| What kids Write: Product |
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| Is it Good? |
| Bad writing is confusing .The confusion leads a reader to ignore, disregard, or even reject the text. |
| Parents, teachers, and students often don�t trust their own inherent sense of what good writing is. Some assume that only some anonymous, presumably objective authority can assess the true worth of a piece of writing. Others, who value scientific inquiry and are concerned about validity and reliability, wonder if there isn�t some sort of criteria for supporting a judgment of �good� or �bad�.
Teachers, business people, editors and writers make conscious decisions about the quality of writing every day. Research shows that they are in agreement about the most significant characteristics (now commonly referred to as �traits�) of good writing. |
| What makes it good? |
| Murray (1982), Spandel (2005),. |
| I wonder if �?
What will happen next? How does that compare with �.? |
| What does it mean?
How does that relate? Who edited this? |
| Good writing leads the reader to respond by connecting to ideas, emotions, and experiences conveyed through the text.
Readers also intuitively know when they come upon bad writing. Bad writing leads the reader to ask questions, too, but the questions are addressed to the text and author: |
| Every reader has a personal sense of what good writing is. Parents, teachers, and student writers can all tell you, �I know good writing when I read it.� Good writing keeps the reader interested and has clear meaning. The meaning leads readers to ask themselves questions like: |
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| Diederich (1974), Murray (1982), Purves (1992), Spandel (2002) |
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| It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both. from Charlotte�s Web. EB White. |
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| Ideas
Organization Voice Word Choice Sentence Fluency Conventions Presentation |
| Though good writing is more than the sum of its parts, identifying a list of characteristics offers a point of reference for analyzing and assessing writing products that is flexible. The same list of traits characterize good writing in all genres, at all developmental levels. These traits are also consistent with international values of quality writing. |
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| xxx |
| And so there ain�t nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I�d a �knowed what trouble it was to make a book, I wound�t a� tackled it, and ain�t a-going to no more. from Huckleberry Fin by Mark Twain |
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