Thursday, February 16, 2012
"40 percent of high school seniors never..."
I was looking through the Kajder text for a topic to write about and I found a statistic that I had highlighted. Kajder's statistic, "40 percent of high school seniors never or rarely write a paper of three or more pages," shocked me at first, until I realized that I hadn't either. I remember having to write my graduation project paper, which was the longest paper that students had to write in my high school. This paper had to be between three and four pages long. I remember thinking that there was no way I was going to have that much to say. Little did I know, I would come to college and have to write papers two or three times as long. Looking back, I wish I would have been required to write longer papers. I wasn't prepared to write four page papers, let alone trying to write ten pages.
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As much as I make fun of my podunk High School, I can say I have written many papers that exceed that length. My 11th grade teacher even had us write a formal research paper with perfect MLA citations of at least 8 pages. Of course, almost all my teachers that had those assignments retired the year after I graduated and I know that none of the teachers exceed that amount there now. I find it surprising myself.
ReplyDeleteRenea (or others),
ReplyDeleteDo you have any solutions for when you teach as to how students can write more than 3-4 pages?
I remember writing five-paragraph essays and a handful of papers that were about 2-3 pages. Not until my Senior Project paper did I write more than that. It's actually kind of funny, looking back on it now. They told me I was being prepared for college, but I had never written anything more than 4 pages.
ReplyDeleteMy teachers told me the exact same thing, but I don't feel that I was prepared at all. If I were teaching (especially juniors or seniors), I would probably have my students write a longer, 5-6 page paper, on a topic of their choice. I could use this as an introduction to writing longer papers, before moving to a more formal 6+ page paper.
ReplyDelete