Living Joyfully

Helping parents cultivate a thriving unschooling lifestyle in their family.

  • Start Here
  • Deschooling
  • Unschooling
  • Parenting
  • About
  • Contact
  • Podcast
    • Q&A Episodes
    • Ten Questions Episodes
    • Interviews I’ve done …
    • TUC Talks
  • Books
    • Book Clubs
  • Network
  • Summit
  • Questions?
  • Articles
    • Spanish Translations
  • Blog
You are here: Home / Unschooling / Learning to Write is About Communicating

Learning to Write is About Communicating

October 16, 2012 By Pam Laricchia 2 Comments

Writing is another of those basic skills that many parents are wary about not teaching when they are exploring unschooling. Let’s look again at the bigger communication picture from the Learning to Read Without Lessons post:

It’s true that reading and writing are useful skills to develop—they are opposite sides of the written communication coin. Yet precisely because of that, children living in the world will bump up against them frequently. They will encounter real life reasons to learn them, which is both more motivating than just a parent or teacher telling them they should, and more effective for real learning because as they learn they’ll be actively using those developing skills to reach their own goals.

Just as there are real reasons to figure out reading, there are real reasons for writing. Not for gold stars, not for marks, but to communicate. And again, school’s need to develop these skills at early age is a direct result of their reliance on written communication. Most young kids prefer actively playing and playing and playing. And if that is their preference, that’s how they are learning the most about themselves and the world around them.

A child’s need for written communication skills often doesn’t surface until a few years later as their world begins to expand beyond the people that immediately surround them. Their parents no longer have all the answers to their questions. Maybe their interests expand beyond their local reach and they want to communicate with those further afield who share their passion. They want to read to gather more information; they want to write to ask questions of others or share their own knowledge. Or share their stories. Or communicate socially with others. As their world expands there are so many real reasons and opportunities to write.

But before we dig into that, let’s take a quick side trip and look at the physical act of handwriting. At school, having legible handwriting is important. When homework and written test papers are misinterpreted or unreadable, marks are lost. And when marks are lost, grades are lower. But when you step outside the structure of school, is handwriting nearly as important a skill? In the bigger picture, what are they trying to accomplish? Communication that persists over time. The method that produces that communication is much less relevant.

In today’s world, communicating electronically has become ubiquitous. Typing has moved beyond secretaries and writers to a skill that benefits most people. The only handwriting I’ve done the last few years is for my own use—I’d be lost without my lists!—though even those could be managed electronically if that were my preference. Still, if a person comes across a need to communicate with another through handwriting and that communication is breaking down because of difficulty reading the messages, that’ll be great motivation to write more legibly. When there is a need, there is internal motivation and receptiveness to helpful information—there is real learning. Or, the pharmacist will just call the doctor’s office to confirm the prescription details. 😉

My eldest son learned to type well in a couple of weeks because he wanted to communicate with others in an online game. If you’ve read the article about my daughter’s reading journey, you may have noticed that she was writing out interesting scenes from the Harry Potter books. Instead of reading assigned books and writing essays about them, unschooling kids find real reasons to write, reasons that make sense to them in the course their days and motivate them to do it reasonably well. They discover that a successful act of communication is dependent upon how well the recipient understands the written message. They discover that there are different levels of written formality depending on the situation.

And remember that when they’re engaged in real written conversation and communication they’re engaged with another person—maybe in real time, through text or chat, maybe a bit delayed through message boards and forums, or maybe over even longer periods of time through books, magazines, and websites. Communication is not a solitary act. Learning about writing doesn’t start from scratch when they first decide to give it a shot; they have been seeing it in action over the years when they read, or are read to. The reading that inspires them to respond is also a guideline for how to respond.

I mentioned my eldest son’s typing skills developing through online gaming. His interest in communicating with others who were as deeply interested in role-playing video games as he was, led him to online forums and message boards. There he lurked at first—just reading and getting a feel for the tone and expectations of the community. He noticed the kinds of written communication that worked most successfully; meaning the posts that he found interesting, the ones that helped him learn more about the topic. He noticed that spelling, grammar, and punctuation made a difference in how well the poster’s message came across.

When he eventually chose to start posting, he wanted his communication to be clear so incorporating those language conventions were definitely key components of his writing style. There is also immediate feedback through the replies: if what he was saying was misunderstood, that’s a clue; if there were no replies, that’s a clue. Real communication. And you’re around to answer their myriad of questions, like “Why does this guy always post stuff he knows is going to make people mad?” More learning about the interesting nuances of written communication that lie beyond the mechanics.

