Writing and critical thinking skills go hand-in hand. Early on, college students are expected to demonstrate their thought process in compositions, by insightfully analyzing and evaluating information, arguments, and perspectives from other sources, and by contributing ideas, arguments, and solutions of their own.
Much of secondary-school writing instruction, however, emphasizes formulas and surface features over disciplined inquiry and rigorous analysis.
Standardized testing in particular tends to focus secondary school writing instruction on form at the expense of content.
As a result, many students come to believe that correct form and mechanics, more than substance, constitute good writing.
Writing and Critical Thinking—The Key to College Success
This misconception—not fully understanding the relationship between writing and critical thinking—can become a major impediment to success for new college students.
As Marlink and Wahleithner write, “By privileging form over an exploration of ideas and analysis, the formulaic approach to writing stands in direct opposition to the type of writing expected in the post-secondary world.”1
In higher education, writing is understood as more than a means for demonstrating command of form and language: it is itself a method of learning, an occasion for complex problem-solving, a tool for discovering and refining one’s own thinking, and for contributing meaningfully to conversations within a discourse community.
As Dolores Perin notes, “College instructors routinely assign writing not for the purpose of teaching writing skills, but to promote students’ development of knowledge and ideas.”2
Condon and Kelly-Riley identify with some precision the relationship writing and critical thinking take in college-level work:3
- Identification of a problem or issue.
- Establishment of a clear perspective on the issue
- Recognition of alternative perspectives
- Location of the issue within an appropriate context
- Identification and evaluation of evidence
- Recognition of fundamental assumptions implicit or stated by the representation of an issue
- Assessment of implications and potential conclusions.
Writing and Critical Thinking—Understanding the Link
Students benefit from understanding prior to beginning their college careers that academic writing will be a primary means for demonstrating not only their language skills and mastery of form, but also the depth of their knowledge and the quality of their thinking.
Writing and critical thinking will forever be intertwined going forward; pre-college writing instruction, therefore, should equip them with this understanding.
If students are to become critical thinkers, they must be given writing assignments that encourage them to develop and demonstrate writing and critical thinking skills. That’s why it’s so important that they get the chance to work on authentic, extended, research-supported academic essays.
For much more information, visit collegereadywriting.com. Download my FREE Mini-Course What Is College-Ready Writing (& Why Does It Matter?) here and watch my FREE Masterclass 3-Step System to Help Your Teen Crush College Academics (and Avoid First-Year Flame-Out) here.
William Bryant, PhD is the President and Co-Founder of BetterRhetor Resources, an educational publishing and services company he and his wife Becky operate headquartered in Prescott, Arizona.
Dr. Bryant has created collegereadywriting.com and authored his premium College Success Accelerator program, his signature online resource, College-Ready Writing Essentials, as well as several other paid and free resources designed specifically to target the college-readiness gap.
He has written for Getting Smart, Curmudgication, and Bright Magazine. and worked for a decade at ACT Inc., lastly as Director of Writing Assessments where he spearheaded the redesign of the current ACT Writing Test.
In addition to college readiness, Dr. Bryant writes about education, equity, democracy—and how they fit together on his American Educator blog. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
Works Cited
- Marlink, Jayne, and Juliet Wahleithner. “Improving students’ academic writing: Building a bridge to success.” Berkeley, CA: California Writing Project (2011). ↩︎
- Perin, Dolores. “Best practices in teaching writing for college and career readiness.” Best practices in writing instruction (2013): 48-72. ↩︎
- Condon, William, and Diane Kelly-Riley. “Assessing and teaching what we value: The relationship between college-level writing and critical thinking abilities.” Assessing Writing 9.1 (2004): 56-75. ↩︎