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.
When you describe writer's block, it seems like you have experienced this several times, and I wonder if you could reflect on your experiences to develop this concept further. For example, do you agree with Rose that the causes for writer’s block lie in rigid rules? If you have experienced this problem, what kinds of rules were holding you up? Do they come from contexts like middle school and high school and are they always restrictive, or are there some that are useful sometimes? How does reflecting on these kinds of experiences change the ways you think about writing?
ReplyDeleteHigh School influences our writing. At least, in my case, I had to write almost 3000 words a week. I think that teachers loved to read because that was a lot and we were like 20 students per classroom. We wrote about different topics and subjects; English, Biology, Government, Economy and History. This was with the purpose to improve our writing for college. So, this experience was helpful for my performance when writing.
ReplyDeleteI can relate to what you describe since I'm sure we all have our own personal experiences with having been faced with writer's block at one time or another. I personally always face writer's block due to the rigid, restrictive rules that were place upon my writing in high school. This article was an eye opener for me as well. I think you did a good job in summing up the author’s main point in a way that was clear for me to understand.
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