Category: Writing

The Case for Learning to Type

Posted on by Chris Loper
Reading Time: 2 minutes

a middle school student typing at home

The young people of our world have been described as “digital natives” because computers and the internet have been around their entire lives. So it might surprise you to hear that many of the high schoolers I work with don’t know how to type.

They get by via finger typing: punching each letter with their index fingers while looking at the keyboard. It’s a survival technique, akin to counting on your fingers to perform addition. And it’s terribly inefficient compared to real typing.

That inefficiency slows them down whenever they have to type an assignment. It makes the homework they already don’t like more tedious. And whenever something you don’t want to do is more difficult to do, the odds of procrastination go up. Essays are difficult enough to write; the struggle to type shouldn’t be an additional obstacle.

high school students typing essays in the library

And much like having not memorized your multiplication facts, being unable to type is a constant source of frustration for these students. For some, it produces a feeling of inadequacy. So we owe it to kids to teach them how to type. It will increase their sense of self-efficacy and make their lives easier as students and as adults.

The ideal time to do this is during elementary school, before finger-typing has become a habit, but it’s never too late. There are numerous free, gamified learn-to-type websites. (Typing Club is a popular option.) Summer is an excellent time to start, but efforts should be maintained year-round until the skill is mastered.

Older students are more likely to resist being asked to learn to type. They’ll argue that they’re getting by just fine with finger typing. Indeed, switching to real typing as a high schooler would temporarily slow you down because you’ve practiced finger typing for so long. Making the switch is an investment in your future. It’s one of those classic things you’ll feel a great deal of resistance to, but which you certainly won’t regret doing.

If you’re a parent wondering how you could possibly motivate your teenager to practice typing this summer, check out our class: Motivation and Behavior Change: How to Really Motivate Teenagers.

The Secret to Better Writing

Posted on by Chris Loper
Reading Time: 2 minutes

a student typing

The most common mistake I see in students’ writing is trying to cram too many ideas into each sentence.

They write a decent sentence, but then they don’t stop. They continue the sentence with a rambling series of phrases that add so many additional ideas that the reader gets lost. Suddenly, what should have been a paragraph is one long, very run-on sentence. It’s nearly impossible to understand, and it’s a grammatical nightmare.

My advice to students: One idea per sentence.

If you’re a teacher, tutor, or parent trying to help a student improve their writing, this is the most powerful advice you can give.

Keep it simple. Err on the side of too simple.

So often, students want to write in a way that’s fancy.

a page of very fancy writing in a notebook

They think their writing needs to be complicated. They try to use big words and impressive phrases. They think it’s boring and elementary to say only one thing per sentence. But in trying to be fancy, they lose track of the real goal of writing: conveying ideas with clarity.

Above all else, your writing needs to be clear. If the reader can’t understand what you mean, you’ve failed. And the best way to improve the clarity of your writing is to simplify your sentences. Stick with one idea per sentence, at least as a starting point. After writing your paper this way, if you see opportunities to combine sentences without sacrificing clarity, go for it.

If you start by trying to write something that sounds good, you’re doomed. Writing something that sounds good straight from your head is a skill that takes thousands of hours of practice. No student should expect themselves to be able to do that.

an old man writing

Start by getting the right ideas on the page. You don’t even have to put the ideas into sentences or paragraphs to start. The ideas don’t even have to be fully formed. Start with whatever you have. Just get them out of your head, one idea at a time. Then put your ideas into a logical order. Cut and paste to rearrange them. Then write them into simple sentences. Then work on making them sound good.

Remember, you can always enhance the style of your writing during editing. You can swap out basic words for fancier words, but only if they add clarity. You can embellish. You can add flavor and detail that were missing from your first draft. It’s way easier to do this after you’ve gotten the right ideas on paper.

Accuracy vs. Perfection

Posted on by Chris Loper
Reading Time: 4 minutes

a carpenter measuring a piece of wood

Many perfectionists struggle to let go of perfectionism because they think it means settling for bad work: sloppiness, inaccuracies, etc.

But giving up on perfectionism doesn’t mean embracing mediocrity. It means embracing effectiveness.

It’s about recognizing that perfection is an impossible ideal – a place you can never reach. So at some point, you have to let go of that ideal and settle for “good enough.”

What is good enough?

Accuracy.

What counts is whether or not your work is accurate enough to be effective. Is it understandable? Is it useful? Is it correct?

Handwriting doesn’t need to be beautiful. It just needs to be legible. Neatness matters, but only to the degree that it improves clarity. Beyond that, time is wasted. (Unless you’re creating art, but I’m not talking about art; I’m talking about homework.)

a student writing an essay by hand

Your essay doesn’t need to be written in beautiful, perfectly phrased prose. It just needs to clearly convey the correct ideas. Too many writers get hung up on making their writing fancy – on trying to sound smart – when they should really just focus on getting their ideas across. Does your essay logically respond to the prompt? Does it have effective evidence and analysis? Can the reader understand what you mean? Is it mostly free from grammatical errors? If so, it’s good enough.

Perfectionism is like expressing pi as 3.14159265358979 when 3.14 will do. We need to cultivate the mental flexibility to know where and when to stop – when to call it “good enough.” Good enough for what? To be understood, to be useful, to be accurate.

Insisting on accuracy is not perfectionism.

Saying the area of a rectangle is 14 inches when you should say 14 square inches is sloppiness. Insisting that you give the proper units isn’t demanding perfection; it’s demanding accuracy.

The same goes for using the wrong form of there/their/they’re or saying effect when you mean affect. We do need to strive to get things right.

Truth be told, I wanted to name this article “Precision vs. Perfection” because I liked the alliteration. But precision means being consistent – keeping all your attempts close together, while accuracy means being correct – getting your attempts close to the target:

a dartboard with a bullseye representing accuracy next to a dartboard with three darts close together but not in the center representing precision

Since accuracy is what really matters, I named this article “Accuracy vs. Perfection” because that was the correct title. Using the word precision incorrectly wasn’t good enough.

But what if you’re not sure how to get it right?

Perfectionism often creates paralysis. You’re unsure about the second step of the problem, so you don’t even take the first. You don’t think you can get the answer right, so you leave the question blank. You know your work won’t be perfect, so you refuse to start.

It would be nice if you could always be sure of yourself. If you always knew all of the steps. If you could always envision a perfect plan for your projects and papers. But that’s not how school (or life) works. There will be many times when you’re unsure.

Of course, if you can use resources to figure out the problem, you should. But oftentimes you’ll just have to go for it. The math test is in front of you, and you need to try all of the problems. The essay is due tomorrow, and you need to get words on the page. The Spanish teacher is asking you a question, and you have to give it your best shot. In none of these cases will you perform perfectly, but doing something is far better than doing nothing at all.

a man shooting a free throw

You have no chance of being accurate if you don’t make an attempt. As Wayne Gretzky said, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. And the best way to learn how to make those shots is to take a lot of them. Practice doesn’t make perfect because nothing makes perfect, but practice does make better.

When you choose to let go of perfectionism, you’re not choosing to fail; you’re choosing to learn. And you’re not choosing to do a bad job. You’re choosing accuracy over artfulness, effectiveness over excessive effort, and action over paralysis.