…my 10-year old child groaned, adamantly, with increasing fervor. No manner of logical persuasion would convince him otherwise.
I appealed to emotion. To no avail.
I laid down the law. That ended it —but not well.
The dreaded composition assignment. Closely followed by the dreaded push-back about it. I’m ’gonna call it Exaggerated Composition Revulsion (ECR).
Have your students experienced ECR? Is it attacking them now? Let’s examine ECR, some of its causes and some healthy responses to combat it.
I Hate Writing. It’s Hard.
Truth.
I empathize.
No matter who you are, writing is hard.
And … it’s complicated.
Writing is a process of producing something simultaneously intangible and tangible, simultaneously academic and personal—and one that will be scrutinized and EVALUATED.
When you ask your students to complete a writing assignment, you are expecting them to perform a multitude of tasks. They must supply a suitable number of worthwhile ideas and content in response to a prompt they’ve had to properly understand. Then they must organize those thoughts, write them in a way that makes sense and also appeal to an audience. Never mind finding a clever introduction and conclusion—or figuring out how to do all those tasks appropriately so the assignment is completed on time.
These are just some of the basic components to handling content. Then come all the details. There’s handwriting (shudder), and grammar (double shudder), vocabulary and spelling. The sheer number of tasks alone can be overwhelming (shudder—to the nth degree).
Combating CR
So, it’s a normal response, really, to throw up one’s hands in despair. We are humans, after all, and we really don’t enjoy painful things . . .
. . . and especially so (as my carpenter Dad used to say), if we don’t have the proper tools for the job.
Sometimes the best tools to start with are simple ones. Here are some simple tools for starting just about any writing task for just about any age writer.
Let Ideas Flow
The biggest writing hurdle is typically the first: getting ideas.
Here are some easy-to-implement techniques that have helped my students (and me!):
Brainstorming – An informal, tried-and-true way to gather ideas at any time in the writing process. Brainstorming is absolutely mandatory! There are many ways to do this, but the simplest is just thinking about the topic and then jotting down any words/ideas. Dictate your thoughts to someone, jot them down, or doodle anything your brain thinks in response to the writing prompt. No restrictions! Incomplete sentences; spelling errors. Write all over the page in crazy ways; everything is allowed (a great time to use fun-colored pens!). Continually practicing brainstorming will train the brain to create ideas, and more efficiently.
Try It Out: Do the following exercise together with your student.
Set a time limit of 2 minutes and come up with as many ideas as you can on one of these topics:
- An ideal lunch
- Best ways to spend $5
- My best memories of _____________.
It’s amazing how much can be achieved in 2 minutes of concerted effort. If you need more time, take another 2 minutes. Then, select which ideas you both like best. Take one of those ideas and brainstorm on that idea alone for 2 minutes. You will develop all sorts of content. That’s more than half the battle!
When a writing assignment comes up, it’s completely legal to employ the group brainstorming technique. As teacher, just gradually contribute fewer and fewer ideas as your students learn to do it themselves.
Freewriting – A “next level” version of brainstorming: similar goals, similar results–but visually resembles sentences. Ignore spelling, grammar, and the like. Write down anything you think of—even if you get “off track.” Set a time or a length of page. The first time, do it at the same time with your student. Choose one of the above “Try-It-Out” activities and write continuously for a set period of time or length of page (a journal-sized page is plenty to start). Younger students can dictate to you. Freewriting gives students more practice actually doing writing. With regular freewriting, amounts of ideas and ease of writing will improve.
Regular Practice – For some reason, we realize math takes practice; sports take practice; musical performing takes practice. But we often forget that writing is an incremental skill that takes practice, time, and concerted effort. As parents, after all, we have been writing for some time; it seems a more intuitive process for us. Provide your students regular opportunities for ungraded practice and constructive feedback. The more students write, the more comfortable they feel doing so and the more easily ideas will come.
One cause of ECR down. One more to go. Watch out for our “I Hate Writing, Part the Two.”
~ Ruth
