Does the enormous amount of help that teachers give to students to help them learn how to write, help them to learn how to write?

Teachers want their students to succeed, so they provide all the help they can. When it comes to writing, for example, there are devices such as rubrics, writing frames and the five paragraph essay. There's then a good chance that in exams they'll produce just what the examiner wants to see.  But will it turn them into writers, or make them even want to write? Probably not.

The reason, according to John Warner, is that we are teaching them to pass writing exams rather than become writers. As for automated assessment, Warner asks:

If someone writes an essay and no human being reads it, has communication actually occurred?

Worth reading for the sections on education fads and technology fads alone, this book gets right to the heart of the problem (and suggests solutions). It describes the situation in the USA, but the differences between there and here are merely superficial.

This review first appeared in Teach Secondary magazine. I was sent a complimentary review copy of this book.

See also, Why they can’t write.