Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans, and the Stifling of language: A Cognitivist Analysis of Writers Block

Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans, and the Stifling of language: A Cognitivist Analysis of Writers Block

Writers Block!!! Don't we all hate it when this happens to us? For those of you out there that are lucky enough not to experience this here is a brief description of what writers block is. Writers Block is when ever you have to write any type of paper and you are not able to due to not knowing how to properly express your ideas on paper, you know exactly what you want to write about but some how the word, phrases, sentences don't seem to be in the right place. Students with writers block sometimes have trouble meeting dead lines resulting in bad grades.

This article called "Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans, and the Stifling of language: A Cognitivist Analysis of Writers Block" by Mike rose talks about how writers block is a very common thing that students encountered while writing a paper. Rose conducted a study analyzing 10 graduate students from UCLA. 5 out of the 10 students encountered writers block. While the others proceeded with there writing like it was nothing. The 5 students had writers block because they were trying to come up with a strategy to approach the topic.These students were spending so much time trying to do all the strategies because they believe that in order to have a good paper you have to have a good beginning.What they don't know is that these strategies that they were thought back in middle and high school by there teachers are crippling their writing instead of enhancing it.

In his article Rose offers a solution for these students. He states that getting help and tutoring are the cure for writers block. This article was an eye opener for me because now that I look back at times that I had writers block it was because I was myself and my writing, now I get straight to the main points and organize them throughout the paper and eliminate unnecessary content. This is very beneficial to know especially in an English class.

Underlife and Writing Instruction

Underlife and Writing Instruction

 I found this article completely interesting. It gave me a whole new perspective on a class room setting. The authors main argument point is that sometimes teachers get mad at theirs students because they believe that the students are getting off topic because they are talking with each other, even though the students are talking to each other they are relating what is going on in class to a personal experience outside of school. I agree with the statement that the author said in his article "The point is not disrupt the functioning of the class room with a sense that one has other things to do, other interest that one is a much richer personality that can show in this context". The reason why I agree with it is because some time in class instead of fully listening to the teacher you start and wonder about something different like another class or home work and by doing so the teacher believes that you are not paying attention there for you are disrupting the class. This article connects with our class in the sense that our teacher might of thought that we did not know what she was talking about or we did not know certain definitions for simple words  ( like when she asked what a summary was) because no one in the class was responding. In reality most of us knew what a summary was we just did not respond because we were nervous and socially awkward due to it being our first day.