Writing Next

By Steven Graham and Dolores Perin (2007)

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A Writing Proficiency Crisis

Writing well is not just an option for young people — it is a necessity. Along with reading comprehension, writing skill is a predictor of academic success and a basic requirement for participation in civic life and in the global economy. Yet every year in the United States large numbers of adolescents graduate from high school unable to write at the basic levels required by colleges or employers. In addition, every school day 7,000 young people drop out of high school (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2006), many of them because they lack the basic literacy skills to meet the growing demands of the high school curriculum (Kamil, 2003; Snow & Biancarosa, 2003). Because the definition of literacy includes both reading and writing skills, poor writing proficiency should be recognized as an intrinsic part of this national literacy crisis.

This report offers a number of specific teaching techniques that research suggests will help 4th- to 12th-grade students in our nation's schools. The report focuses on all students, not just those who display writing difficulties, although this latter group is deservedly the focus of much attention. The premise of this report is that all students need to become proficient and flexible writers. In this report, the term low-achieving writers is used to refer to students whose writing skills are not adequate to meet classroom demands. Some of these low-achieving writers have been identified as having learning disabilities; others are the "silent majority" who lack writing proficiency but do not receive additional help. As will be seen in this report, some studies investigate the effects of writing instruction on groups of students across the full range of ability, from more effective to less effective writers, while others focus specifically on individuals with low writing proficiency.

Recent reports by the National Commission on Writing (2003, 2004, 2005) have helped to bring the importance of writing proficiency forward into the public consciousness. These reports provide a jumping-off point for thinking about how to improve writing instruction for all young people, with a special focus on struggling readers. Reading Next (Biancarosa & Snow, 2004), commissioned by Carnegie Corporation of New York, used up-to-date research to highlight a number of key elements seen as essential to improving reading instruction for adolescents (defined as grades 4-12). Writing Next sets out to provide guidance for improving writing instruction for adolescents, a topic that has previously not received enough attention from researchers or educators.

While Reading Next presented general methods and interventions that several of America's most respected adolescent literacy experts found to be useful for improving reading instruction, Writing Next highlights specific teaching techniques that work in the classroom. It does so by summarizing the results of a large-scale statistical review of research into the effects of specific types of writing instruction on adolescents' writing proficiency. Although several important reviews of research on writing instruction exist (e.g., Langer & Applebee, 1987; Levy & Ransdell, 1996; MacArthur, Graham, & Fitzgerald, 2006; Smagorinsky, 2006), the special strength of this report is its use of a powerful statistical method known as meta-analysis. This technique allows researchers to determine the consistency and strength of the effects of instructional practices on student writing quality and to highlight those practices that hold the most promise.

The Recommendations

Eleven Elements of Effective Adolescent Writing Instruction

This report identifies 11 elements of current writing instruction found to be effective for helping adolescent students learn to write well and to use writing as a tool for learning. It is important to note that all of the elements are supported by rigorous research, but that even when used together, they do not constitute a full writing curriculum.

1. Writing Strategies, which involves teaching students strategies for planning, revising, and editing their compositions
2. Summarization, which involves explicitly and systematically teaching students how to summarize texts
3. Collaborative Writing, which uses instructional arrangements in which adolescents work together to plan, draft, revise, and edit their compositions
4. Specific Product Goals, which assigns students specific, reachable goals for the writing they are to complete
5. Word Processing, which uses computers and word processors as instructional supports for writing assignments
6. Sentence Combining, which involves teaching students to construct more complex, sophisticated sentences
7. Prewriting, which engages students in activities designed to help them generate or organize ideas for their composition
8. Inquiry Activities, which engages students in analyzing immediate, concrete data to help them develop ideas and content for a particular writing task
9. Process Writing Approach, which interweaves a number of writing instructional activities in a workshop environment that stresses extended writing opportunities, writing for authentic audiences, personalized instruction, and cycles of writing
10. Study of Models, which provides students with opportunities to read, analyze, and emulate models of good writing
11. Writing for Content Learning, which uses writing as a tool for learning content material

The Writing Next elements do not constitute a full writing curriculum, any more than the Reading Next elements did for reading. However, all of the Writing Next instructional elements have shown clear results for improving students' writing. They can be combined in flexible ways to strengthen adolescents' literacy development. The authors hope that besides providing research-supported information about effective writing instruction for classroom teachers, this report will stimulate discussion and action at policy and research levels, leading to solid improvements in writing instruction in grades 4 to 12 nationwide.