Alex Quigley's 'Closing the Writing Gap'

What connects all these great writers and thinkers who changed our world are their unheralded teachers; the teachers who made gentle but indelible marks on their thinking, so that they could change the world, and themselves, in the act of writing. It is a truly remarkable legacy that is within the grasp of every teacher reading this book.

Those words come near the conclusion of Alex Quigley’s recently-published Closing the Writing Gap, which completes a trilogy: the first two books were on vocabulary and on reading, and together the collection provides the single best resource for English teachers available today.  Also, check out the online resources.

I write that as an English teacher, but Alex Quigley’s determination is that teachers of all subjects will benefit from the explicit teaching of writing, and indeed this is a book that can be passed all the way around the staff room: many of his examples are from geography and science, for instance. The tone of optimism in the paragraph at the top is backed up by the clarity and good sense of his own writing, which  is underpinned by wide reference to research. The latter, however, is not overbearing or intimidating (notes at the end of each chapter give the references). As in the earlier books, an overview leads steadily to more practical guidelines. In this one he starts by looking at the history of writing, and the sheer complexities of this extraordinary process.

Seven ‘suggested steps’ are the spine of the book, leading to better writing instruction. These include a sensible approach to the gift of grammar, about which many teachers are on a spectrum from nervous to defensively hostile. Throughout, the importance of breaking down writing instruction into manageable chunks is emphasised. There are helpful pointers to improve spelling - particularly important since an aversion to spelling errors can see pupils limiting the vocabulary choices they use in their own writing so that they do not make a mistake. He gives a list of the general grammar moves of academic writing, including right-branching sentences and sentence signposts. Through all these, he states that

Success for struggling writers is likely to be slow and cumulative; however, with sustained planning, it can be achieved.

I particularly liked Chapter 5, ‘Crafting Great Sentences’: ‘the art of the great sentence is about paying acute attention to brilliant variation (see a very sophisticated example of such attention in Brian Dillon’s essay collection Suppose a Sentence). Chapter 6 looks at Disciplinary Writing, again marked with the key idea:

We can teach the code for every subject discipline, so that we begin to close the writing gap in every classroom.

Some teachers will jump straight into Chapter 7, ‘Practical Strategies’, which provides many paths to differences in our teaching, in encouragingly modest and manageable ways:

The secret to a practical, and pragmatic, approach to teaching writing is to seize the countless small opportunities into our existing practice.

An example of such a strategy is the section on paragraphing (which I think is crucial, but with which I have inconsistent results in my own classes). Alex Quigley suggests looking for the big idea in a given paragraph, paragraph shrinking, working on white space, traffic light paragraphing and that old favourite, graphic organisers. Further practical strategies cover writing about what you read, note-taking, model writing, structuring arguments, planning narrative writing, practising structured talk and fostering writing motivation.

If there is one phrase which summarises Alex Quigley’s approach in this book and its predecesssors, it is effortful practice. Writing is a highly complex process, and pupils have to do a lot of it, constantly switching between disciplines and tasks. Having teachers who help them to do this better over the course of their years in school will prepare them for a world in which writing is so important for a productive, happy and fruitful life. This book is an excellent aid for all of us who are engaged in that crucial work.