Writing program for...more engaging writing?

[linders]

I'm not sure how to title this, but we need a writing program. Which one?

DS15 (just finishing 9th) recently finished an 8 page paper. It was very well-constructed in terms of organization and grammar (well, for the most part, on the latter). The content and subject analysis were good. But the writing was...blah. "Subject-verb-object" over and over, little variation in sentence structure. A few clauses, not many. Word choice sometimes good (specific nouns/verbs/adjectives/adverbs) but sometimes too generic, although he has a good vocabulary. For example, he wrote "Baptism is the thing that brings..." - when I asked him to find a specific word for "thing" he quickly changed it to "sacrament." The boy is a future engineer - he would rather write an 8-page bulletized list. (And it would be a well-organized list.)

I don't expect flowery language from this one, but I think it would be valuable for both him and his reader to develop the ability to write in a more interesting manner. I actually thought of giving him basic sentences then requiring that he modify them - inverted word order, beginning with a clause, etc. But I would rather find a writing program that might achieve this. Any ideas?

Thanks!

[Julie of KY]

Well, Brave Writer courses have been great at improving my STEM kids' writing. They don't explicitly teach any grammar or sentence structure, but they are great at pulling the content out of the kids and improving the writing.

[Miss Tick]

Kilgallon might fit the bill. They focus heavily on Sentence Tools and how they make things more interesting. It is almost all fine using model sentences from various books and then making or modifying sentences based on those models. It sounds like he just needs a little push in that direction, these fairly inexpensive books might be just the thing.

I've only used elementary and middle school, so I don't like exactly which book to recommend at high school. Middle and elementary are very similar, just the sentences and excerpts in the middle school books are longer and from books suited to an older audience.

[Matryoshka]

35 minutes ago, SusanC said:

Kilgallon might fit the bill. They focus heavily on Sentence Tools and how they make things more interesting. It is almost all fine using model sentences from various books and then making or modifying sentences based on those models. It sounds like he just needs a little push in that direction, these fairly inexpensive books might be just the thing.

I've only used elementary and middle school, so I don't like exactly which book to recommend at high school. Middle and elementary are very similar, just the sentences and excerpts in the middle school books are longer and from books suited to an older audience.

Killgallon does indeed have a high school series.  And I'd also recommend the books, though I did only use them at the elementary / middle school level, as my kids didn't need them by that point. 

They have both sentence and paragraph composing books at the high school level, and the 'grammar for...' book as well, which is reallymore sentence composing.  I preferred the format of the 'grammar for...' series over the ones labeled sentence composing. The paragraph writing one intrigues me. There's a 'look inside' on Amazon. 

[8filltheheart]

I would look into Patterns in College Writing https://vufind.carli.illinois.edu/vf-mck/Record/mck_87852 (thete is a pdf online somewhere so you can look through the whole book. 

They Say, I Say might help, too. https://www.amazon.com/They-Say-Matter-Academic-Writing/dp/039393361X Also has pdfs online.

[linders]

20 hours ago, SusanC said:

Kilgallon might fit the bill. They focus heavily on Sentence Tools and how they make things more interesting. It is almost all fine using model sentences from various books and then making or modifying sentences based on those models. It sounds like he just needs a little push in that direction, these fairly inexpensive books might be just the thing.

I've only used elementary and middle school, so I don't like exactly which book to recommend at high school. Middle and elementary are very similar, just the sentences and excerpts in the middle school books are longer and from books suited to an older audience.

 

This looks like just what I wanted, thanks!

20 hours ago, Matryoshka said:

Killgallon does indeed have a high school series.  And I'd also recommend the books, though I did only use them at the elementary / middle school level, as my kids didn't need them by that point. 

They have both sentence and paragraph composing books at the high school level, and the 'grammar for...' book as well, which is reallymore sentence composing.  I preferred the format of the 'grammar for...' series over the ones labeled sentence composing. The paragraph writing one intrigues me. There's a 'look inside' on Amazon. 

 

I ended up ordering all three high school books - they won't go to waste! Thanks.

20 hours ago, Julie of KY said:

Well, Brave Writer courses have been great at improving my STEM kids' writing. They don't explicitly teach any grammar or sentence structure, but they are great at pulling the content out of the kids and improving the writing.

 

Bravewriter is looks good, thanks, but he doesn't have any problem with what to write, just style. We are going to try to Kilgallon.