to be everything I wanted on a Saturday morning: fresh, vibrant and crunchy, with just enough spicy zing to wake me up. ~Salma Abdelnour, Best Restaurant Dishes of 2007

Broiling a nice juicy steak until it spatters and hisses and crusts up in all the right places is wonderful. Roasting a chicken and seeing the skin crisp up in the oven while the meat goes tender beneath is lovely, too. And most of the ills in the world can be cured with a few savory pork-stuffed dumplings, dripping broth and juice. ~The Wednesday Chef

I could marinate in these all day. Pun intended.

The Bad

Ah, but it’s also possible to describe a food—even one you normally like—in a way that totally robs the joy of eating it. Or to describe “iffy” foods like okra, black licorice, or liver and onions that are popular enough with some folks, but we just can’t abide ‘em.

One article, “Yucky Foods Worth a Second Taste,” tells why some people don’t like—among other foods—tomatoes. Given the description, I can understand why! To me, a good tomato is ripe, sweet, and juicy. But as the article explains, the “slimy, jellylike substance around the seeds, thin skin, [and] grainy pulp” send some people running from this salad staple.

Whoa. Almost had the same effect on me.

And last week, a friend’s Facebook status lamented the horrors of a recent fast food experience. She complained:

Just had the worst breakfast [I have] *ever* had. Ever. I love Sausage McMuffins and went for Burger King’s knock off. Imagine an English muffin soaked in artificial butter oil, toasted, assembled with a spongy egg-like substance, cheese whiz or something, and a sausage puck. Now, wait a few hours, microwave until completely indestructible, and serve to an unsuspecting consumer. It was malevolently bad.

Melanie’s description has had its effect. Off to BK, anyone?

And this description of how to eat raw oysters, though intended to set the novice at ease, sure doesn’t inspire me to rush out to my nearest oyster bar!

Stay calm when faced with a half-dozen to a dozen barnacled, irregular and slimy oysters set on your party’s table. If you’re an oyster eating novice, attempt to suppress the look of horror at not only the aesthetics of the shellfish, but how you’re going to manage extracting the oysters from their watery home.

And the Ugly

Then there’s just plain ugly food. You know the kind I’m talking about. Undercooked. Overcooked. Burned. Mystery meat lurking in an old margarine tub at the back of the fridge. An  unnamed vegetable  weeping at the bottom of the crisper. The leftover cup of grayish, congealed gravy. The stuff no one wants to—or should ever—eat.

Some people are experts at describing ugly food. In children’s literature, Shel Silverstein and Roald Dahl pretty much top the list. Silverstein’s poem “Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out” contains some of the very best of “worst food” descriptions you’ll find! Adjectives like gristly, gloppy, withered, rubbery, curdled, and moldy perfectly describe food that’s, shall we say, beyond its prime. Here’s an excerpt:

. . . Prune pits, peach pits, orange peels,
Gloppy glumps of cold oatmeal,
Pizza crusts and withered greens,
Soggy beans, and tangerines,
Crusts of black-burned buttered toast,
Grisly bits of beefy roast.
The garbage rolled on down the halls,
It raised the roof, it broke the walls,
I mean, greasy napkins, cookie crumbs,
Blobs of gooey bubble gum,
Cellophane from old bologna,
Rubbery, blubbery macaroni,
Peanut butter, caked and dry,
Curdled milk, and crusts of pie,
Rotting melons, dried-up mustard,
Eggshells mixed with lemon custard,
Cold French fries and rancid meat,
Yellow lumps of Cream of Wheat. . .

It’s a fun poem! Hope you’re inspired to read the whole thing.

So there you have it—the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of food description. Have I whetted your appetite for descriptive writing? If so, I challenge you and your kiddos to grab a food from the refrigerator, study it carefully, and come up with a list of words to describe it—for better or for worse. And if you’re brave enough, leave a comment sharing your lists with us. We’re hungry to read them!

. . . . .

