Old Versus New - Writing Process and Mechanics

          Today's post deals with a comparison between writing process and mechanics standards in the old Arizona English Language Arts standards versus the new Arizona Common Core ELA Standards for 12th grade students.  As with the previous post, consideration will be given for whether or not the new standards are superior or inferior to the old standards in these subject areas, whether or not the new standards represent a threshold for college or career readiness, and whether or not development of the required skills is necessary and sufficient for involved participation in our society. 
          I would define writing process standards as anything that deals with the method students use to write: pre-writing, editing, etc.  Writing mechanics, on the other hand, is adherence to conventions like spelling, capitalization, etc.  Together, these two topics speak to the more technical aspects of writing.

The Facts:

• The old standards include an entire strand (1 of 3 strands) on Writing Process.  This strand includes 5 concepts: pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing.  Each of these concepts is further broken down into individual standards. 
• The new standards have only one standards dealing with writing process.  It reads, "Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience."
• The old standards have a single concepts that deals with conventions, but it includes 12 sub-concepts which take up a page and a half of the 9 pages of writing standards.  These sub-concepts are 1) capitalization, 2) comma usage, 3) quotations marks, 4) underlining/italics, 5) colons, 6) semi-colons, 7) apostrophes, 8) hyphens, dashes, parentheses, ellipses, and brackets, 9) spelling, 10) paragraph breaks, 11) grammar and usage, and 12) formatting.  Many of these categories have additional bullet points describing situations in which students should be able to apply relevant principles.
• The new standards require students to "establish and maintain a formal style and objective tone while attending to the norms and conventions of the discipline in which they are writing."

My Opinion:

          It is clear upon looking at the stark contrast between the old and new standards that the old standards place much greater emphasis on the steps necessary to produce writing.  The new standards, as pointed out in a previous post, describe what a student needs to be able to produce in terms of writing rather than how it is to be produced.  Teachers and parents who worry that the new standards will force teachers to teach writing a specific way and take away options that have worked well in the past, need not worry in the regard.  The new standards open the door to any methods teachers feel work best so long as the result is good, appropriate writing.  In my eyes, this makes the new standards much more like standards and much less like prescriptive teaching plans.
          Although I have looked through the old standards or several occasions, it was not until I compared the two that I realized just how prescriptive the old standards are in this regard.  The level of detail of what students should be able to correctly abbreviate and punctuate surprised me.  It seems to make much better sense to simply say that students should use correct abbreviation, punctuation, and spelling in their writing than to say each and every instance in which students should know correct punctuation.  Beside taking up a large chunk of the writing standards, if there are situations that were missed, are students not also responsible for proper punctuation and abbreviation in unlisted situations?  Plainly and simply put, graduating seniors need to be able to write with correct mechanics.  That is basically what the new standards say.  To me, this makes them superior to the old.
          My second consideration is whether or not the skills listed for writing process and convention are sufficient and necessary for successful freshman level college work or entry-level career work.  I think adherence to either set of writing standards above will produce students who are ready for college level work.  As stated in the previous post, many of the students with whom I worked in groups or performed peer reviews struggled mightily with proper spelling, punctuation, and grammar.  Some of them were undoubtedly successful with being skillful in these regards.  However, it greatly hindered their work and required them to do many more revisions than those who had better honed their skills in following writing conventions.  With the advent of spell-check and grammar check and the fact that virtually all college papers are prepared on the computer, perfect mastery of these skills may not be as important as they were previously.  However, I believe they should continue to be one of the focuses of teaching students to write - perhaps not the main focus, but certainly something to be addressed.
          Familiarity with the writing process is perhaps more important in the age of computer editing than knowledge of particular conventions.  A student who receives a writing assignment and doesn't know where to start without a teacher beside him walking him through the process is going to flounder in college classes.  Likewise, a student who fails to take advantage of proof-reading and revision opportunities will struggle to write successful college papers.  These are absolutely essential skills to develop before beginning college.  Further, in a career where writing is prevalent, employees will be expected to plan out, organize, write, and revise without prompts or too much additional support.  In short, both adherence to writing conventions and knowledge of and familiarity with the writing process are essential to college and career success.
          Finally, I do not see any way political bias could be suspected in regards to the new standards for writing process and conventions.  Furthermore, adults who have been taught the writing process and proper adherence to writing conventions will be more confident engaging in the political process by writing letters to politicians, writing opinion pieces for newspapers or voting pamphlets, or communicating their thoughts to other through use of the written word.  The ability to write a well-crafted resume or application is likewise essential to business success for many.
          The best standards state what a student should be able to do with as few restrictions as possible.  In this regard, the new standards get an A+.  They remove all of the unnecessary details found in the previous standards and cut to the chase.  Students need to be able to follow the writing process to produce various types of papers and students need to follow appropriate conventions in their writing.  Teachers need to teach these precepts in whatever way works for their students.  This is what the new standards require and allow.