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Do Australian students have a ‘problem’ with writing?
A decade’s worth of NAPLAN data and a sweeping review of how writing will be taught in NSW has suggested – strongly in the media – that Australian students’ writing skills are in a sad state of decline.
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What a bizarre article. It mixes up evidence from NAPLAN, HSC English, and university essays. Your conclusion is very bold: “So, besides a decline in a dubious test such as NAPLAN, is there a systemic writing problem among Australia’s youth? The evidence doesn’t seem to support it.”
If you think the literacy problems at tertiary level are limited to misplaced apostrophes then you are wildly misinformed. Please see the source of my comments for greater detail on the type of literacy issues that emerge in first-year university student writing: https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/lnj/article/view/6672
Russell Daylight
Lecturer in English
Charles Sturt University