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Good Writing Honors the Reader

19/2/2018

 
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Good writing engages the reader.  As William Zinnser said in his classic book, "good writing is clear thinking." Yet most children would never get past the first sentence of a standardized text book unless it was required reading. Some schools know that and tell teachers not to bother with text.  The tradition of assigned reading assumes it is a way to impart information to readers.  So, as long as the information is there and correct, the student will understand it and the teacher is off the hook because the material has been "covered."  Right?

What happens when the same historical information is written by textbook writers, linguists,  academics and  magazine writers?  What does reading comprehension have to do with the quality of the writing?  Is this something that can be measured?   As a matter of fact, a study was done in 1988 that still holds up well today.  

The writing in question was two 400-word excerpts from a high-school history textbook. The experimenters asked three pairs of writers, two linguists, two college English teachers and two former Time-Life magazine writers to rewrite the passages to make them more understandable to the students. Three hundred eleventh-grade students read the original material and the revisions and were tested on how much they recalled. The results? Students who read the linguists’ and English teachers’ versions did not recall much more or less than they had from the original texts. But students who read the magazine writers version recalled 40 percent more than the original! Naturally, the linguists and English teachers wanted another crack at a rewrite but although the second experiment showed a little improvement, the magazine writers were still twice as effective at communicating. In other words, good writing is memorable. And command of the English language doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a good writer.

Reading teachers have a measurement, called “lexiles (L)” to evaluate the complexity or the level of difficulty of texts. There is another myth that such leveled reading is easier when it comes to comprehension than good writing.  Gerri K. Songer, Education Chair/ Illinois Township High School District 214, measured the lexile level of some sample paragraphs from the recent PARRC  assessment test and came to the conclusion that  “[for students] to independently read the most complex of these passages, [they] will need to read at 1470L by April of their junior year.” As a comparison, I measured a few of my entries here on my blog and they average about 1000L. She also came to some conclusions about the reading levels stipulated by the Common Core State Standards:


  • ​​CCSS finds it more desirable for students to read text that does not follow standard convention rules (i.e. text without an identifiable pattern).​
  • CCSS finds it more desirable for students to read text that is unclear, misleading, old, unfamiliar, ironic, and figurative (text that doesn’t say what it means).
  • CSSS finds it more desirable for students to read text with which few people can identify in terms of life experience.
  • CCSS finds it more desirable for students to read text that has multiple meanings with information that is implied, hidden, or obscure.

And she sums it up: “CCSS advocates utilizing text for educational purposes that follows no pattern, that is unclear and misleading, that few people can identify with, and that has multiple meanings.” I think we're teaching kids to read bad writing. Yet they use excerpts from iNK authors for the standardized tests!

We created the Nonfiction Minute to show good writing to those who buy in to the standardized material used in classrooms full of diverse individual humans.  We include an audio file of the author reading his/her Minute so less fluent readers can access the content, as well as visuals (photos, charts, illustrations, even videos).  We welcome any reading researcher who wants to evaluate our effectiveness. (Write me at: vicki@inkthinktank.org.)   We have all kinds of stats on page views, which doesn't distinguish that each single page view could be a class of twenty-five.
This past week we had 15,751 page views and more than 4,500 new visitors.

Literature has been defined as "the single passionate voice."  Its humanity connects us to the writer just as a teacher's humanity connects him/her to students. Humanity is the common denominator of all authentic communication. 






Fun Test Prep

5/2/2018

 
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We're coming up on "test prep" season that puts fear into the hearts of teachers, students, administrators and real estate agents.  So who doesn't worry much?  Good schools that take testing in their stride.  That's because the key to good test scores is reading and writing. Lots of it. Every day.  Across the curriculum.  

The standardized tests are primarily reading comprehension.  Students are asked to read several passages, amounting to about 400 words, and are then asked questions to be electronically scored about what they've read.  Ever wonder where the test creators get their passages?  One place is by excerpting nonfiction literature like the books in the picture.  How do I know?  Here's a picture of a file of contracts where I sold excerpt rights to testing companies:​


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My agent gets me paid according to the number of people who will read the passage. This year she sold two paragraphs from an out-of-print book to a Tennessee testing company where 100,000 children will read it. That's more than the number who read the original book!
Secondly,  I received an email asking me to be a “passage writer” at the Center for Educational Testing and Evaluation (CETE) in Lawrence KS offering me $500 to write passages for the assessment tests. There were two attachments: “Tips for Writing Topics” and “Writing Guidelines.”  Here are a couple of excerpts:

 “When coming up with topic ideas for reading passages, it's always best to go with something familiar to you. Choose topics in which you have prior knowledge or interest. This will make the passage easier to write, and will often reflect in the writing. Because writers may use a maximum of 5 sources when writing a passage, choosing passages in your realm of knowledge will also minimize the number of sources you have to rely on.

“Keep in mind that passages may not have references to drugs, sex, alcohol, gambling, magic, holidays, religion, violence, or evolution, and that topic ideas should not lend themselves to passages which would require such content.”

And

“Use grade-appropriate vocabulary. To check your passage, use Microsoft Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level readability test (part of Microsoft Word programs).”
​
Clearly the authors of these documents didn’t know for whom they were writing.  Did they think that after 90 books I need their tips?   Do they have any idea how these “tips” flatten text and clip the wings of a talented writer?  Is it their intention that the Common Core State Standards teach kids how to read bad writing?  Don’t they know that kids build vocabulary by being exposed to literature and spoken language where nuanced words are used in context, not through leveled readers with controlled vocabularies?  And if you think kids can’t learn multi-syllabic words, just talk to a five-year-old expert on dinosaurs.  FYI:  I passed on the opportunity.

But I digress.  Your problem is simple. In the next month or so of test prep, your students need to practice reading widely and reading deeply.  Use the Nonfiction Minute as your source. They are exactly the same length as the test questions. Use the T2T sections to discuss the Minutes.   Have students pick authors they like and go to the library and get a book by that author. Reading a whole book is reading deeply.  You can use our database to find books that fit in with your curriculum and grade level.

Remember that drill-down test prep by reading test questions and filling in bubbles doesn't foster a love of reading or learning as it increases pressure and tension on both students and teachers.  The Nonfiction Minute makes reading and thinking about what you've read fun and engaging.  It could lead a student to the library to read books, think of that!
​
Give the kids two days of practice tests right before the real ones to build their confidence that taking the test is a piece of cake.  Allow yourselves to be pleasantly surprised.  


     Vicki Cobb

    *Award-winning author of more than 90 nonfiction books for children, mostly in science.
    *Former Contributor to the Huffington Post
    *Founder/President of iNK Think Tank, Inc.
    *Passionate advocate for the joy of learning for every child and teacher.


    Disclaimer: All opinions, typos, and grammatical errors are my own,  especially small word omissions which I often don't notice in my fervor.  

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