Do You Know Your Punctuation (insert question mark here)

You’re a high school English teacher, inevitably getting kids ready for the standardized writing tests they are about to take. A reporter approaches you outside the school building and asks: “What is the most important thing in writing effectively?” Obviously, I’m not a teacher yet, but I could probably envision myself saying something like “syntax,” “overall organization,” or “imagination.” However, I would be in for a rude awakening because apparently, high-schoolers are having a really tough time figuring out how to use punctuation.

According to an article by the East Bay Daily News, recent statistics show that “less than 60 percent of incoming freshman [at Diablo Valley College] tested at remedial levels in English.” Now, colleges are running development writing courses which are designed to help these students catch up. The report also shows, what I think is a very strange response regarding the most important thing about writing effectively:

“College instructors ranked punctuating the end of a sentence correctly as the 2nd most important thing in writing effectively. High school teachers ranked that skill as the 31st most important thing.”

I always figured that students mastered the art of punctuation in elementary school. But apparently, this isn’t just a freak incident which took place at DVC. In fact, most colleges look for very different skills than those which high school instructors are teaching students:

“Teachers at all levels value organized, coherent writing from their students. But college professors more often rated punctuation as paramount, the study says, while high school teachers placed more importance on developing a topic and writing a great introductory paragraph.”

Personally, I had a different experience regarding high school writing versus college writing. College writing has never been particularly focused on the grammatical issues within my papers. In college, content is key. Now, many schools are taking a different approach to improve the weaknesses of freshman college students:

“Professor Alison Warriner of Cal State East Bay serves on a state task force to improve writing at the high school level. In 2005, state superintendent of public schools Jack O’Connell created a council to foster relationships between educators at the preschool, K-12 and college levels.”

So how do standardized writing tests help this issue? One might assume that skills obtained in high school are ones which ready students for standardized tests, and standardized tests play a large role in admission to college. Therefore, in a perfect world, a student who passes a standardized writing test should be ready for college writing as long as she knows how to use her semi-colons and commas. Too bad this isn’t the case.

The actual study which was reported by the Contra Costa Times can be found here.

Sources:
East Bay Daily News - Study: “High school, college learning divide continues”

Contra Costa Times – “High school instruction, college needs unmatched”