Poor Writing Skills Affecting Students’ Overall Academic Performance: Who Is To Blame?

NEW YORK - April 15, 2015 - PRLog -- Students don’t take writing seriously, which affects their scoring: Teachers

Our teachers think they are supposed to teach about the main subject only, but not about writing exclusively: Students

In a complete contrast, modern universities, the reservoir of knowledge and wisdom, have stopped producing eloquent writers and authors. The reasons of such failure are many, though no one seems to take the blame in fact.

“Our student get poor marks not because of their poor knowledge in particular subjects, but this is mainly because they cannot express their knowledge fluently and convincingly,” said by Mr. Albert McCain, a retired professor and scientist from University of Minnesota. “It’s really disturbing to see that the majority of graduate students is unable to write what they want to. They use wrong phrases, improper grammar and not good in putting punctuations accordingly, and beyond such technical writing flaws, todays’ higher-education learners seem to be rather confused when writing down their thoughts on a piece of paper,” Mr. McCain mentioned.

Ms. Lucy Steven, a student from the same institution, thinks quite otherwise, as she believes the main culprits are the teachers who don’t, really, guide their students how to write well. “We write whatever we learn in our schools. Knowing the fact that we have been writing academic papers and assignments since ages, the lack of effective writing skills among the graduate students raises the question mark on the very teaching standards of universities and colleges. So, why do not teachers accept their own professional flaws?” said Ms. Steven in a fury.

Every year, from 5 to 6 thousand graduate students submit their research proposals for thesis and dissertation writing in their relevant knowledge disciplines, but most of these proposals are disapproved by the dissertation committees because of poor grammar, improper punctuations, and faulty sentence structures, as well as the inappropriate referencing and citations as per the given writing formats. However, Professor M.A. Ashton from the School of Economics finds grave issues in entire education system here in the United States, saying that "we have never included writing as a distinctive subject in our curriculum, and this is the mostly student’s own efforts and talent which help them write better than other fellows,” Mr. Ashton summarized. He is of the view that academic writing is, itself, a very specialized domain, but mostly taken for granted by the academia in U.S. “Writing is one of the primary parts of the whole education and learning process, and when learners appear to be poor in writing, there is something, definitely, wrong with existing educational and teaching standards,” he added.

“Being a single parent of a 19-years old college boy, I am seriously worried about his academic future, as despite having convincing verbal communication prowess my son is not capable of expressing himself in black and white,” said Ms. Elvira Tiwari, a mother of college-going student enrolled in University of Chicago in its evening program. “Having added hundreds of friends here in Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, etc., my son happens to be a social media freak from head to toe. Day or night, I always find him talking and chatting endlessly with his friends and classmates through via his cellphone and personal laptop. His typing speed is mind-blowing, and sometimes I wonder how can he write to so many friends at one fell swoop? Despite these attributes, he cannot write well and accurately, as he makes so many mistakes and errors, which you cannot expect from a regular college goer. Overall, my son happens to be an average student, while his writing skills are less than average, to be very honest,” Ms. Tiwari elucidated.

“Instead of blaming each other, we have to find a workable solution. To me, there are a number of critical factors behind poor writing abilities of university and college students, but an excessive indulgence of modern communication tools (e.g. Internet, smartphones) has badly affected their actual writing skills. Today’s youth can work as a shorthand typist in organizations, but as far as their academic growth is concerned, there is a long way to go,” mentioned by Mr. Tom A. Rodriguez, a senior psychologist attached with Institute of Clinical Psychology here at the Kentucky.

Smith F. Grossberg, an associate professor here at the School of Applied Sciences California, said, “If you want to be a good writer, you must refer to quality books, dictionaries and writing-related websites operating online. Here being a teacher, I mostly recommend my students to consult those of the dictionaries and writing manuals published by the Oxford University Press, Merriam-Webster, and Nelson and not to exclude many valuable online writing platform like the http://dissertationexpress.com/ ”. “We all can become second to none in writing, but for this we have to be voracious readers, first of all. It beats me when today’s learner think as if they are exempt from studying quality books and other reading materials readily available everywhere,” Mr. Grossberg concluded.

Regardless of the underlying factors and causes, our graduate and undergraduate students need to work hard in order to improve their writing and editing skills, and they can easily do so by writing more and more, particularly in supervision of their teachers and other writing experts. The education policy makers must also introduce exclusive programs for both the teachers and students to help them become good writer and authors in the end.