College students hold a fairly high opinion of their
writing skills, even when their grades don’t merit it.
According to Inside Higher Ed, a new survey by Primary Research Group found that 46% of
students didn’t think they needed any more instruction in writing and just over
half said they didn’t require assistance with spelling or grammar. About a
third were willing to concede their writing and grammatical skills could use a
little work, but believed they were able to brush up on their own without
formal instruction.
Students
who earned A grades were more likely, as you might expect, to say their writing
skills were just fine, but students with lower scores were almost as confident.
Only 17% of C students admitted to needing more instruction in writing.
Students
in their first or second year of college overwhelmingly held a positive view of
their writing capabilities, but seniors (who had presumably by then received
more feedback from professors on their papers) were somewhat more apt to say
they should get more instruction in this area.
The
study also determined that about 30% of students have never been assigned to
write a paper with more than 10 double-spaced pages, the type of paper
typically calling for deeper research and/or analysis. Social-sciences majors
were more likely to have written such papers.