Or maybe they start by copying stuff they love (like my daughter and Harry Potter) and progress to adding their own ideas (she moved on to writing some fan fiction). When she was looking for feedback she posted her stories on an online fan fiction forum. Eventually she started writing stories about her own worlds. Sometimes handwritten, sometimes typed—always communicating. In her early teens her story-telling process became visual: photography. Nowadays she’s learning about the language and communication style of contracts and working with clients.

For my youngest at the moment, written communication is mostly about social interaction. Yet even from his texts to me I can see he is particular about grammar and punctuation. And even if not, that would be perfectly okay too. It’s about the individual, it’s about noticing what is interesting to *them* because that’s where the useful learning is.

Life, if lived actively and open to opportunities, gives everyone the chance to learn the skills that best help them follow their unique path through it—written communication included. The wonderful thing is that unschooling kids have the time to explore, the time to find the things that interest them and develop those skills that will be uniquely helpful in their lives; instead of spending a significant portion of their childhood in a classroom, disconnected from life and trying to learn skills others think they might eventually need.

How can you help? Be open with your kids about your communication forays in the world. Did you write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper? Or participate in an interesting discussion in an online forum? Or receive a particularly stilted form letter in the mail that made you laugh? Share these moments with your kids. Not with any expectations of a response, but because they are interesting bits of communication in the world. Share share share. Living and learning together.

 

Filed Under: Unschooling Tagged With: deschooling, learning, Oct 2012

Comments

  1. Bea says

    March 29, 2013 at 12:19 pm

    I’ve translated this one in French too. Here is the link:
    http://apprendreenliberte.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/apprendre-a-ecrire-pour-communiquer/

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Apprendre à écrire pour communiquer | Apprendre en liberté says:
    March 29, 2013 at 4:33 am

    […] de l’article de Pam Laricchia “Learning To Write is About Communication” Traduit de l’anglais par Béatrice […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

The Living Joyfully Network community

The Living Joyfully Network

The Living Joyfully Network is an online community for parents worldwide to explore unschooling with other like-minded parents who are also choosing to embrace lifelong learning and develop strong and connected relationships with their children. We invite you to join our candid and wide-ranging conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling!

Learn more about the Network here!

free intro to unschooling ebook

Click the book cover to get the book from your favourite online retailer, or click the link below to join my mailing list and download the book directly!

What is Unschooling? A book about living and learning without school.

Exploring Unschooling Podcast

click to listen to the archive of all Exploring Unschooling podcast episodes

Choosing to live and learn without school isn’t as intimidating as you might imagine!

The podcast archive is now home to more than 300 episodes, filled with unschooling goodness.

support the podcast on Patreon

Have you read my books?

Free-to-Learn-Cover Free-to-Live-Cover Life-Through-the-Lens-of-Unschooling-Cover Living-Joyfully-with-Unschooling-Box-Set-Cover The Unschooling Journey Libre d'Apprendre cover Libre para Aprender cover Szabadon Tanulni cover

Journey with us to a new way of seeing your child

icon-logo

Join Anne Ohman, Anna Brown, and I in our online Summit where we share the experiences, insights, and tools that we found most helpful on our unschooling journeys. We will walk with you from where you are now, to where you want to be.

Looking for something?

I've been exploring unschooling for many years now and there's a lot of content here! I've been working to tag things to help you more easily find information about the questions you're curious about right now. I'll continue to work on this.

Click a topic to explore:

college

dads

deschooling

food

grown unschoolers

learning

life

math

reading

relationships

relatives

technology

teens

work

Welcome to Living Joyfully

Pam ... an online resource for parents who are curious about unschooling. If you're passionate about exploring the world with your children, this site is for you. I'm Pam Laricchia, the author and owner of this site. Thanks for inviting me along on your unschooling journey!

The Living Joyfully Network

The Living Joyfully Network is an online community for parents worldwide to explore unschooling with other like-minded parents who are also choosing to embrace lifelong learning and develop strong and connected relationships with their children.

Learn more and join us here!

SEARCH LIVING JOYFULLY

Living Joyfully participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and the iTunes Affiliate Program. This allows me to earn a small commission, at no cost to you. I appreciate your support!

Read my Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy.

Copyright © 2023 · Living Joyfully Enterprises

By using this website, you agree to the use of cookies. I use cookies to provide you with a great experience and to help my website run effectively. OK READ MORE
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT