It should be obvious, but it isn’t…
“I struggle with writing.”
“Writing doesn’t come easy to me.”
“I’m not confident in my writing.”
That’s a sample of what students tell me at the beginning of my composition courses. Students grasp that writing is important, but they don’t feel equipped to succeed.
One reason is that because they aren’t good at it, they don’t want to do it. Who wants to do something you feel like you’re bad at?
That’s understandable, but if students retain this
The secret to succeeding in an English course is pretty simple: practice.
Specifically, successful students submit multiple drafts of each essay.
I tend to give students two due dates: one for a draft and one for a final draft, typically a week apart. In between, students schedule individual meetings so we can review what has and hasn’t worked in their first attempt. The truth is that students need an extra draft between that first draft and their final version. The best students schedule two meetings during this revision week. In the first meeting, they learn what they can improve. In the second meeting, they get a progress report. I tell them they’re on the right track or what still needs work. They then have time to revise before they hand in the final draft.
The students who learn the most in my courses inevitably continue revising after they get a grade.
Students who practice begin to figure out that they can’t wait for a draft to be perfect in their head before they write. They will figure out what they want to say as they write their first draft. Yes, it will be messy, but it’s much easier to fix something that’s on paper than something in their head. Soon, they will start figuring out what works and what doesn’t before I tell them. As a student practices more, s/he will come to our meetings knowing what the problem is (organization, better analysis of evidence) and simply needing some help developing a solution.
The way to get better at writing is to write. The way to do well in a writing class is to write multiple drafts.