If you’re looking for curriculum to help your students write more descriptively, consider WriteShop Primary Book C for grades 2-4 (or even older) and WriteShop I for grades 6-10. WriteShop I has a great lesson on describing a food, but both of these books offer several lessons on concrete description that will draw out the best in your young writers and make their writing sparkle with interesting, colorful vocabulary.  

~William Strunk, Elements of Style

Conciseness boils down to this: expressing as much as possible without using unnecessary words or details. Concise writing is brief and precise, but that doesn’t mean it has to be dull and dry. Help your children apply some of these tips for more concise writing.

1. Stay on track

Staying on topic is a surefire way to write concisely. When your student takes tangents and rabbit trails, he loses his focus and ends up with cumbersome, awkward, or disjointed writing. Help him create an outline before he begins writing so that he’s less likely to wander off the path. 

2.  Be precise

The more concrete the word choice, the clearer the writing. Your child can be wordy and say “the shaggy gray dog with the long hair hanging in his eyes,” or he can simply say “the gray sheepdog.”

3. Use plain English

Many students mistakenly think that big words impress. In truth, effective writing uses simple, straightforward language. While a handful of mature, well-placed vocabulary words can raise the level of a story or essay, using too many can make a piece of writing seem verbose, over the top, and just plain hard to read. Unless you’re writing for a scholarly audience, don’t overdo the vocabulary.

4. Avoid super-long sentences

To train children to be concise, attach a word limit or try restricting the number of paragraphs and sentences they can use. This will help them say what they need to say in the space allotted.

When kids are first learning to write descriptively and use a thesaurus, the pendulum can swing wildly from three-word sentences to 20 or 30-word sentences. It’s okay to give them the freedom to play with words; they’ll find their center over time. Just know that you may need to gently correct if their zeal begins creating log jams in their writing.

5.  Don’t be redundant

Redundancy refers to extra words or phrases that should be cut out. Your student’s ability to write concisely will always trump filling a page with unnecessary text.

It’s not uncommon for beginning writers to repeat themselves. But such repetition bogs down the writing and makes the reader work too hard. Here are two ways to eliminate redundancy:

• Adding concrete details, facts, or examples instead of rehashing the same point.
• Slashing unnecessary words and phrases. Remember: when two words will do the trick, why use a dozen? Encourage your student to read each sentence and paragraph to see if he can cut out any words. His point will be clearer, stronger, and easier to identify.

Concreteness transports us into a story like nothing else. It’s the key that unlocks the door of the reader’s imagination. If your child’s paper is vague and sketchy, what happens? She loses her readers and they come away without a clear understanding of the characters, setting, or event. Instead, her writing should contain specific, concrete details to hold her readers’ attention and give them a mental picture of the topics she’s discussing.

Choose Words Wisely

Concrete writing engages the senses. Your child’s descriptive and narrative writing should employ strong, colorful word choices that allow readers to experience an object, setting or situation through sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.

Robust nouns and active verbs always pack more punch than weak ones that are simply preceded by a string of adjectives or adverbs. Not to say they don’t have their place, but adjectives and adverbs should boost—rather than define—the words they modify.

Search for Word Pictures

It’s fun to ask your children to search for descriptive, concrete passages in the books they’re reading, such as this excerpt from The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Down the face of the precipice, sheer and almost smooth it seemed in the pale moonlight, a small black shape was moving with its thin limbs splayed out. Maybe its soft clinging hands and toes were finding crevices and holds that no hobbit could ever have seen or used, but it looked as if it was just creeping down on sticky pads, like some large prowling thing of insect-kind. And it was coming down head first, as if it was smelling its way. Now and again it lifted its head slowly, turning it right back on its long skinny neck, and the hobbits caught a glimpse of the two small pale gleaming lights, its eyes that blinked at the moon for a moment and then were quickly lidded again.

Notice how Tolkien paints a haunting image of Gollum as he makes his wily approach. Can’t you just imagine that scene in your mind’s eye? Can you see the thin padded fingers and toes and feel the cool smoothness of the rocks in the weak moonlight? Can you picture the secretive, insect-like prowler with the luminous eyes?

