Lethbridge Herald

Professor Says Students Lack Skills In Writing

Gaidosch says some students never taught how to study

By Sherri Gallant

Lethbridge Herald

As a college-level English instructor, Bernie Gaidosch is continually astounded by the growing number of students he sees who can't write essays, have poor English skills and have never been taught fundamentals like how to study.

Professor Bernie, as he is called, soon found he was able to help these students fill in their knowledge gaps and succeed, often in short order. His results excited him so much he knew he wanted to make his techniques more widely available and published two books: The Professor's Secrets: breaking the silence, how to write essays and term papers; and The Professor's Secrets: How to get top marks on tests and exams.

"My challenge is, there is kindergarten to Grade 12, and there is another education system beyond Grade 12, and those two systems don't talk to each other," said Gaidosch, who's a professor at George Brown College in Toronto.

"I'm just one person but what I'm trying to do is draw attention to the reality. School is a very political animal and almost decade to decade the curriculum will vary according to who's been elected in a province. Where my position is, I'm in the trenches with 18-, 19-year-old students who are getting their first taste of post-secondary and they're like soldiers who've been dumped off with no helmets, no rifle, no ammunition, and they're told 'OK, now go and get the enemy.'"

Gaidosch has taught thousands of students since 1976 and is known for his simplified writing skills strategy. He also conducts writing workshops for teachers, other professors and employees in the workplace and is a frequent expert guest on radio and television shows across the country and in the U.S. He says the whole-language approach that was inflicted on children beginning in the 1970s has done far more harm than good, producing students who can't spell and don't know the rules of grammar or sentence structure.

Kids are told to study, Gaidosch says, but often don't have a clue what that means.

"Even they don't know how unprepared they are," he says. "And parents aren't always aware that there's a problem. They send their kids to school and they want to believe the school is doing what it's supposed to."

Schools are teaching to the tests, he says, especially true in provinces like Alberta, where provincial achievement tests measure the curriculum's effectiveness each year at Grades 3, 6, and 9, and high school students must write diploma exams. The pressure to perform well on those tests, Gaidosch says, has meant other important skills are no longer being emphasized.

"School is about content -- the War of 1812, math equations -- but I'm saying school needs to be about skills. If you have skills, where do you think your confidence level goes? Well, of course, it goes up. We do diagnostic tests on our incoming students for reading, writing, vocabulary, comprehension and test-taking. If they're graduating from Grade 12, those skills should be there but the bulk of the Bell Curve comes in between Grade 8 and Grade 9."

Abbreviated segments from Gaidosch books are being aired every Wednesday on Global TV's noon-hour newscast, running between 12:30 and 1 p.m. The books are available through his website, www.profsecrets.com and when both are ordered, a DVD is included at no charge.

What can parents do before their kids get to college? Gaidosch says ask at parent-teacher interviews if the children are being taught how to write and if they're being shown how to study. If the answers are unsatisfactory, take it to the principal and if that doesn't work, to the school board. Poor writing skills lead to poor self esteem and often translate into low-paying jobs in adulthood, he says.

"If you short-change your education now, you might find yourself short of change later," he says.

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