Does it Matter if People Write Well?

Sometimes, in essays such as IAs, people with relatively poor grammar, unsophisticated word choice and incoherent sentence somehow score the same with people who are extremely intricate in their use of language. Today, a phenomenon has been spreading in high school in which students are less willing to proofread our work for grammar or spelling mistakes compared to us in elementary school, where we continuously edit each sentence to perfect it. Why is that the case? Is it because the skill of writing is becoming less and less important in essays or is it because of something else? With these questions in mind, interviews with the student and faculty body are carried out to understand how people perceive writing skills.

In an interview with Ms. Partee, she believes that it is important for people to write well for the purpose of communicating. The level of vocabularies people has to incorporate in their writing is not as important as being able to get their point across in their essays. Furthermore, Ms. Partee also mentioned that she’s not concerned with whether students use big 16 letter words. “If a 6 letters word is enough to convey an idea, then that is good.” The grading is also not heavily based on language use.  As Ms. Partee mentioned, language usage is not a problem unless the grammar is too off to the point that their ideas cannot be understood.

Mr. Beckway, an English teacher at AISG believes that writing is important because “writing clearly is thinking clearly.” Writing reflects a person’s understanding of complex issues and views are not obstructed with correct punctuation and precise word choices. Mr. Beckway also thinks that because IB puts less emphasis on writing criteria, it is possible for students to score high on essays if they can demonstrate their knowledge even with poor grammar. On the contrary, Mr. Beckway pointed out that AP system has a more holistic rubric, making it harder for students to score high with poor writing skills.

Angela Lin, a senior also stated that she believes language use is important in conveying the content but it should not overshadow the significance of content in terms of an essay.

According to Verbolio, although content is significant, an individual’s ability to write also dictates how other perceive him/her. In Verbolio’s post extracted from Exforsys, people will think you’re an average person if you can only speak average English, the same goes for writing. If someone is unable to use advanced vocabulary, then readers’ perception of the writer will go down as they come off as “uneducated” or “average.”

In short, although the content of the piece is priority, writing is still as important because the buildup of the content is based on how accurate and concise a writer can get their point across using intricate words. Furthermore, writers that write better are often praised and respected more than writers that are less skilled.