This passage from The Miracle at Speedy Motors by Alexander McCall Smith describes a different scene altogether:

Two days passed—two days in which more rain fell, great cloudbursts of rain, drenching the length and breadth of Botswana. People held their breath in gratitude, hardly daring to speak of the deluge, lest it should suddenly stop and the dryness return. The rivers, for long months little more than dusty beds of rust-coloured sand, appeared again, filled to overflowing in some cases, twisting snakes of mud-brown water moving across the plains…. The bush, a dessicated brown before the storms, turned green overnight, as the shoots of dormant plants thrust their way through the soil. Flowers followed, tiny yellow flowers, spreading like a dusting of gold across the land.

Powerful verbs—drenching, thrust, spreading—propel this passage along. Imagery of the river as a snake and flowers as gold dust appeal to the senses. The reader feels the quench of thirst and drought. Such is the power of concrete writing.

Your children can learn to write more vividly too. For starters, encourage them to:

• Recognize the importance of using specific vocabulary.
• Pay attention to detail.
• Add more description.
• Replace tired, vague words.

Introduce the Thesaurus

A thesaurus is a writer’s best friend (my all-time favorite is The Synonym Finder by Rodale). A thesaurus will help your child find synonyms for repeated words that keep cropping up in the writing. It can also help her find more specific words to replace dull words that contribute to boring prose.

And if you’re looking for curriculum to help your students write more descriptively, consider WriteShop Primary Book C for grades 2-4 (or even older) and WriteShop I for grades 6-10. Both offer several lessons on concrete description that will draw out the best in your young writers and make their writing sparkle with interesting, colorful vocabulary!

The Confusing World of Homophones

“If your going too the movies, make sure you don’t by to many sweets.”

Your/you’re. By/buy. To/too/two. These often-confusing (and frequently misused) words are called homophones—words that sound the same but are spelled differently.

While the difference between its and it’s may not seem like a big deal to some, using these two little words—or any homophone—incorrectly can make us seem ignorant and uneducated. You see, whether or not they mean to, people often form first impressions simply by reading our writing. Isn’t this why our shelves brim with English references, grammar programs, and spelling books? It IS important to us that our children write as accurately as possible.

It’s never too late to teach the rules to your kids. And if you didn’t quite grasp these concepts during your own school days, it’s not too late to learn or re-learn the rules yourself.

All About Homophones

All About Homophones is an exciting new curriculum that will unlock your children’s understanding of these confusing word sets. Author Marie Rippel says:

“Teaching homophones can be tough! They sound the same, but they aren’t spelled the same, and they don’t mean the same thing . . . [All About Homophones] is a complete teaching tool kit that helps you demystify homophones and homonyms for students. They’ll learn and master spelling easily through interesting worksheets and games they love to play.”

One Book, Multiple Grades

Take time to teach your children about homophones so they’ll learn to correctly spell and use these word sets.

Because the worksheets are divided into sections by grade level, All About Homophones is perfect for teaching multple grades. One book includes reproducible worksheets for grades one through eight, making the program budget friendly too.

Lessons You’ll Love

The book includes a comprehensive list of common homophones and recommends which grade to introduce each one. And All About Homophones offers a variety of activities that appeals to different learning styles: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.

These aren’t your ordinary dull worksheets! Whimsical illustrations and engaging activities maintain your children’s interest while helping them make sense of each new set of words. Here are some of the ways your children will learn about homophones:

• Homophone Worksheets to reinforce reading and writing.
• Graphic Organizers to help teach the meanings of each set of words.
• Crossword Puzzles, Riddles, and Tongue Twisters to reinforce with fun and humor.
• Card Games with cards and instructions for playing several different games.
• Student Record Sheets
• List of Homophones
• List of Homophone-rich Books to read with your children

Click here to see sample pages from All About Homophones.

Now in the WriteShop Store

We’re always looking for top-notch products that reinforce writing, grammar, and spelling, so we’re excited to announce that All About Homophones is now in stock in the WriteShop store. Stop in and check out this great new resource. Teaching your children to use homophones correctly is one of the best gifts you can give them. Order yours today! 

