Advanced writing skills
We learn to write by practising writing, with the aim of developing the skills and understanding to become accomplished and capable writers who apply techniques and make stylistic choices that shape texts. We want these texts to communicate ideas, evoke emotions and have impact.
Teaching students to write begins with developing their foundational writing skills in the early years of school, including explicitly teaching text structure, purpose and language conventions. These skills are systematically built upon over time. As students become more proficient writers, they learn to make deliberate language choices and control language for different purposes and audiences across a range of increasingly sophisticated contexts.
A well-designed assessment rubric is an effective teaching tool for developing students' advanced writing skills. It gives teachers a tool for modelling the thinking of accomplished writers as they show students how to make purposeful decisions about content, themes, language, structure and style when constructing texts. Because it sets out clear, consistent criteria, a rubric becomes a point of reference for teachers and students can return to repeatedly, as students refine their writing over time.
For example, the following rubric can be used by teachers and students to analyse and evaluate a discussion text as students research and craft an essay for a History writing task:
Depth of understanding: the writing demonstrates insightful and sophisticated understanding, explores perspectives and underlying complexities.
Strength of reasoning: the writing synthesises well-constructed, nuanced arguments with deep justification (logical, extensive, reliable evidence from multiple sources and perspectives) that are consistently sustained throughout.
Quality of connections: the writing makes creative and insightful connections by linking historical events, contemporary society and evolving ideas of national identity.
Control of structure: the writing moves beyond the exemplar text with independent structural choices that nuance meaning and have a profound impact.
Effectiveness of communication & authorial voice: the writing communicates with a confident and authentic personal perspective, showing originality with independent stylistic choices (vocabulary, sentence construction etc..) that have a profound impact.
As a writer builds their skills, knowledge and confidence, the writing process increases in its complexity. It involves generating ideas, researching and verifying facts, organising information, resolving language and structural challenges, making choices about content and themes, and drafting, reflecting, revising. The effective teaching of writing therefore requires teachers to understand the nuances of sophisticated writing with an expertise to provide targeted instruction and precise feedback that support student progress and achievement.
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Cheung, Y. L. (2016). Teaching Writing. In W. A. Renandya, & H. P. Widodo (Eds.), English Language Teaching Today: Building a Closer Link Between Theory and Practice. New York, NY: Springer International.