Righting Writing

So . . . one topic of conversation that frequently comes up amongst university faculty members (and pretty much any educator) is the poor writing skills that students seem to have.  Everyone bemoans the fact that the kids can't write correctly, interestingly, or coherently.  Now I do not hold myself up as a paragon of literary quality; I'm sure you could find more than one fault with each of my blog posts.  But I do put some effort into communicating my ideas clearly (if not quite as concisely as some of you might want) and am familiar with the accepted conventions of spelling, grammar, and punctuation.  Which is more than can be said about many students.

Most of the grades assigned in the courses I teach are based on written communication.  I get to see first hand the lack of knowledge and/or motivation that students have when it comes to writing skills.  But the problem is that my role is not to teach writing, but rather to teach marketing and aspects of it.  Herein lies the dilemma: either ignore the poor writing, or assign a portion of a student's grade to a skill that I do not teach at all.  To date I have used the half-assed solution of marking students up or down in a general sense based on the clarity and quality of their writing.

(And, like most teachers and profs, I have a treasure trove of errors that were unintentionally funny.  My fave from this year: Tim Hortons throws out all unsold beagles and donuts at the end of the day.  Runner-up: Starbucks' donuts are more expansive than Tim Hortons'.  To which I disagree - my field research indicates that they have an equally expanding effect)

I think that's going to change.  As I mentioned, this topic has been brought up amongst various professors both formally and informally.  Students are taught the basics of business writing in first year, so just as I would have an expectation that they have a basic knowledge of marketing theory by the time they reach my third or fourth year course, it is fair to have an expectation that they have writing skills as well.  Going forward I shall seriously consider assigning a particular portion of the grade to writing, at least for some assignments.

But there are also bigger considerations (bigger than my course?  No way!) here.  Like with most deficiencies in our society, the cause it generally assumed to be lack of knowledge (e.g. we're fat because we don't know we're supposed to eat healthily - though I do have a very healthy appetite and yet am still expanding, possibly due to the aforemetioned donuts).  I don't think that this is necessarily the case.  The students learn writing skills, and can pass a test of these skills.  I think it's just a lack of effort in many cases, manifested as letting Word correct mistakes (leading to the ever-present "loosing" of money by corporations - hey, I'll have some), not proofreading, and not bothering to plan out and organize written work prior to writing.

Essentially, like most old codgers, I'm concerned that future generations are being raised without being taught to write properly.  Texting, e-mail, and Twitter are not conducive to eloquence or proper communication (though you can follow my tweets @uncertainprof), and they are by far the most-used fora for expression.   It always irks me when I receive e-mails from well-educated people who can't spell or use an apostrophe correctly (and I can't help reading a mistake like "I'm looking forward to seeing my friend's" as "seeing my friend is" or asking "my friend's what?").

And as of last week, the U.S. government has banned certain words from documents meant for its citizens (words such as shall, aforementioned, herein, practicable and citizens, all of which I managed to use today).  Like most government bans, the intention is noble - to foster and promulgate clearer and better-understood writing meant for the masses, and to reduce over-writing. But is dumbing things down and banning words a practicable solution? 

I firmly believe that there is a right word for each situation, and reducing the general vocabulary means that a message can stray from its intention.  Banning words isn't going to improve writing skills, it will just cure a symptom of it.  Practicing writing and putting effort into writing will improve writing skills and will expand them, perhaps as much as a Starbucks donut would.