Getting it down on paper

What can a student learn from writing when the writing doesn't come? What might cause page fright and what, if anything, could be done about it?

The character Phaedrus in Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance (Pirsig, 1974) encourages a student experiencing such fear to narrow her focus from the nation to the main street in town to a building wall and finally to an individual brick; she then becomes unstuck and the writing begins to flow. He attributes her difficulty to an attempt at imitative rather than original expression, the latter having been learned in school.

Galbraith (1980) describes three goals of writing for students as expression, coherence and self-presentation. While the form of expression need not constrain the written product, the desire for coherence and the writer's self-image in a social context can result in a student who "will not say what he thinks, but what he thinks he thinks, or, even more confusing, what he thinks he ought to think" (p.365).

Samson and Radloff (1994) describe a "Mozart style" of writing that captures on paper ideas that are fully developed in the mind versus a "Beethoven style" of writing where ideas are developed as they are written, suggesting that the ability to write in either form is indicative of deep learning. Is page fright then an indicator of surface learning?

The UWA Support Center <http://www.studentservices.uwa.edu.au/> provides some tips for undergraduate and postgraduate students about learning from writing, some of which help page fright, e.g.

• Your primary objective in the first draft is to get your ideas down on paper. Don't be too fussy about your writing at this stage.
• Revision should be done in stages, concentrating on argument, contents, structure and paragraphing and expression one at a time and separately.

Other forms of aid to student writing developed by departments/faculties at UWA include:

• Flexible Delivery of Academic Writing Tuition Project <http://www.ecel.uwa.edu.au/~jrocheco/ACADWRIT/front.htm>
• Scientific Communication 405 <http://www.publishing.uwa.edu.au/handbooks/Ems/units233-405.html>
• Academic Writing in English 409/509 <http://www.publishing.uwa.edu.au/handbooks/education/GSEUnits300-409-300-509.html>
• English for Academic Purpose (EAP) <http://colon5.ecel.uwa.edu.au/celt/course_info2.htm>

Directing student attention to the need to separate the process and product of writing may help those who find that they are stuck. How do you and your department facilitate student writing?

• Galbraith, D. (1980). The effect of conflicting goals on writing: A case study. Visible Language, XIV(4), 364-375.
• Pirsig, R. M. (1974). Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. London: Vintage.
• Samson, J., & Radloff, A. (1994). In Writing: A guide to writing effectively at the tertiary level. Perth: Paradigm Books.

Previously published in Making Meaning through Writing. (2000). Issues of Teaching and Learning, 6(3)