Trina's concerns

How does a teacher create a desire in students to improve their writing skills? A comment earlier asked this question and it's a doozy. I wish I had the magic lamp and could answer. One of the only ways I ever saw a difference was by using a rubric to grade. Rubrics accomplish several things. One, they take away the "the teacher doesn't like me" crutch. My favorite rubrics awarded 80% of the grade to content, organization, sentence structure/word choice but kept the 20% for grammar. I have never believed that  students who have terrible grammar or lazy grammar should make an A on a paper. When they finally realize that they are hampering themselves by consistenly being lazy (ie texting language such as bc or u) or some incorrect grammar, they are a bit more serious during the prewriting, drafting stage. No matter how many positive remarks I ever made, the only strategy that ever seemed to catch their attention was the lower grade.