Homophone Humor

If I haven’t yet convinced you of the importance of teaching homophones—or if you think your children can simply trust their spell-check to correct these troublesome words, you’ll want to read Owed to the Spell Checker. One of my favorite examples of homophone confusion, this humorous poem illustrates just how easy it is to mix up words that have similar sounds.

~Brenda Covert

What’s the big deal about writing descriptively? For one thing, it’s much more than page-filling fluff. Descriptive writing imprints images into the reader’s mind, making you feel as though you’re “right there.” It‘s all about engaging the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch to transport the reader and stir emotion. By choosing vivid details and colorful words, good writers bring objects, people, places, and events to life. Instead of merely telling you what they see, they use their words to show you.

Writers use this powerful method to make their pieces memorable—even brilliant—rather than dry and boring. In many ways, description is the most important kind of writing you can teach your children because it supports other reasons for writing such as storytelling, informative reports, or persuasion.

So even if your child never aspires to write stories or poetry, description is a wonderful skill to develop, for without it, all other writing falls flat.

Describing a Place

Vivid writing is especially important when describing a place—whether to describe a vista for a travel guide or flesh out a scene in a novel. 

Master storyteller Charles Dickens was also a master of using description to create a particular mood or idea.

It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, arid vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. ~Charles Dickens, Hard Times

But your child doesn’t have to be a Dickens to add color, depth, and interest to his writing. Here, a ninth grader draws on all five senses to describe a place and set an effective mood.

Moist and salty, a chilly breeze blows in across the swells, bringing with it the pungent smells of seaweed and fish and making me pull my jacket a little closer. Sea spray transforms into fiery prisms as the waves splash against the shore, catch the last golden rays of sun, and toss them up like liquid crystals.

With a few tips and tools, your child can effectively describe a  place too.

Suppose he’s planning to describe a desert. He’ll need to describe basic desert features, of course: sand, rock, hills, and dunes. But deserts aren’t all alike, so his word choices will need to reflect the kind of desert he wants to write about. For example, if he chooses a desert in the southwestern United States, he’ll probably describe plants such as sagebrush, Joshua trees, yuccas, or saguaro cacti.

But if he’s writing about an oasis in the Sahara Desert, where vegetation is much different, he would instead describe date palms, oleanders, acacia trees, succulents, and desert grasses. His description of either desert scene will spring to life as he describes these places with rich and appropriate details.

Finding Vocabulary to Describe a Place

How do you help your child study his subject and choose vivid words that make his writing sparkle? Whether he decides to write about a desert, city, rainforest, or pond, these ideas will help him find words that will form the foundation of his descriptive piece, narrative story, or report.

Using a Search Engine

Search engines such as Google makes a great resource for inspiration. In addition to collecting general terms about the location’s flora and fauna (the desert, for example), he’ll also find concrete, specific nouns and adjectives that will add color to his writing. Suggest that he begin his search by looking up terms like these:

• desert landscape
• desert features
• desert climate
• desert plants
• desert animals
• desert description

What if your child wants to describe a city instead of a desert? City words are trickier to find, and he may have to hunt more. Try some of these search terms:

• describe city sights
• describe Chicago, describe Pittsburgh, etc.
• “describe downtown” (use quotes)

Using Other Sources

While search engines can lead you to a wealth of information, don’t discount the value of print media such as magazines and books, or digital media such as TV documentaries or DVDs about the subject.

If possible, visit the place in person. But if not, can you explore a spot with similar features? Many children are visual and tactile learners. If your child wants to describe what a sidewalk looks like, how about taking him outside to explore the sidewalk on your street? It will help him describe the texture, color, and appearance of a city sidewalk, even if you live in a suburb.

Expanding Vocabulary

As your child searches the Internet, ask him to keep an eye out for adjectives that describe desert or city features (or whatever place he wants to write about). Encourage him to come up with words on his own, but also to watch for words he comes across in articles or photo captions.

If he doesn’t understand some of the words, pull out the dictionary and make it a teaching moment! And show him how to use a thesaurus (we love The Synonym Finder) to find other words that say the same thing. Both of these exercises will help his vocabulary to grow.

