1. Writing AC TIVITY
Nowhere in the university system is the
debate about the ‘crisis’ in education and
the ‘lowering of standards’ more intense
than in the arena of student writing.
(Lillis 2001)

2. Typically Students:
 Working 20 or more hours per week
 Supporting or raising families
 Engaging in modules rather than courses…
 Have little time:
 to tackle new material
 to practice their thinking/writing
 to familiarise themselves with a bewildering
array of assessment engines

3. Imagine tackling
 Presentations &
seminars  Seen & unseen exams
 Essays, reports,
 Open or closed book
exams
papers, dissertations &  Exams with differing time
projects limits
 Case studies & child  Exams with differing word
studies limits
 Annotated
bibliographies AND that perennial favourite
 Group work – with group
 Reading Records mark awarded
 Learning Logs  Group work – with
 Abstracts & individual mark awarded
 Group work - with self-
Summaries and/or peer evaluation

4. Student responses to this:
I’ve been humiliated in ways I’d never have
put up with outside that institution
I am still not sure if my work is considered
academic, I still don’t know what makes
one of my essays better than another.

5. And:
Academic language, the kind of language that
doesn’t readily flow off my tongue: the type
of language I rarely use when speaking to
my peers. The type of language that I don’t
readily understand and the type of language
that means spending hours at a computer
turning something quite simple into
something that sounds moderately
impressive with elitist results.

6. Perhaps it is not that the trouble with
students is that they cannot write
 But that the problem for students is that
they have to write when:
 Insufficiently inducted into the epistemology,
discourse and content of a subject
 Tackling new material, at new levels within
a variety of assessment engines
 Having little opportunity to ‘write to learn’, to
practice their writing or to discover that …
 Writing gets easier with practice. So …

7. Participant Activity
Free writing
Each person should have in front of them:
 Two sheets of paper:
 One, blank, to write upon,
 One, the ‘commentary’ sheet, to note
reasons for not writing
 Pens or pencils

8. Participant Activity
 The Activity
 When asked, turn to your blank paper and
write for ten minutes without pause (on
anything you see, hear, think or feel)
 If you stop writing for any reason, write
that reason, no matter how trivial or
insignificant on the ‘commentary’ sheet.
 After ten minutes we will discuss the
exercise, leaving enough time at the end
for the Q&A session

9. Participant Activity
 Collate ‘reasons for stopping’
 Discuss solutions
 How will this help with future
writing?

10. Some reasons for stopping:
 Thinking
 Searching for a word, spelling, tense
 Uncomfortable
 Distracted
 Couldn’t see the point

11. Some solutions …
 Get into a good physical & mental space:
Be comfortable – your way
Accept the task – or fake it!
 Brainstorm & plan before you write
 Once you start – go with the flow
 Don’t stop!
 Do not search for the right word – re-
draft and improve later.

12. Writing …
 How will this help with your writing?
 Collect responses…