Teaching Composition: Research on Effective Practices

Given the broad general agreement about the importance of learning to write, it is disturbing to discover that "most researchers and educators agree that, with rare exceptions, students do not and cannot write well" (Amiran and Mann 1982, p. 3). In preparation for a report sponsored by the American Association of School Administrators, Neill (1982) conducted a survey of 425 school districts and found that 90 percent of the respondents considered student writing to be a problem -either a serious problem (40 percent) or a minor problem (50 percent). Neill also quoted a late 1970s report stating that the reasons given by some corporations for leaving urban environments is that they couldn't find people for clerical jobs who are minimally competent in basic skills, including writing.