Some Desert Adjectives

Desert: harsh, dry, arid, sparse, severe, hot
Rock: sharp, rough, jagged, angular
Grasses: windblown, bent, dry, pale green, brown
Sand: coarse, fine, glittering, shifting, rippling, sifting, white, golden
Sky: pale, intense, cloudless, azure, purple, crimson
Cactus: tall, short, squatty, spiny, prickly, thorny
Date palm: tall, bent, leather (leaves), frayed (leaves)

Some City Adjectives

City: active, bustling, noisy, busy, clean, dirty, windy
Traffic: loud, congested, snarled
Buildings: old, shabby, rundown, crumbling,  modern, futuristic, sleek, towering, squat
Buildings (walls): brick, stone, marble, glass, steel, graffiti-covered
Monuments, statues: stone, copper, carved, ancient, moss-covered, faded, green, bronze
Sidewalk: concrete, cement, slick, cracked, tidy, littered, swept
Paint: fresh, weathered, peeling
Signs: neon, weathered, worn, bright, welcoming, flashing
Buses, cars, taxis: belching, crawling, speeding, honking, waiting, screeching
People: hurried, bundled, smiling, frowning, eager, rushed

Use these suggestions to encourage your child come up with ideas for describing his own place. You’ll both discover that hunting for words can become a favorite pre-writing game! And as your child dabbles more and more with descriptive writing, I’m confident his words will soon begin to “show” more and “tell” less.

. . . . .

Do you struggle with teaching and grading writing? Does your child’s writing need a boost? Consider adding WriteShop to your curriculum choices for this school year!

The first seven lessons of WriteShop I specifically teach your teen descriptive writing. This important skill is then practiced in the remaining informative and narrative writing lessons. In addition, WriteShop teaches—and offers practice in using—a wide array of sentence variations that help to enhance a student’s paper with fresh style and vigor. When combined with strong, dynamic word choices, sentence variations give dull writing new life.

For younger children, WriteShop Primary introduces K-3rd graders to activities that widen their writing vocabulary. Book C contains three  specific descriptive writing lessons.

For more information, visit our website at http://www.writeshop.com/.

1. Break Free from Writer’s Block

“As a writer, I want to choose the exact right words for my story. But when I’m stuck, I try to ask myself, What do I REALLY want to tell the readers? Instead of worrying about perfect sentences, I jot down ideas, phrases, the points I think are most important and also things I think are cool or surprising. Once I have notes on paper, it’s a lot easier for me to figure out how I want to tell the story.” ~David Bjerklie, senior science reporter at TIME magazine

2. Use “To Be” Verbs Sparingly

“‘No more than one to-be verb per paragraph’ will force students to avoid passive voice and strengthen nouns and verbs.” ~Mark Pennington, reading specialist

3. Use Transition Words

“Young writers often get into trouble when going from one idea to the next. Without transitions, a reader is likely to get lost or disinterested. Each paragraph, like the overall body of the essay, needs a beginning, middle and an end.

“Start off with simple transitional phrases. Sometimes one or two words will adequately signify the essay’s development. Words such as ‘therefore’ and ‘finally’ signal to the reader that the essay’s message is progressing. As a test, reread each paragraph, and if they make sense standing on their own, they probably incorporate good transitions. If not, add a sentence introducing a new idea.” ~Sylvan Learning Online

4. Watch out for Contractions and Apostrophes

People often mix their and they’re, its and it’s, your and you’re and so on. If there is something that can hurt the credibility of your text, it is a similar mistake. Also, remember that the apostrophe is never used to form plurals.” ~Sharon at DailyWritingTips.com

5. Edit and Revise Your Writing

“Revise and rewrite. Improvement is always possible.” ~Bob Brooke, author

I’ve been thinking about the importance of giving our kids a wider audience for their writing. After all, if they only write for an audience of one—whether parent or teacher—they tend to write for his or her benefit alone.

But if we want our students’ writing to improve, shouldn’t we also encourage them to find opportunities to share their stories, poems, and essays with someone other than Mom?

