They produce second, third and sometimes fourth and fifth drafts until the piece is coherent and error-free. Teaching good writing is a topic that is getting renewed interest from educators everywhere. Writing programs abound, teachers are jamming writing seminars and colleges are experimenting with writing requirements for graduation. Some colleges make writing advisers available to student 24 hours a day, by telephone or online. The verbal portion of the SAT now includes a writing section, and New York City schools just changed some of their testing to emphasize writing.
Students have to be able to write articulate and coherent essays.
Yet many still can't. College presidents and employers continue to complain that young people can't write well, and federal studies confirm it. Some educators, such as Kay Phillips, head of the journalism school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, are convinced that the quality of writing has deteriorated in the past quarter-century. She blames it in part on what she believes is a decline in the reading of literature and a lack of strong grammar instruction. Pesche Kuriloff, director of the Mellon Writing Project at the University of Pennsylvania, doesn't quite agree.