When Students Have Writer's Block

John Dewey, in How We Think, said, “Insistence upon avoiding error instead of attaining power tends also to interruption of continuous discourse and thought.”  My first thought when I read this sentence was how true this would be for teaching academic writing.  While I’m sure it might be for all writing (journalistic, creative, etc.), it struck me as true because this is precisely the problem I would run into when trying to get high school or college students to write.  

The problem, of course, is that most people who aren’t regular writers or comfortable with their writing often want to write it right the first time and never have to think about it again.  Consequently, these students tend to stare at the blank page, afraid to write anything down that they may have to later change.  One common complaint of students is often, “I know what I want to write but I don’t know how to write it.”  I think this paralysis of the mind occurs precisely because students don’t want to play with their language.  Writing becomes work from the outside, as Dewey calls it, “when we think of it as simply doing things that need to be done” (p. 211).  Students need to finish the essay so they can get on with whatever other work that needs to be done.  To play with language in writing, “activity directed by ends that thought sets before the person as something to be accomplished” (p. 211), may allow more freedom of thought.  

How I helped students with this problem

To help students with the above type writer’s block, I would often sit with them and have them tell me what they think they wanted to write.  I transcribed their ideas word for word and presented it to them.  They are often amazed that it was so simple, but I think they feared writing anything down that they would have to change or they feared making errors.

This type of activity can be done by putting students in pairs as well.  One student writes while the other talks.  Sometimes just helping students overcome that initial writer's block can get them moving on their drafts.

I don't know of any research at the present to back up this particular strategy, but if I find any I will edit this post.

Writing with Ammunition: Shells and Other Formats

A while back, I read a research article that really hit home with me.  I have been searching for this article now but can’t seem to find it.  When I do, I will link it.  Until then, I will describe it, why I remember it, and what is so important about it.

This study was not done by a major player in the field of writing research, that I remember.  In fact, I believe it was a probably not even considered an overly influential study.  I found it fascinating for a few reasons.  One, I have wanted to do something like it because of a job I have held now since 2002. Two, it justified my own thoughts about my experience with writers and that job.

Now to the specifics.

The research article looked at timed writing samples and compared the style of writing done on it with the score received.  Style may not be the correct word, but the research was looking at how students scored and if they used some kind of writing shell or formula, like a 4 or 5 paragraph essay with a 2-3 point thesis.  Writing shells are very common in timed writing exams, especially by students outside the U.S. whose first language isn’t English.  

After coding thousands of papers in this way, the results indicated that the students with the higher scores often did not use any type of formulaic writing.  However, the students with the lowest scores also did not use any type of formula or shells.  The students in the middle used formula type writing.  The author indicated that better writers do not need formulas but that poor writers could benefit from using a formula.

I found this article very interesting because it is exactly what I have seen in my many years of scoring essays online.  I have been doing this now since 2002, and cannot even begin to guess how many essays I have scored over the years.  I can average roughly 120 essays in an 8 hour shift.  Sometimes more.

As a researcher, I would never be able to say something like - yes that was my experience. Research likes to look at the bigger picture.  My experience is merely that, just my experience.  However, as a writing teacher, blogger, and now research exposer, I’m coming out of the lab and saying - yup that is exactly what I have noticed about timed writing as well.

Good writers do not need a shell nor do they need to resort to formulaic writing.  The good writers are the ones that score highly on these exams.  Some may use a 4 or 5 paragraph structure but content in the essays is stronger than that normally seen in essays that stick to a strong formula.  Poor writers, those that score low, often have no structure at all, as well as very limited development.  Those that rely on a shell sometimes do not know what to put between the parts of the shell that they know.

Most of the middle range essays are very traditional 4 or 5 paragraph essays.  When I teach, I call them grocery lists because to me that is what they read like.  For example, if the prompt asked if all politicians were corrupt.  The grocery lists agree or disagree and then list the reasons followed by some development.  However, for timed writing, that’s not a bad place to be.  It means you pass, and for some, that’s all that matters.

What does this mean for my teaching?

It might mean that you may want to take the time to teach a shell or formula to students that seem to struggle with writing.  Normally, I do not like to have students rely on formulas but for some, it might be necessary.  Good writers realize that writing is not one-size-fits-all.  Poor writers need that structure and step by step assurance that they are doing the right thing.  It might take the burden off of them enough to work on the content and development more if they don’t have to focus on the organization.  Students who struggle with writing just can’t focus on all of those different particulars.  Something will have to give.  

Writing should help students learn content but if they are too bogged down in how to write then they will never get to the important parts of writing - that is what they can learn by writing about a topic.

Analyzing research design: Being treated artificially

In the world of quantitative research, there are true experimental and quasi-experimental designs.  It is extremely rare, if not impossible, to have a true experimental research project in the realm of education.  Simply, to be considered true experimental, the participants have to be completely random, from anywhere, pooled from everyone available.  As you can see, research like this is nearly impossible when you want to test one treatment against another in a quantitative educational research project.  For us, there are all sorts of regulations in place at the university, district, class, and student level.  Each one has its own barriers, and each one can thwart a research project at any time.

You will more often see the quasi-experimental design.  Here, researchers use several classes.  These can be whole class units or a class split into groups.  The effect is similar in that one group will get one treatment; another group will get another treatment or be a control group.  There could be just two groups or more than two depending on the number of treatments being measured.

While this design has a purpose, I am, personally, not fond of the two group (control and treatment group) types of research designs in writing research for two reasons:

1.) Any time you explicitly teach a topic or genre, students are bound to do better than when something is not explicitly taught.  These designs often pit an implicit teaching design versus an explicit teaching design.  