Benefits of a Wider Audience

Having an audience takes your child beyond the point of writing for a grade. So why not start thinking of ways to broaden his understanding of what an audience can be?

Help him experience how others can find joy in reading his work. He’ll be rewarded with increased joy and confidence, and I think you’ll begin to see his writing blossom as he takes more pride in his efforts.

Think Inside—and Outside—the Box

When Debbie and I taught WriteShop classes, we always ended the year with a parent tea. The students recited poetry, and we passed out class anthologies. As the children pored over the stories and poems in the spiral-bound booklets, it was clear how much they enjoyed seeing their works in print.

But an anthology is just one of many ways to publish. I want to challenge you to think outside the box, too! Here are some other suggestions for expanding your kids’ writing audience or showcasing their writing projects.

• Turning writing assignments into art projects or mini books to share with others
• Mailing or emailing final drafts to grandparents
• Newsletters or anthologies (think homeschool support group or co-op class)
• Writing contests
• Student readings for a parent night 
• Audio and video productions of student essays
• Your personal or family blog, such as Titanium Woman
• Your child’s own writing blog, like Justine’s Awesome Writing Assignments and Kaja Wrote

So help your children look for new ways to share their work with others. Once their writing pieces get published—whether in traditional or nontraditional ways—they’ll begin to grasp what it really means to be an author! 

Share a comment: What are some things you do to give your children’s writing a bigger audience?

We parents give an awful lot of thought to what our children will do once we’re done homeschooling. Will they go to college or university? Take a vocational track? Enter the ministry? Will they become scientists or mortgage lenders? Clerical workers or nurses? Entrepreneurs or educators?

One thing seems clear: No matter the profession, studies show it’s more important than ever that your teen develop good writing skills if he or she hopes to get—and keep—a job.

Writing: A Ticket to Work . . . or a Ticket Out

According to a 2004 survey polling 120 American corporations (whose payrolls include nearly 8 million people), an employee’s writing skills can either hinder or advance him in the company.

The survey may be a few years old, but its ramifications remain relevant in 2010. Here are some of the survey’s findings:

• People who cannot write and communicate clearly will not be hired and are unlikely to last long enough to be considered for promotion.
• Two-thirds of salaried employees in large American companies have some writing responsibility. “All employees must have writing ability,” said one human resource director.
• Eighty percent or more of the companies in the service and finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) sectors, the corporations with the greatest employment growth potential, assess writing during hiring. “Applicants who provide poorly written letters wouldn’t likely get an interview,” commented one insurance executive.
• Half of all companies take writing into account when making promotion decisions.
• More than 40 percent of responding firms offer or require training for salaried employees with writing deficiencies. Based on the survey responses, it appears that remedying deficiencies in writing may cost American firms as much as $3.1 billion annually. “We’re likely to send out 200–300 people annually for skills-upgrade courses like ‘business writing’ or ‘technical writing,’” said one respondent.

You can read the entire report here.

Focus on Key Writing Skills

What does this mean for your child? Simply, it doesn’t matter whether or not she’s college-bound. If she expects to succeed in the workplace, she’ll need to demonstrate better-than-average writing skills.

So make sure you’re focusing on basic but key writing skills throughout junior high and high school to adequately prepare her. Minimally, by the time your teen graduates from high school, she should know how to:

• Write a clear, well-organized essay.
• Write a business letter.
• Use correct grammar.
• Use proper punctuation, such as correct use of quotation marks and apostrophes.
• Use good sentence structure, including avoiding run-on sentences and sentence fragments.
• Avoid using slang and shortcuts common to texting and instant messaging.
• Properly site sources (avoiding plagiarism).
• Self-edit and proofread her own writing.

Helpful Resources

If you’re looking for a place to start or need a few supplemental resources, check out some of these links and products:

• WriteShop - Solid composition and essay skills for junior high & high school
• How to Write a Business Letter
• Editor in Chief  – Practice with editing and proofreading skills
• OWL at Purdue - Proofreading and self-editing tips
• The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation - Practice, reinforce, or teach grammar and punctuation skills
• How to Cite Your Sources - A great resource!