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Greetings!

Deborah Wuehler and family

We had a homeschool mom write in recently about how to get her high school boys ready for college writing. What a great question! I didn't have time to write a decent answer right away, so I asked my trusty friend and absolutely brilliant assistant, Andrea Newitt. Here is her response:

Good for you for asking about preparing boys for writing college papers. John Mark Reynolds, the director of the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University, commented at a homeschool seminar many years ago that homeschoolers are not any better at writing than public schoolers. They just aren't able to write a 10-page paper when they enter college. Keep in mind that he is a big proponent of homeschooling, and he sees top-notch students; it is a fairly prevalent problem.

Here are some ideas on teaching high school boys how to write long papers. First of all, I would suggest having them write on a subject they are interested in and develop the paper over a period of time, using smaller papers that they put together. They essentially will be writing a super paper, on a particular subject of interest. Their main subject will be divided into three smaller subjects, and each of those subjects will be broken down into three topics, each with interesting facts to know and tell!

We have used IEW's writing program for years, and I love it. Writing a five-paragraph paper using their format that relies on a key-word outline is quite simple, and I would suggest having the boys write three five-paragraph papers, then put them together with a well-written introduction and a conclusion, making sure they have good transitions. This format also worked well for us when we took part in a Toastmaster Youth Leadership Program for a couple of years. Think of three things you want to tell your audience, then introduce those three subjects, tell them the three things, and remind them of the three things you just told them.

Before they start writing their super paper, a good outline will help them organize their thoughts and help ensure they have enough to work with.

A basic five-paragraph paper, which will be the building block of the longer paper, looks like this:

Introduction
Topic 1
    3 to 5 interesting facts
Topic 2
    3 to 5 interesting facts
Topic 3
    3 to 5 interesting facts
Conclusion

Make sure that their introduction grabs the reader's attention and that the conclusion reminds the reader of the most important fact(s) from their paper. In the introduction, be sure that they include the three topics they will be discussing, and make sure the paper, especially the last sentence, comes to a good, strong conclusion. 

Each of the three body paragraphs needs to have a good, clear topic sentence. The reader needs to know what each of those paragraphs is about, and it is a good practice to always look at that first sentence and make sure that everything in the paragraph has to do with that topic sentence. If not, the reader will have difficulty following the train of thought and the paper will not be successful.

Transitions are the key to a flowing paper. Deborah Wuehler happens to be the Queen of Transitions; she is gifted in that area. I relied more on a small, inexpensive book called The Lively Art of Writing to learn and to teach my children how to write good transitions. It also helped us in our struggles with writing good conclusions that don't sound repetitive. Just make sure your boys pick up a word, a phrase, or an idea from the previous paragraph and incorporate it into the next paragraph, and they will be on their way to becoming Kings of Transitions.

Putting three of those five-paragraph papers together for the super paper would look like this:

Introduction
    Introduce Subject 1
        Topic 1
        Topic 2
        Topic 3
        Conclusion
   Introduce Subject 2
        Topic 1
        Topic 2
        Topic 3
        Conclusion
    Introduce Subject 3
        Topic 1
        Topic 2
        Topic 3
        Conclusion
Conclusion

For a time frame, you could spend a day or two brainstorming ideas and developing the outlines. Then they will need time to research. When it comes to writing the papers, two weeks for each five-paragraph paper works well. If they don't particularly like writing by hand, encourage them to do their work on the computer. Give them another two weeks to put the super paper together. Remind them that rewriting is the key to good writing. They need to think how they can say something in the clearest, most concise way (by the way, that is from The Elements of Style, which is another small, inexpensive resource to have on hand).

So, that would be something like nine weeks to complete their first super paper. After that, the process should be much easier and could go more quickly. You could do it once and know that you have prepared them to write a long paper, or you could do it a few times so that it becomes more second nature to them. It all depends on how much time and effort you want to put into it and how prepared you want them to be as they enter college.

I hope these ideas help. Please write back with any questions. We are here to help!

~Andrea

(Deborah: See, I told you she was brilliant!)

~Deborah

 

Hey from Gena 

Gena Suarez

Gena Suarez, Publisher of TOS     

~~~

Janice Campbell

Getting Ready for College Writing

Learning to write is a process, and to be honest, none of it is easy to a student who is doing it all for the first time. One of the most effective and time-tested ways of learning to write well is to work with models and to learn while doing. Most students are ready to begin this once they've mastered basic skills, either through the Charlotte Mason sequence of copying (penmanship), narration (mental organization, sequencing, word choice), and dictation (spelling, punctuation, proofreading), or another method.     Working with models and learning by doing are both pretty straightforward processes, and neither requires a large investment. When you choose to learn by doing, you will practice writing skills in the process of doing literature, history, science, and other written assignments, rather than taking up school time with separate writing lessons. Writing skills grow sharper when students write about important ideas and try to convey meaningful information rather than just write essays based on random writing prompts.     You can learn how to effectively use models for any kind of paper by following the process outlined in The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. After his father pointed out his lack of "elegance of expression," Franklin devised the following method to teach himself to write well:     "About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator -- I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With this view I took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, try'd to compleat the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come hand. Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them. But I found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and using them. Therefore I took some of the tales and turned them into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again. I also sometimes jumbled my collections of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the best order, before I began to form the full sentences and compleat the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts. By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language."     Franklin apparently worked on his writing during his early teen years, and this is a reasonable age for students to begin working with college-prep assignments. Writing for college may not be easy, but using models and learning while doing will help your student learn to do it well.  

~Janice Campbell