Getting Your Child in the Habit of Writing - An Important Skill

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Just after 3 weeks of tutoring a primary school pupil in year 5, this young girl is now able to write a descriptive short story with minimal errors.

Her mother hired me, for one to one tutoring to improve her daughters writing skills, which was a cause of concern for her. The first thing I did was to go through her previous written work and read her teacher's comments - which were usually a sad face or a neutral face. I'm always surprised to see that teachers don't correct pupils' mistakes. How on earth are they supposed to know they've not punctuated correctly or have spelt a word incorrectly? I fail to understand why some teachers can't give comments with some detail, highlighting the areas where they need improvement, so the parents have something to work on.

After analysing her work, I made a list areas of improvements and started to work from there. There were many aspects which needed to be covered for instance the structure of a written piece, the use of descriptive words, spellings, punctuation, paragraphing, connectives, contractions, adverbs and the use of other literary devices.

In this digital age, young children are using technology and social websites to socialise and stay in touch with their friends. Technology also plays a powerful role in shaping the skills of young writers as there are numerous apps and websites that enable pupils to develop their literary skills, such as online dictionary and online thesaurus.The key was to ensure she practised everyday to build up her confidence, even if it was for a short while.

With regular practice, the introduction of online resources, encouragement and feedback pupils are able to produce written work which is not only engaging but also error free.


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