An online writing tutoring student types on his computer.

This is the second-to-last blog post in our four-part series on the 2007 research report titled "Writing Next: Effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle and high schools,” which breaks down eleven “instructional practices” that have been proven to improve students’ writing skills over time. In today’s post, we’ll summarize the next three instructional strategies outlined in the report (numbers 6-8), and explain how our online writing tutors use them to enhance the thinking and writing skills of the adolescent learners we work with every day. Our approach to improving students’ writing abilities is always rooted in these and other evidence-based teaching methods, and we find a lot of value in sharing this information with our audience.

We’ll begin with the sixth effective instructional practice described in the report: sentence combining.

Practice 6. Sentence Combining:

“In one approach, students at higher and lower writing levels are paired to receive six lessons that teach (a) combining smaller related sentences into a compound sentence using the connectors and, but, and because; (b) embedding an adjective or adverb from one sentence into another; (c) creating complex sentences by embedding an adverbial and adjectival clause from one sentence into another; and (d) making multiple embeddings involving adjectives, adverbs, adverbial clauses, and adjectival clauses”(pg. 17).

Sentence combining is an instructional method wherein students learn how to construct longer, more sophisticated sentences by repeatedly combining two or more simpler sentences into a grammatically coherent whole. Such exercises – which can be deceptively tricky to complete – are useful because they ask students to manipulate the rules of English syntax in a more dynamic, intuitive way than they would in most ELA workbooks. This helps them learn to actually use the linguistic principles that they are (or should be) learning separately through formal grammar study.

At the Gilliam Writers Group, our favorite series of workbooks that incorporates sentence combining exercises comes from co-authors Don and Jenny Kilgallon, two English teachers whose first-rate instructional materials can be used at home or in the classroom. Many of our best writing tutors use the Kilgallons’ expertly crafted line of sentence composing worktexts, which includes books for every grade level all the way through college. (These workbooks are also great resources for educators looking to incorporate instructional practice number 10, the “study of models,” discussed below.)

Practice 7. Pre-writing:

“...some common pre-writing activities include encouraging group and individual planning before writing, organizing pre-writing ideas, prompting students to plan after providing a brief demonstration of how to do so, or assigning reading material pertinent to a topic and then encouraging students to plan their work in advance”(pg. 18).

“Pre-writing” refers to the toolkit of exercises and activities that students can (and should) undertake before they begin drafting – activities like brainstorming, outlining, or developing graphics to aid in planning and organization. Prewriting activities lay the foundation for well-crafted essays, improving coherency and structural effectiveness; in our view, they are a non-negotiable cornerstone of the academic writing process.

Outlining is, of course, the most important prewriting activity, which is why our writing tutoring programs tend to emphasize this practice so heavily. In most cases, Gilliam Writers Group tutors take a highly structural approach to teaching academic writing, honing our students’ understanding of the interdependence of form and content.

Practice 8. Inquiry Activities:

“Effective inquiry activities in writing are characterized by a clearly specified goal (e.g., describe the actions of people), analysis of concrete and immediate data (observe one or more peers during specific activities), use of specific strategies to conduct the analysis (retrospectively ask the person being observed the reason for a particular action), and applying what was learned (assign the writing of a story incorporating insights from the inquiry process)”(pg. 19).

Inquiry activities have been used by teachers to spark learning and inspire new writing throughout history – and their popularity has persisted for good reason. Since Socrates led Plato down the dialogical rabbit-hole; since the religious leaders of the Axial Age discussed parables with their followers; since Sumeria’s bureaucrats trained their scribes to document the grain tax in cuneiform – in other words, since the beginning of documented history, educators have relied on inquiry activities to help others think reflectively. Inquiry activities teach students to not only see, but observe; to not only notice, but consider, to interpret what is noticed. And since these habits of mind are central to every skilled writer’s outlook, it only makes sense that they would foster better writing in adolescents.

So what, exactly, does an “inquiry activity” consist of? Well, these activities help students “develop ideas and content for a particular writing task”(19) by asking them to closely observe and then analyze some form of immediate, concrete data – whether sensory, narrative, experiential, or otherwise. For instance, one of GWG’s academic writing tutors recently had their student listen to various musical instruments before describing each sound on the page, incorporating as much detail and feeling into their work as possible. Once the first draft was complete, their instructor suggested revisions aimed at deepening the piece’s impact, focus, and specificity. And so on, and so on. (See further examples on page 19 of the “Writing Next” report.) Inquiry activities promote critical thinking, research skills, and effective argumentation by enhancing students' ability to think critically and express their ideas persuasively.

If you’ve made it this far in the blog post, congratulations, and thanks for reading. That’s all for today. In the next and final installment of our series on the “Writing Next” report, we’ll explore the last three instructional practices this trusty document recommends. If that’s of interest to you, stay tuned!