Every student arrives in high school with a different relationship to reading and writing. Some are confident. Many are not. And for a significant number, the struggles they experience aren’t random — they’re patterns. Recurring mistakes that quietly chip away at performance across every subject, not just English class.
The good news is that most of these patterns are identifiable and fixable. Here’s what to look for, and what actually helps.
1. Reading the Words Without Reading the Meaning
A student can move their eyes across every line of a passage and retain almost nothing. This surface-level reading — common in students who were never pushed to actively engage with a text — becomes a serious problem in high school, where reading comprehension underpins everything from history essays to science exams.
What to do: Teach students to annotate as they read. Underlining key claims, jotting a quick summary at the end of each paragraph, and pausing to ask “what is this section actually saying?” turns passive reading into active processing. It feels slower at first. It produces far better results.
2. Avoiding Long or Unfamiliar Words
Rather than slowing down to work through an unfamiliar word, many students skip it, substitute something approximate, or simply lose the thread of what they’re reading. Over time, this avoidance stalls vocabulary growth and limits reading comprehension at exactly the level where high school texts demand more.
What to do: Encourage students to break unfamiliar words into parts — roots, prefixes, and suffixes carry enormous amounts of meaning. A student who knows that “bene” means good and “mal” means bad has a tool that works across hundreds of words. Making vocabulary a habit, not a chore, pays dividends throughout high school and into college.
3. Writing Without a Plan
The most common writing mistake at the high school level isn’t grammar or spelling — it’s structure. Students who sit down and write whatever comes to mind first produce essays that wander, repeat themselves, and fail to build a clear argument. Teachers recognize this immediately. Students are often genuinely surprised their grade reflects it.
What to do: Before writing a single sentence of the actual essay, spend time on a simple outline. A clear thesis, three supporting points, and a sense of how the conclusion ties back to the opening — that’s all it takes to give a piece of direction. Students who outline consistently produce stronger first drafts and spend less time revising.
4. Treating the First Draft as the Final Draft
Most students submit the first version of whatever they wrote, often finished minutes before the deadline. High school writing assignments, particularly essays and research papers, are almost always better on the second pass — but only if the student actually makes substantive changes, not just spell-checks.
What to do: Build in revision as a real step, not an afterthought. Reading the essay aloud is one of the most effective revision tools available — students catch awkward phrasing, repeated words, and logical gaps far more easily when they hear the writing than when they read it silently. Even one genuine revision pass meaningfully improves the final product.
5. Over-relying on Casual Language
Years of texting, social media, and informal communication have made it genuinely difficult for many students to shift registers when they sit down to write academically. Contractions, vague filler phrases, and conversational tone creep into essays where precise, formal language is expected.
What to do: Help students understand that academic writing is a mode — one they can learn to switch into deliberately, the way they’d dress differently for a job interview than a Friday night. Reading strong examples of the kind of writing they’re expected to produce is one of the fastest ways to internalize what that register sounds and feels like.
6. Not Asking for Help Until It’s Too Late
Perhaps the most costly mistake isn’t a reading or writing skill at all — it’s the habit of waiting. Students who struggle with a concept in September and say nothing are often the same students in crisis come November. In high school, where units build on each other and grades accumulate quickly, early intervention makes a far bigger difference than late intervention.
What to do: Normalize asking for help before the problem becomes urgent. Whether that’s office hours, tutoring, or a conversation with a teacher, reaching out early is a skill in itself — one that will serve students well beyond high school.
The Common Thread
Every mistake on this list shares something: none of them are fixed by simply trying harder. They’re fixed by trying differently — with the right strategies, the right support, and enough consistency for new habits to take hold. That’s something teachers, tutors, and parents can all play a role in.
