Why does your child struggle to write well?
If you’re reading this page, you want your child to write better.
- Maybe your child has just received a bad grade on a school essay assignment.
- Maybe you’ve read your child’s writing—and you know it’s not good enough.
- Maybe you’ve started thinking about writing expectations for high school, college, and beyond.
- So you know your problem.
You know that your child needs to improve his writing.
And you are wondering how he will do so.
How will he avoid making embarrassing grammatical errors?
How will he learn how to organize his thoughts?
You don’t know the answers to these questions.
You do know that your child’s writing doesn’t measure up to your high standards.
So you are worried. And with good reason.
Because even if he is getting A’s today, next year, your child could start getting B’s.
If he is in high school, those B’s will go on his permanent record, lowering his GPA and hurting his college application.
How do you avoid this GPA disaster?
Perhaps you think back to your own education.
How did you learn the writing skills that brought you success in high school, in college, and in the career that you have today?
How did you learn this skill?
You start to think about the specific approach that YOUR teachers used to teach you to write—your assignments, your exercises, your teacher’s comments on your papers.
And suddenly, …
… you realize that your child’s writing education in school seems worse than yours was—much worse.
You realize that your child isn’t learning grammar.
He can’t correctly identify subjects and verbs in sentences.
You realize that he isn’t learning vocabulary.
His teacher doesn’t give him regular lists of vocabulary words to learn. His essays use the same words he uses when talking or when messaging his friends.
You realize that his teacher doesn’t give him many writing assignments.
He writes one or two essays each semester. Those essays come back to him many weeks later with the teacher’s grade and a few comments. Looking over the comments for his last few essays, you wonder why the teacher writes so few. (You also wonder if your child is even reading his teacher’s comments.)
Worried about his writing? See if your child qualifies for our program.
You can see that something is very, very wrong with your child’s writing instruction.
But wait a minute—maybe your child’s situation with writing isn’t so bad.
After all, today we have Chat-GPT and other AI tools to help people improve their writing.
You use these tools yourself.
Grammar check in google docs and MS Word.
Spellcheck in emails.
Maybe you’ve even had AI completely rewrite your email—fixing the grammar problems, removing any signs of foreign English, adding a to-do list at the end.
Could AI writing save your child’s writing, too?
With AI, maybe he doesn’t really need to know how to write a complete sentence, how to organize his email, or even how to spell.
Could Chat-GPT do his writing for him?
No.
Let’s be honest: While this thought might have crossed your mind, you probably don’t take it seriously.
Since you care about your child’s writing, you know that education—real education—is the key to success in life.
Doing assignments with Chat-GPT is cheating—not real education.
If you have read this letter this far, you are in a group of elite parents.
You, I, and the tutors I have trained at Improve Your English for over 20 years now—we all care very deeply about education.
I care because I can see that education has contributed directly to my success, particularly my ability to write well.
Worried about his writing? See if your child qualifies for our program.
In fact, let me tell you more about myself and how my writing has helped me.
My name is Nat Crawford.
I was a successful student from the day I started school, and I have a long list of accomplishments to prove it.
As an elementary school student, I scored in the 99th percentile on my standardized tests.
For middle school, I attended a gifted-talented program; within that program I was part of an elite group that passed the US History AP Exam in 7th grade.
In high school I was a National Merit Scholar, thanks to my high PSAT and SAT scores. (And I took the SAT only once.)
After being admitted to several colleges, I chose the University of Chicago, where I had a scholarship.
Before graduating, I was admitted to Phi Beta Kappa—a national academic honors society for college students in the top 10% of their class.
I was admitted to the PhD program in English at Stanford University, where I received a full scholarship and a salary.
What has been the secret to my success?
Yes, I attended good public schools. But even in those schools, I was a top student.
Yes, I had a supportive family who cared about education. But my family didn’t do my homework for me.
Yes, I read a lot. But reading by itself didn’t prepare me for tests.
The secret to my success was simple:
I made sure that I fully understood every subject that I studied.
I didn’t use textbooks, calculators, or word processing programs that GAVE me the answers.
I studied hard so that I KNEW the answers.
Let’s come back to our question: Will Chat-GPT save your child from needing to learn writing?
Because you care about education, you already know the answer to this question: No.
No matter how good Chat-GPT becomes, your child needs to know how to write well.
For proof, just look at what’s happened in the last two decades with calculators and computers in math classes.
Today, anyone can solve a basic arithmetic problem with a simple solar-powered calculator.
Does that mean your child doesn’t need to learn multiplication?
Today, you can create a basic graph of typical polynomial functions by using a graphing calculator.
Does this mean your child doesn’t need to learn algebra?
Today, you can use programs like Desmos and Mathematica to calculate integrals and do regression analysis.