For example, the research may use how a teacher normally teaches something versus the new treatment that the researchers want to try out.  When the researchers come in and teach something, or train the teacher how to teach it, more often than not the treatment group exceeds the control group in results.  

Logically, any time you explicitly teach something, or add an additional factor of the research teaching students (thus adding interest only because someone other than the teacher is teaching), or additional training for the teacher (meaning he or she may present the material with more zeal), the treatment group already has more going for it than the control group.  This is a validity problem inherent to all such research like this, no matter how many steps are done to try to minimize the effect.

A slight variation, and only slightly better in design, is when more than one treatment is present to find out which treatment works better.  Again, if there is a control group, they will almost always come in behind the treatment groups.  A researcher might find out which of the treatments is better but that only tells us which is better among those chosen for study.  A different treatment may be far superior but was not part of the research design.  While I don’t see this as a failing on the part of the researchers, it is a limitation of deciding which is treatment might be better.

2.) Most of these research projects have short treatment times, such as a few weeks or a month.  Students can learn and retain information in the short term better than in the long term.  If these treatments are then not used, will the students remember them six months from the treatment or a year later?  Again, it is rare for a research group to go back a year later to find out if the students remember the treatment.  If they do go back or are planning to go back (in the event of preliminary data), the timeline is noted in the research methodology.  

The flaws in research design are just one reason that reading, analyzing, and questioning the different sections of a research article is important.

Are they really doing more writing?

I am very excited to share some recent research by Andrea Lunsford from Stanford University called The Stanford Study of Writing.  

Andrea Lunsford has been doing research into the writing of college students since the 1970’s.  Her earlier work looked at basic composition students at the college level; some of her later work focused on collaborative writing at many different levels and in different places. 

The research I want to chat about today, called The Stanford Study of Writing, spanned five years between 2001 – 2006.  This study attempted to look at all the writing done by college students, in and out of class. This is really a huge undertaking.  The researchers collected over 14 thousand pieces of writing from a group of 189 students.  

Now, you might be thinking…that research was years ago and probably isn’t relevant.  The fact is that from the end of a research project to publication is often several years in the making.  In the mean time, preliminary data is presented at conferences across the country and can be published in preliminary form in research journals.  It’s not a quick or easy step from research to publication.

I worked on a project similar to this for one year with Dr. Arthur Applebee and Dr. Judith Langer.  I can say from experience that dealing with this paper load is no easy feat.  We had four students in each grade (6, 8, 10, and 12).  Our goal was to collect all of their in-class writing.  (I will review some of the data findings for that study in another post.)  The point of this short tangent is to really applaud the students who contributed their writings and the graduate students that sifted through all of the information to bring out one very important fact:

Students today are writing more than any generation before them!  

Dr. Lunsford’s preliminary data shows that 39% of all writing done by these students is being done outside of the classroom.  Compared to previous generations, this is phenomenal because most people, once they were out of school, hardly ever wrote paragraph length texts unless possibly writing letters or had a job where writing was required.

What kinds of writing are they doing?

Texting

Blogging

Writing walk-throughs for video games (also know as how-tos)

Other internet content writing

Another important finding is that they are writing for specific audiences.  They are not only writing for their teachers, which has been the primary audience of students since writing became its own subject.  The terms good writing and bad writing have always been subjective in school, but now the line gets even blurrier.  Good and usable writing for the internet can be much looser than good writing for school, and it may have more importance for the student.

What can this mean for my teaching?

To me, this means that a variety of different internet writing forms can be exploited in my classroom.  I could poll my class and find out what kind of writing they do outside the classroom in non-academic related activities.  After that, I would use these genres as a jumping off point.  I think this activity can be used in any content classroom.

Sample Activities

For instance, instead of exit writing (a few sentences where students write a question about the class before they leave), you could have them write an exit text and let them use text language.  However, if you aren’t well versed on texting abbreviations, make the students then write out the text until you learn the abbreviations.  This way you not only learn the lingo, students write in a form that they like that they use to quickly inform their friends of information.  

I might have them write a video-game like walk through for a literary selection.  You can present them with a typical video game walk through found on the internet and practice writing them using topics from the class.  They really are nothing more than how-to articles.  Science classes already use walk throughs in their labs.  Math concepts might benefit from a walk through as well.  By presenting it using a writing form that they already know, students might see the connections better and be able to write one of their own.  Then you can follow the next step and explain how the different writing forms compare and contrast to each other.

In addition, I would use this opportunity to explore the different expectations of different writing mediums.  What does it mean to write a blog?  How does this genre form differ from the writing expected in school.

Please feel free to share any other classroom related ideas based on this research for others.

Welcome

Welcome to Research to Writing, a blog dedicated to bringing important research in the field of writing instruction to your classroom practices.

A bit about me

I love to read about research on writing instruction and like to know what different researchers are studying that could be useful to my teaching.  This is a practice that began while earning my Master’s in English Education degree at Ohio State University years ago. I tried to keep up with reading research during my years as a high school and college teacher, but I found that I had little time for it.  

While taking doctoral classes at the University at Albany, I used every reading and research opportunity to build my knowledge about theories and research related to writing instruction.  I have finished my doctoral course work and will be receiving my Certificate of Advanced Study in the Spring 2010.  I am now raising my two year old and doing what I love most, teaching about writing.

The purpose of this blog

My goal for this blog is to bring this research to the classroom teacher in an easy and palatable form.  After all, not everyone likes slogging through research articles.  

I will be presenting research, both old and new pieces, and giving suggestions as to how this research can be used in a classroom.  I also hope that those of you who need research to support classroom practices will use what I write.  I will always provide a full citation of the research that I discuss, some related research, and links to full texts available on the internet when possible, both free and pay sites.  (Sorry that I have no control over which ones are available, and I will respect any copyright laws regarding reposting of information.