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Encourage Children to Write Well |
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Importance of Writing Well |
Proficient writing skills are no longer a “bonus” skill that would add to your skills, but won’t have too much impact on your general impression. Today, it is a core skill expected in almost every profession. In any job today, you have to communicate with your manager, your team members, your clients, your friends, and your co-workers. Most of the time, this communication is done through writing given the prevalence of email culture in the office. In addition, there are memos, letters, proposals, and presentations to written at various points. At school or college level, it is needed in writing essays, admission tests, and term papers. Good writing skills can make one’s life so much easier these days.
As parents, there are certain activities you can do at home to encourage your children to work on their writing skills. |
| Encourage Reading |
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Good and avid readers are usually able to express themselves well. The more you read, the more exposure you get to different writing styles and expanded vocabulary. Reading can also stimulate a child to write about the things he has learned or to generally express his feelings. |
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| Give a Short and Relevant Topic to Write About |
| When your child is still young, it is always good to give him short writing assignments, something that he knows about and is also interested in. This will ensure that he focuses on his writing skills and not find the assignment “too hard”. Once he is comfortable with the assignment routine, you can start giving him writing assignments that also involve some thinking on his part, areas where he may not be very comfortable with and has to think of ideas or facts to write about. |
| Become an Audience |
| Play the role of an audience at home where you child has to go on stage and share the story with you. Reading aloud is a very important component of improving writing skill. When reading aloud, the child can become aware of the areas which don’t make sense or the disconnects between different characters or story plots. You can also have a Q&A session at the end where you could ask questions on the parts you didn’t understand forcing him to make the connections and focus on details. Just make sure that you aren’t criticizing his writing skills, but just asking questions that you genuinely didn’t understand in the story or the article he wrote. |
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| Encourage Editing and Revisions |
| Editing and revising are important ingredients of writing. As a child grows, he learns that rewriting is the norm in writing. Give him articles to revise or just play games where you can revise each other’s articles. Or encourage your child to play this game with their play date. The person who can find most improvement areas is the winner. And suddenly you may find you have an editor in your family – soon editing school newspapers and articles. |
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| Importance of writing can’t be emphasized enough in this age. The sooner your children can learn to write well, the better it will be for them to handle pressure of tests, essays, writing assignments, and admission tests. |
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About Author : Anu Bhave is the founder and President at  - an online tutoring and homework help firm that provides very high-quality personalized, convenient, yet highly affordable supplementary education services to K-12 and college students. |
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