Essay on Authentic Writing v. Formulatic writing

This piece is a draft "argument" piece written for the prompt:


Educators should use authentic writing tasks rather than formulaic ones when teaching students to write.

Have you ever written an assignment in which you had no interest? How about an assignment where you had no idea where to start or what the teacher was looking for? Now, have you ever written an impassioned email or facebook post or block post or letter in which the words fairly flew from your brain on to the page, post or site? Which writing was your better writing? The “what I did on my summer vacation” assignment or the writing on a topic of your choosing? These are the differences between formulaic writing and authentic writing.

Formulaic writing is writing where the teacher says “you will all give me a three or five paragraph essay with five to seven sentences in each paragraph on the life cycle of the tse-tse fly.” Authentic writing is where the teacher assigns the students to open a writing journal and write for an amount of time, but the student determines the style of writing and the topic of the writing. Which assignment would you rather have? Which would your children rather have? Which is more interesting to read?

Authentic writing is what educators should use in the classroom. Authentic writing is what adults use in the real world, it's the writing of grocery lists, lesson plans, office memos, business letters and stories. In the classroom authentic writing grabs the imagination of students and helps them see the reasons “why we write” and to learn writing is enjoyable. Once kids understand “why we write” it is far easier to work with them on conventions of grammar, punctuation and spelling than it is with a marked up paper that they hated writing in the first place.

Small groups of students focused on improving their writing, each working on a similar task on different projects builds a sense of community and a “hey, listen to what I wrote” and a “let me see what you wrote.” All children writing the same (basic) essay on the same topic leads to discussions of “are we done yet” or “only two more sentences and I'm done.”

Students who are at different parts of their writing share different experiences with their classmates. Students learn best when some are finishing a story and getting it read to “publish” which means show the piece to others, be that taking it home, showing it to another teacher, their classmates, or putting it in a class book. Students learn best when writing at their own pace. In a writing workshop format, any given student may be at the beginning, middle and end of the writing process in any given class period. Using this model, some students are revising, others editing, others having a mini-lesson the teacher on “voice” or on adding more exciting adjectives and verbs to their writing.

When students are invested in their writing, writing something they are interested in their writing improves and they take more care in the steps to final product. Is there a place for worksheet writing? Yes, now and again for certain tasks. But, for writing instruction on an ongoing basis, authentic writing is the best way to go.