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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b]Reading does not make you a great writer.. just stop.[/b]

Hire a writing tutor. Your child will have plenty of writing assignments in your public school but they will never be taught how to write.

The tutor can help them through the process for each paper and slowly they will become more independent when it comes to writing.

[/quote]

Literally every writing teacher or good writer I have ever heard says the opposite.  If you want to be a good writer, you should read good writing.  [b]It's not sufficient, but it's incredibly important. [/b] Read things that are well-written.  The New Yorker is a great resource, because the writing is good and well-edited.  Find other good writers, both fiction and non-fiction -- essays and articles are helpful because they are closer to what students are expected to write: James McPhee, Rebecca Solnit, George Orwell, Marilynne Robinson, James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, etc.

Don't worry about the ten-page papers to start.  Start with the well-organized five-paragraph essay.  A tutor will help, as long as they teach both organization and editing/revision.  No one is a good writer without a good editor, and learning to be a good editor makes you a better writer.  [/quote]

I agree with you here, PP.  Good writers usually have done a lot of reading, but being a great reader is not sufficient.  As earlier posters have said, some of us have avid readers who score in the 99% in reading comprehension with their arms tied behind their backs and they still have issues with writing.  Executive functioning difficulties and anxiety often play a part.  So, reading is the foundation, but some very bright kids still need something more to become great writers.  [/quote]

Cannot agree more!  I was a well-read student. My urban public school teachers in junior high never taught me the mechanics of [i]good[/i] writing.  Grammar was relegated to foreign languages.  Yes, I was able to crank out essays and term papers.  Because I was never shown the nuance of how to compose succinct, elegant, and well-planned writing, I found writing too effortful.  I went to Harvard for undergrad.  This could be a stereotype, but New England prep school graduates seem to be able to write about anything at all with ease.  I envied their confidence in writing.  Were they better writers than I?  Probably not.  But someone showed them how writing works, and they clearly had more guided instruction and opportunities for honing those skills year after year.  I shied away from fields with heavy writing requirements.

Decades later as a parent, I am convinced writing is the most important skill for lifelong learning and career advancement.  I don't think this is a public vs private school disparity per se.  It's a pet peeve of mine when my DC's progressive lower school teachers imply that love of reading is sufficient to make a good writer, and all they do to 'coach' writing is having kids freestyle in their daily journals with occasional 'publication party' after peer editing.  I'm curious if there are state-wide standards that public schools have to cover every year?  Do Catholic school teachers give more explicit instructions?  I have no basis for this assumption other than knowing Catholic schools tend to still offer 'old school' type of workbooks on vocabulary and grammar...[/quote]

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