Why Can’t College Students Write Anymore?

[wa3zrm]

Why Can’t College Students Write Anymore?
Is it just me, or are student competencies like basic writing skills in serious peril today? Granted, I am about a decade in to my teaching career, but even within this fairly short span, I have noticed a startling decline in the quality of written work turned in by my students, regardless of which institution (community college, private, four year school) the papers are coming from.
It’s not just that students aren’t demonstrating critical thinking skills in their writing, basic competencies like proper syntax, spelling, and even proper structure like paragraph indentation and how to cite sources are being done very poorly. Teachers have been reporting anecdotally that even compared to five years ago, many are seeing declines in vocabulary, grammar, writing, and analysis (e.g. Westin, 2013; Bloomberg News, 2012). Moreover, on an international scale, our standards in literacy is similarly on the decline (McGuire, 2014).
There are only so many times you can correct a “their” that is meant to denote “there” before wondering, when was the last time this college student’s writing abilities were actually assessed? As a psychology professor, I am starting to feel like an English instructor, because so much of my feedback on these papers is focusing on such basic writing skills, that the coherency or theoretical merit behind the content is getting lost in the shuffle.
Snip
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...-write-anymore

(Excerpt) Read more at psychologytoday.com ...

[Frankie Reloaded]

It´s because parents of those students are too busy with their Facebook and Twitter accounts to teach their kids anything. Lazy bunch, parents

[Snusdog]

I have noticed a startling decline in the quality of written work turned in by my students, regardless of which institution (community college, private, four year school) the papers are coming from.

Um....herr professor.....is that a misplaced, dangling preposition I see!!??

I have noticed a startling decline in the quality of written work turned in by my students, regardless from which institution (community college, private, four year school) the papers are coming.

There fixed that for ya..........

[resnor]

I believe the dangling preposition is a bit archaic...I was taught not to do it, but I feel lie that rule has fallen by the wayside. In general, writing skills are falling as more and more kids grow up in this instant messaging, texting, and emailing generation. Throw in the lack of quality literature being read, i.e., the rise of Harry Potter, Twilight, etc vs Dickens, Stevenson, and the rest, and it's no wonder college kids can't write. Go read Treasure Island, and read like three pages describing the bar where the pirates are before you get any dialogue.

[WickedKitchen]

Where my gerunds at?

[resnor]

Hahahaaa.

[Thunder_Snus]

Mostly because that is how their parents speak. I talk to people at the fortune 50 company i work for and if i ask....."does this person have an account with us?" "He do."
Also lazy parents that don't try to teach their children while they are at that awkward being able to form sentences that are understandable but still not using correct tense and other things. Also because being a student is a joke now. Sure an A is hard but a C is the new F. Most universities you could just pay the tuition and not attend any classes and you will just receive a C on your transcript.
No child left behind and such.
America is doomed.

[GoVegan]

It's not necessarily the parents. Many school require essays to be done on a word processor. I have always thought that essays should be hand written until you get to college. Same thing with math. A calculator is a requirement even at the lower grade levels.

[R.B. Kazenzakis]

America is doomed.

I taught for a few years at an overseas university, and my (anecdotal) view is that poor written (and critical) skills are not limited to the U.S. The silver lining, now that I am an older individual: I am not too afraid of the young folk stealing my job anytime soon.

[wa3zrm]

Texting! It is all about texting!

[Thunder_Snus]

It's not necessarily the parents. Many school require essays to be done on a word processor. I have always thought that essays should be hand written until you get to college. Same thing with math. A calculator is a requirement even at the lower grade levels.

Being fair....calculators just make things easier rather than forcing someone to do something long hand just because the older generation had to. A simple graphing calculator for 50$ can give you future value, present value, annuities, standard deviation, variance and everything so simply that it really ins't worth teaching how to do it by hand. I think it is critical to understand what those numbers mean that that calculator spits out but still....it's just not necessary. I learned how to do long hand for everything and looking back it just didn't make sense.

I can understand writing on word processor to be difficult. As i type on here i catch things i put in my posts where i clearly switched trains of thought mid sentence and it doesn't really make sense but in terms of turning something in for a grade i atleast look it over and fix all of those mistakes that i made. Ironically the only thing I have ever needed to hand write in college was source code during a programming test. It makes absolutely zero sense but almost all colleges do that for programming classes. You can't even just type something in notepad or word which would make it a lot easier and faster. I consider the whole learning system to be pretty flawed. The real world is about knowing how to solve problems, so even though some kid could look up the formula for how to find standard deviation if he doesn't have it burned into his brain for a test he is a failure. If you're at work and don't know how to do something you aren't going to be fired, your boss is going to tell you you had better figure it out. Some of the smartest people I know failed out of college simply because they couldn't memorize a huge list of things which is all school is. It's about burning these facts into your head so you can do well on standardized tests to get more funding for your school. That's just a terrible system.

[Darwin]

Dangling prepositions are a situation up with which I will not put.