Why Strive to Improve Your Writing Skills?

Writing Skills Help You Succeed in College and in Your Career

College courses such as psychology, biology, and political science demand that you read articles, essays, reports, and textbooks and then react to and write about what you have read. In many courses, you demonstrate what you have learned by writing exams, reports, and papers.

Writing is important on the job, as well. In most jobs, workers need to communicate effectively with supervisors, coworkers, patients, clients, and customers. You can expect to write plenty of letters, email messages, memos, and reports. The 2000–2001 study performed by the Collegiate Employment Research Institute found that employers consistently want the “total package” in recent college graduates. Employers want job candidates who have not only the technical knowledge to work but also strong oral and written communication skills. Because your writing course offers both immediate and long-range benefits, it is one of the most important college courses you will ever take. You will learn how to express your ideas clearly, structure convincing arguments, prepare research papers, and write essay exams. Your writing course will also help you improve your reading and thinking skills. As you read, respond to, and write about the readings, you will learn how to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate ideas.

Writing Helps You Learn and Remember Things

Taking notes, outlining, summarizing, or annotating focuses your attention on the course material and gets you thinking about the subject matter as you connect and define ideas. In addition, writing facilitates learning by engaging two senses at once. Whereas you take in information visually by reading or aurally by listening, writing engages your sense of touch as you put your pen to paper or your fingers on a keyboard. In general, the more senses you use in a learning task, the more easily learning occurs and the more you remember about the task later on. You can often remember something more easily if you write it down.

Writing Helps You Think More Clearly

Writing forces you to think through a task. Getting your ideas down on paper or on a computer screen helps you evaluate them. Writing, then, is a means of sorting ideas, exploring relationships, weighing alternatives, and clarifying values.

Writing Helps You Solve Problems

When you solve problems, you identify possible actions that may change undesirable situations (your car won’t start) to desirable ones (your car starts). Writing makes problem solving easier by helping you define the problem. By describing the problem in writing, you can often see new aspects of it.

One student, for example, had a father-in-law who seemed hostile and uncooperative.

The student described her problem in a letter to a friend: “He looks at me as if I’m going to take his son to the end of the earth and never bring him back.” When she reread this statement, the student realized that her father-in-law might resent her because he was afraid of losing contact with his son. She began to think of ways to reassure her father-in-law and strengthen their relationship. Writing about the problem helped the student define it and discover ways to solve it. Similarly, writing can help you think through confusing situations and make difficult decisions.