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Dear Reader,

I’ve always wondered how humans pick up languages and learn to physically transcribe

their words. More specifically, having been in school for over 12 years, I often questioned what

was the most efficient way to learn how to write. How do some kids learn at a faster rate than

others? What modes of instruction were ingrained into them as an adolescent, during their most

formative years? To get to the bottom of my curiosities, I decided to embark on a research

project that would study the various topics that contribute to learning the complex skill of

writing. This included the ways in which children are able to recall language and words as well

as the effects and importance of certain writing interventions.

In the following article, I will introduce the works of many Cognitive Science and

Educational Psychology research professionals as they have examined the inner workings of how

children learn to write through various of their own experiments throughout the years. After

exploring their findings in a conversational manner, I will provide a holistic explanation of how

their discourse and conclusions relate to how children pick up on writing and how it should be

taught to adolescents.

Starting with French researchers of language production Béatrice Bourdin and Michel

Fayol examining how children process writing in comparison to oral language production, other

professionals in Educational Psychology like Steve Graham, Karen R. Harris, Barbara Fink,

Steve Graham and Delores Perin continue to build off of each other’s works with their own

studies on students grades 4-12 about writing instruction, either proving the previous researchers

work to be insufficient or significant to supporting their claims.

Having read works such as Dan Melzer’s Understanding Discourse Communities in my

Writing 2 class, I found it very interesting looking at these authors site each other’s research with
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a direct response to them as well. However, at times I would feel overwhelmed by the sheer

amount of information that I was processing. However, I remember the questions I was asked to

consider in Melzer’s article, “Taken together, do the documents reveal anything significant

about the period in question?” (Melzer 3-4). This helped me identify joint conclusions that would

come out of putting two articles together. One instance I found particularly eye opening was

when Steve Graham, Karen R. Harris, and Barbara Fink addressed Béatrice Bourdin and Michel

Fayol’s research regarding the psychological aspects of recalling written words as correlational

findings that would further support their hypothesis regarding handwriting, which allowed me to

conclude that handwriting instruction should facilitate learning to write.

When revising my translation, I realized that the conversation did not thoroughly flow

from author to author to provide a convincing argument at the end of my article. I added an

additional study that focused on more contrasting writing interventions that would provide a

holistic view of the sheer amount of nuances involved in learning to write. In addition to the

extra studies, I wanted to make sure that I was simplifying and paraphrasing my sources in an

understandable manner. Thus, I listened to the words of Stedman in his text “Annoying Ways

People Use Sources,” to introduce patchwriting into my work which he described as

“[describing] writing that blends words and phrases from sources with words and phrases [I]

came up with [myself]” (Stedman 253).

I hope this article brings a thorough and fresh perspective to you with new

understandings on teaching strategies for writing that can then be applied in your homes and

classrooms to maximize your ability to teach the children in your community to write effectively.

While my research only covered a small fraction of the writing interventions that are involved in

an adolescent’s journey to become writing sufficient, I now understand the sheer amount of
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layers that comes from truly mastering a skill. This foundational conversation surrounding the

basics of writing has left me wondering about all the other nuances that are at play behind more

abstract topics surrounding writing, like how humans learn to tell immersive stories, or the

science behind writer’s block. I hope to explore those conversations with you soon.

Sincerely,

Jenny Wu
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Works Cited

1. Stedman, Kyle D., et al. “Annoying Ways People Use Sources” Writing Spaces: Readings

on Writing. West Lafayette, Ind., Parlor Press, 2010, pp. 242-256

2. Writing spaces. Writing Spaces. (n.d.). Retrieved December 1, 2022, from

https://writingspaces.org/past-volumes/grammar-rhetoric-and-style/