The Way We Teach Writing Is Bad

You probably remember it. Your English teacher carefully goes through how to write a formal essay, do an outline, and so on. You spend a ton of time on figuring out how to do citations.

Aaaaand when you try to get into writing, you realize nobody enjoys that.

(Like, nobody.)

We do need to understand the basics, including general essay format. But in this video, I highlight the fact that what we’re taught about writing is often not how people really communicate. If it’s not realistic to the world or what you’d use in modern journalism, or if it’s not going to hold the interest of the reader, why do we still teach writing this way?

Watch/Subscribe:
https://youtube.com/shorts/aw_N42jFjf0?feature=share

The sentiment is captured exceptionally well in this lecture from Larry McEnerney. He explains that readers will read what is valuable to them — and most formal writing education teaches people to write what they as authors think is valuable.

[Transcript summary]

I was reading this post that I happened to see online, and essentially the post was about how all of the writing that we learn in school isn’t the writing that we actually see. So, like, if you learn in school, you learn, okay, you have your thesis statement, and then you have your three paragraphs, and then you conclude.

That’s not really the way people talk and communicate. That’s not really the way people write. If you think about a lot of the articles that you see, journalism, that’s not how we do it. And so the concept was, in terms of writing, we’re kind of setting people up to not be good writers. Even at academics, it’s not interesting. So, people are going to leave it.

So, my thought is we, just as writers, need to be aware of this and ask ourselves, “How can we teach writing in a more interesting way, a more — a way that acknowledges the different approaches writing can have?” So, that’s my idea for today. Bye.