A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n

How Well Do Students Write? Can They Persuade?

Writers can communicate in a variety of ways from business letters to stories to reports to essays. But to become good writers, students need expert instruction, frequent practice, and constructive feedback.

According to the results of the 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Writing Assessment, many students have difficulty writing effectively. This new National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) study shows that even the best students who are able to write informative and narrative pieces have trouble in persuasive writing tasks.

To compile the data, NCES used a nationally representative sample of 30,000 students in 4th, 8th, and 12th grade and had them respond to a variety of writing tasks, defined as:

Informative writing-: subject matter that is being explained and emphasizes sharing knowledge, messages, instruction, and ideas;
Narrative writing-: stories or essays that emphasize the writer's experiences, perceptions, and imagination;
Persuasive writing-: focused on exerting an impact on the reader and influencing others to take some action or bring about change.

In addition to determining how well students write, this assessment examined curricular emphases, writing instruction, and the availability of resources. It also uncovered profiles of proficient and not-so-proficient writers and the influence of home environment on student skills.

Most students had an understanding of the basic features of narrative and informative writing, but many at each grade level had difficulty producing effective informative, narrative, and persuasive writing. Even the best students had difficulty with persuasive tasks.

The assessment described certain activities that promote good writing. Teachers in top-performing schools reported such practices as:

Writing about literature;
Asking students to choose topics;
Emphasizing the writing process;
Integrating reading, writing, and language tasks; and
Placing an emphasis on the quality and coherence of the written product.
In addition, students in top-performing schools reported
Being asked to plan their writing and to write more than one draft; and
Doing more spelling, punctuation, or grammar exercises.

While the percentage of 8th graders who are taught writing for at least 1 hour a week went up between 1988 and 1992, writing is still not emphasized relative to other subjects such as mathematics, which is taught 5 or more hours a week. More than half of 8th graders and more than a third of 12th graders report never or hardly ever being given writing assignments of three or more pages.

On the other hand, the data show an increase from 1988 to 1992 in the direction of new reforms in writing. For example, there was an increase in the amount of attention paid to writing instruction, emphasis on process-oriented activities, integrated reading, writing language tasks, and evaluation of student work in terms of quality and coherence of ideas.

Some of the other factors associated with high writing achievement were doing challenging and lengthy writing assignments, analyzing and interpreting rather than preparing summaries and reports, doing homework, having reading materials in the home, and limiting television watching.

The results of this assessment are published in the NAEP 1992 Writing Report Card. Copies are available from GPO (stock #065-000-00654-5, $14).

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