Helping Students Overcome Writers Block Reflection Engl 1301

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Jorge Diaz
Professor McCann
English 1301.127
8 September 2021
Helping Students Overcome Writer’s Block Reflection
Writer’s block is that feeling that writers have when they can’t find the right words,
sentences, or tones to use in an essay. Writer’s block is so hard to overcome because it’s not only
a writer being lazy to write, but there are several other factors, such as teacher comments, that
can affect every writer and how secure they are about their skills. There are some factors that
help people overcome writer’s block, such as support from instructors, not following the rules of
writing strictly, and personal support.
One of the main factors in which instructors can help people overcome writer’s block can
be by giving the writer questions that have to be answered in their paper. These questions can
help their students because it gives them a clear idea of what it is that their text should have, and
what it is that the instructor is going to be looking for. For example, let’s say that someone has to
write a 7-page essay as their final work. Writer’s block means that writers don’t know what to
write, or where to start from, and because it is such a large and important paper, writer’s block
can become worse than what it already is. However, if the instructor was to give their students
some base questions for their paper, they could overcome writer’s block more easily, as they
already have an idea on where to start from, and triggers that would help them think and express
their ideas more easily.
Moreover, traditional teaching, and its rules, can also be a part of someone’s writer’s
block. Rules can have a high impact on a paper because “some students, especially those with
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weak writing skills, are so concerned with “correctness” when they write that they worry about
violating rules and conventions while they are trying to express their thoughts,” (Oliver 164)
which ends up making students limit their own ideas. For a large group of people, rules of
writing end up becoming a part of their writer’s block because they try so hard to use
professional vocabulary, right punctuation, the right transitions, and right formats that they end
up forgetting about the actual purpose of their writing is, in order to try to obtain a better grade
based on how traditional their paper is. For instance, let’s say that you are trying to do a
motivational speech. Most of the speeches have outlines, and those outlines have several rules
that most of the students want to follow exactly as they appear. In this case, taking so much into
consideration writing rules compliments your writer’s block because it could let you make your
speech way too formal, which would be not only complicated, but would also ruin whatever the
purpose of the discourse actually was.
In addition, overcoming writer’s block requires not only help from instructors, but a
significant amount of personal support. Supporting your own is so important to overcome
writer’s block because it helps you gain self-confidence and motivation to actually do your work.
To illustrate, let’s say that you have to write an essay but have no self-confidence, or motivation.
Lack of self communication could assess your writer’s block because it will put you down,
making you think that your writing is never going to be good enough, or that you will never have
the necessary skills to write a paper. Not only that, but lack of motivation will add to your
writer’s block, because is going to make you slow yourself down, by creating internal questions
such as why should I even write this paper?
In conclusion, writer’s block is that internal inability that some writer’s experience, when
creating a paper or text, that makes it hard for them to find the tone, words or sentences that they
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should use on their papers. Writer’s block is not only an internal problem, but it can also be
triggered by negative comments or feedback that lowers the writer’s confidence. However,
receiving help from their instructors, not thinking of rules as the creator of their paper, and
having self support, are all factors that help readers overcome their writer’s block.
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Works Cited
Oliver, Lawrence. Helping Students Overcome Writer’s Block, International Literacy Association
and Wiley, 1982. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40029248. PDF Download.

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Helping Students Overcome Writer’s Block Reflection

writing strictly, and personal support.

their ideas more easily.

purpose of the discourse actually was.

significant amount of personal support. Supporting your own is so important to overcome

such as why should I even write this paper?

and Wiley, 1982. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40029248. PDF Download.

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