Does this mean your child doesn’t need to learn calculus or statistics?
Of course not.
Your child can use these tools to do math FASTER, but he needs to know the operations before he can do the math AT ALL.
Writing is no different.
Yes, AI writing tools will help people to write faster. AI can help people organize their ideas and offer them new ones that they had not considered.
But …
… AI won’t teach the principles of good writing.
Those principles enable your child to DISTINGUISH good writing from bad writing—to DECIDE which ideas to keep and which to reject.
AI-based writing tools will not save your child.
If you want your child to succeed, he needs to learn how to write.
But how will he do that?
How can your child turn from a weak writer into a strong writer?
It’s a question that’s worth pondering.
Unfortunately, your child doesn’t have much time.
Because if your child’s writing is weak, he is already behind.
And kids who are behind just fall farther and farther behind as the years go by.
It’s going to take extra work for your child to catch up—just to reach the point of being average.
Once he catches up, it will take extra work for him to keep up with his peers. That’s because formerly weak students will regress if they stop their extra training too quickly.
And if he wants to move ahead of his peers, he’ll need even more extra help.
If you want your child to attend a good college, you want him to be AHEAD in writing, not just average.
Consider the University of California (UC) system.
The UC system no longer accepts SAT scores. As a result, it bases the academic part of admissions decisions on student GPA.
To have the best GPA, your child needs A’s in the hardest classes—honors and AP classes.
So in high school, your child should plan on getting A’s in honors English classes, even if he plans to major in STEM.
And to get into honors English classes, he needs to write well—not by the end of 12th grade, but by the end of 9th grade. That’s when schools decide which students will advance to honors classes.
(By the way, if your child is already in 10th or 11th grade, don’t panic. It is NEVER TOO LATE to improve your child’s ability to write well in high school, college, and the work force. It’s NEVER TOO LATE to set your child in the right direction by teaching him good writing.)
So ideally, by the middle of 9th grade, your child should be well above average in his writing,
And that means that you want to start his journey earlier—by middle school, or even elementary school.
How do you know, though, which path to writing improvement is best?
On your short timeline, every month is precious.
You can’t afford to waste weeks doing pointless busywork.
Remember: your child already participates in at least one failed writing class—his current school English class.
If that class was teaching him how to write, you wouldn’t be reading this letter.
You need a program that helps your child improve—quickly.
A program that gives him the strong foundation he needs to write well.
A program that does A LOT more than pair him with a smart young tutor who basically writes his essays for him.
Because if your child’s tutor writes your child’s homework, what will your child do when given an in-class assignment—one that he must handwrite, immediately, with no outside help?
He’ll do poorly on that essay.
That result will damage not only his grade in the class, but also his teacher recommendation for college.
Read What our Students Have to Say
X. Liu, Palo Alto
“Thanks very much for working with our son on his English writing. He is heading to MIT, and his planned major is CS.”
Amy S., Los Altos
“I GOT INTO STANFORD Thanks so much for helping me with everything!! I’m so happy :)”
S. L., 1600 SAT score, Harvard University
“As someone who hates standardized testing, I had always thought of the SAT as a pain, a weary obstacle that had to be scaled because there exists a vague thing called “college.” But as I prepped for the SAT at Improve Your English, I realized that there was something big, something monumental, occurring in my education.
For me, SAT test prep with IYE was a transformation in the way I understood the English language.”
David Z., Regent’s Scholar, Engineering Department, UC Berkeley
“I took several reading classes in the first semester of college, and I had a great time. I frequently find myself using some of the techniques you taught me: mostly trying to draw a picture of what is actually going on, and imagining what the author is really saying using visuals. This technique forces me to pay attention and not mindlessly ‘read’. I think one of the most important things I remember you teaching me was the day before the SAT, you encouraged me to keep my self criticism at bay while learning. I was lucky to hear that advice from you at a young age.”
G. L., Palo Alto
“Hello Nat, I am writing this email to thank you for helping me improve my English and develop better writing and grammar skills. Thanks to your boot camp class, I have improved my score on the SAT to 1540, with a 740 in English (50 more than the previous attempt). Thank you so much for your help with my reading and writing skills, and I do believe that this program is amazing at helping high schoolers develop said skills. I use the techniques in my English essays on an everyday basis.”
Qun M., Palo Alto
“I wish we had found IYE when our daughter was in lower grades and had started enrolling in the program much earlier. Your program is well thought and planned. I think students would benefit by enrolling in the program earlier on. I would definitely recommend to my friends who are interested in enrolling their kids in a great English class.”
Worried about his writing? See if your child qualifies for our program.
Imagine a college admissions committee reading this letter of recommendation for a kid:
“Johnny always did a great job on take-home essays, but he wrote much worse on in-class essays.”
