More than an art: Writing skills are life skills

You may be good at calculus or separating a compound, but can you describe these skills in a cover letter?

As a country, we’ve overlooked the importance of strong writing skills, siphoning language’s complexities out of our education system.

Although math and reading comprehension are incredibly important, we can’t favor them over writing as we continue to be a tech-heavy, numbers-loving society. Even students pursuing math-intensive fields, such as engineering or medicine, have to be proficient writers. No one can evade essays, application papers, professional letters or even funding requests and research proposals.

Most students, however, lack these writing skills that can help them succeed in their college courses.

The Intersegmental Committee of the Academic Senates conducted a report on California’s higher education system faculty’s opinions of their students’ abilities to read, write and think critically. They found that 83 percent of college faculty said the lack of analytical reading skills contributes to a student’s lack of success in a course.

Faculty also determined that “only about one-third of entering college students are sufficiently prepared for the two most frequently assigned writing tasks: analyzing information or arguments and synthesizing information from several sources.”

When we lose the ability to write well, we lose the ability to think deeply. In order to equip students for professional success, we need to reevaluate how we teach writing in high school. Teachers should — occasionally ­— give writing assignments in STEM classes.

By assigning writing in classes that don’t traditionally focus on writing, students have more practice writing essays and more opportunities to expand their vocabularies. These future engineers and statisticians will learn the greater value of writing and the answer to the question “when am I ever going to need this?”

For example, on the AP U.S. History test, students are required to answer a free-response question that requires analysis of a topic and askesstudents to develop their answer in a way that exercises critical thinking. In biology, writing may allow students to better understand biological and chemical processes and prepare them for lab reports in college.

A pre-med or engineering student still needs to know how to write a lab report and attend to a number of other writing assignments passed out in labs. Most classes require students to write papers on topics related to the coursework.

Writing is also a skill valued following college, as strong writing increases pay and hireability.

After surveying freelancers’ work and personal profiles, Grammarly, a program that corrects grammar, discovered a strong correlation between writing skills, hireability and pay. Greater writing skills also led to fewer mistakes on the job. Out of eight professions, including fields such as sales and marketing, administrative support and information technology and programming, writers ended up making the fewest errors per 100 words they wrote.

Having advanced writing skills can also put you ahead of the curve and make you more competitive when you enter the workforce.

According to the College Board’s National Commission on Writing 2004 report, two-thirds of salaried workers in large U.S. companies have jobs that require writing. Employers spend $3.1 billion dollars annually training workers to bring their writing skills up to the standard required for their work.

Strong writing has more than aesthetic appeal. It demonstrates work aptitude, so we need to put it to work outside of the English classroom.

Marlo Safi primarily writes about public policy and politics for The Pitt News.

Write to Marlo at mes26@pitt.edu