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LANGUAGE ARTS :: SECONDARY RESOURCES :: WRITING HANDBOOK :: WHAT CAN I DO IF I HAVE A STUDENT WHO IS REALLY APPREHENSIVE ABOUT WRITING?

WHAT CAN I DO IF I HAVE A STUDENT WHO IS REALLY APPREHENSIVE ABOUT WRITING?

Faigley, Daly, & Witte (1981) define writing apprehension as a tendency to be so anxious about writing that writing is avoided and the apprehension can be seen in behaviors, attitudes, and written products. They further state that these writers tend to share many of the following characteristics: they have difficulty thinking of what to write about, produce shorter pieces of writing than their peers, fail to develop their ideas adequately, use less variety in sentence patterns, and have difficulty with usage and mechanics.

Writing apprehension may cause students to fail to turn in assignments, produce inadequate products, or even lead to behavior problems in class when students become frustrated. Reeves (1997) identifies several strategies that teachers can use with students whose writing apprehension sabotages their writing efforts. She recommends that teachers talk about past experiences with writing in small groups early in the course as a way of helping students put past experiences in perspective. For example, students who are accustomed to receiving failing grades or primarily negative feedback may feel that they are unable to produce effective writing. By helping students explore these feelings and understand their source, teachers can encourage them to work through their apprehension.

Reeves also advocates for the inclusion of daily non-threatening writing activities in a practice-like atmosphere because many of these writers have either had little experience writing or have only received criticism about past writings. The goal is to help students develop fluency and confidence in small doses.

Another way that Reeves suggests teachers can help students overcome their apprehensions is to help them see patterns in their errors. This emphasis on systematic logic can help struggling writers increase their confidence and see that they can learn from past mistakes.

Most importantly, though, teachers can help students who are apprehensive by structuring writing activities in ways that promote success, balancing flexibility and structure, and help students "unblock" themselves. The following activities offer some suggestions.

Students may feel less apprehensive about writing if a teacher gives out note cards (which provide only a small amount of writing space) and asks for a response to a prompt to be written in the student's own words. Another technique that can be helpful (especially when students are suffering from "writer's block" because they feel overwhelmed with information) is to tell them to imagine that they have 10 minutes to write the assigned paper. Set a timer and have them write for 10 minutes. This will often help them find a "way into" the writing or at least help them see some of the main points that they want to make in the writing. Some students work better when the teacher helps them "break down" a larger essay into pieces (for example, spend some class time working on the introduction or just one paragraph of support) initially.

Some students may need some structure initially to help them feel less threatened by writing. Structured poems such as biopoems or acrostics may work very well for this purpose. They allow students to explore content without the pressure of having to make decisions about the form of the content. Graphic organizers can also be helpful to students who feel inhibited by structure since the organizer can provide a visual pattern for the writing. As students develop more fluency as writers, teachers can help them move beyond these structured activities and show them how to write "from scratch" using their own planning techniques.

Teachers can use several techniques to help students continue to write even when they are feeling blocked.

• One technique is to tell students to imagine a different audience for the piece (the student may be able to write a first draft of a letter to the editor by first imagining her best friend as the audience).
• Another is to remind students that they don't have to start writing at the "beginning." They can pick any part of the piece as a starting point to just begin getting something down on paper.
• With the use of technology, students can also do "invisible writing" (Worsley & Mayer, 2000). Invisible writing can be done by turning off the computer monitor. Because students can't see what they have been writing, the focus tends to move to the thinking inside the head and may even affect the way that the student conceptualizes what will be written. It also helps students who are so concerned about "correctness" refocus their attention since they can't check the correctness of what they've written while they continue to write.

Example
In Woodworking, students use a graphic organizer while categorizing information to be part of a grant proposal they are co-writing with the teacher to secure funds to purchase materials to design and build ten pieces of furniture as part of a service learning project to donate to families building Habitat for Humanity homes.

Example
A novice ESL student in social studies who feels apprehensive about writing an autobiographical paragraph at the beginning of the year during a "getting to know you activity" writes a structured "Geo Poem" (Bachman-Williams, 2001) about his or her country of origin to gain confidence and prewrite about his or her culture before moving to the paragraph assignment.

The format is as follows:

Geo Poem
(Name of country)

(Four adjectives - words or statements that describe the country)

Home of… (something that distinguishes it from other countries)

Neighbor of… (name at least three neighboring countries)

Who exports… (three items)

Who imports… (three items)

Who is proud of… (people, places, or characteristics)

Who celebrates… (name three holidays)

Whose flag is… (name the colors in the flag)

Member of… (continent on which it is found)

(Local name of country and a phrase to describe the origin of the name) (p. 10)

 

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