Reading that college recommendation letter, an administrator would immediately suspect that the student was cheating on take-home assignments.
Instant rejection.
That’s why your child needs to learn to write INDEPENDENTLY, not just rely on a tutor for ideas and corrections.
Your child needs an EXPERIENCED writing tutor.
Speaking of experience, let me tell you something about young tutors, because I was a young tutor once.
Young tutors have a lot of enthusiasm.
And they are committed to helping kids learn.
But they lack experience. And this inexperience limits their effectiveness.
Think about the young people at your own company. They are bright, enthusiastic, and hardworking.
But they lack experience.
A college education, even at a top college, can’t prepare a 22 year old kid for all of the challenges that he will face in a real job.
There are specific systems to master, specific problems to understand.
(And don’t get me started on the people skills they need to learn. This is yet another area where schools are failing our students.)
As a result, new hires spend A LOT of time learning, asking for help, and making mistakes.
You, the experienced employee, need to train the new hire, answer his questions, and fix his mistakes.
Hour for hour, you, the experienced employee, are simply more valuable than young hires.
So if you need a job done quickly and efficiently, you give it to an experienced team, not one that is still learning procedures.
Likewise, for improving your child’s writing, you also want an experienced tutor.
Your child’s writing tutor should know exactly how to diagnose your child’s writing problems and assign homework to fix them.
Your child’s writing tutor should be able to look at an essay and IMMEDIATELY decide which problems need fixing NOW and which can wait.
Your child’s writing tutor should already have YEARS of experience grading essays and helping students improve their writing.
You don’t have time to wait week after week for your child to improve while a young teacher figures out the best way to teach him.
Because make no mistake about it—there IS a BEST WAY to teach writing.
And the reason so many kids write poorly is because very few English teachers teach the BEST WAY.
How do I know that there is a BEST WAY to teach writing? I know because I have seen the results of two different approaches to teaching writing.
As a first-year teacher at Pinewood School in Los Altos Hills, I taught two groups of 10th graders.
The previous year, one group had a teacher who taught five-paragraph essays, plus English grammar.
The other group had a teacher who taught five-paragraph essays, but no grammar.
When they reached 10th grade, …
… the group that knew English grammar wrote SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER than the other group.
It wasn’t even close.
As their writing teacher, I could tell, simply based on first drafts of essays, which group had mastered English grammar the previous year.
Based on that experience, I built my writing curriculum around learning grammar. As my weak writers learned their grammar lessons, they began to improve. And they could see the difference:
“The grammatical explanations are the clearest I have ever had.”
—Former student, Pinewood School, Los Altos Hills
“This class has improved my writing.”
—D. B., Pinewood student and future Harvard student
My students took their writing skills to top colleges.
I sent two of my students to Harvard, two to Yale, one to Princeton, four to Stanford, and two to MIT.
That’s why, when I created the curriculum at Improve Your English, I incorporated the methods that I helped so many students at Pinewood.
And this is the writing program that will improve your child’s writing.
- It will save your child from making silly grammar errors and teach him how to write sophisticated sentences. His writing will be exciting to read.
- It will give your child systematic, step-by-step procedures for writing a wide variety of essays. He’ll have the confidence to complete any school assignment.
At Improve Your English, we have complete confidence that this program will teach your child to write.
In fact, we’re so confident that …
… we back our writing program with our Apple Watch Guarantee
Here’s how it works:
- If you take the Improve Your English Comprehensive English Diagnostic
- and meet with me to
1) review your child’s results and
2) discuss your child’s English tutoring needs - and you DON’T THINK that our program will improve your child’s writing …
… we’ll buy you an Apple Watch.
No questions asked.
It’s the best guarantee in the tutoring business.
And it’s available to you right now.
Now, obviously, we can’t make this promise to everyone.
For one, your child needs to be old enough to benefit from our program.
Also, you need to be ready to commit to a weekly 1-1 tutoring session—not occasional classes, not group classes.
And we have a few more requirements for families to qualify.
But if you have read this letter to the end, there is an excellent chance that you are one of those families.
How do we know?
Because we have helped over 1200 Silicon Valley students improve their writing, using our program.
That’s over 1200 families who qualified for our program—and who would qualify for our Apple Watch Guarantee.
That’s a lot of families, and the chances are good that you are just like them:
- You care about your child’s education.
- You want your child to improve his writing.
- You value a systematic teaching curriculum.
- You prefer experienced tutors.
To find out if you qualify for our Apple Watch Guarantee, just click the button and fill out our form.
We’ll let you know immediately.
Sincerely,
Nat Crawford
—MA Stanford
—BA UChicago
—Phi Beta Kappa
—National Merit Scholar