This study investigated the effect of cooperative learning on writing anxiety alleviation through a pre-test/post-test assessment. 120 EFL learners from a Chinese polytechnic institute were assigned into two groups: one experimental (cooperative writing) and the other comparison (solitary writing). Results revealed that cooperative learning…

Suggests motivating writing apprehensive students by asking them to "remodel" passages from novels, magazines, or newspapers that have been stripped of details, descriptions, and compound sentences. (HTH)

Explores the relationship between mathematics instruction and writing instruction, particularly their similarity in causing student anxiety. Offers specific teaching methods for reducing writing anxiety. (HB)

Writing exercises are games that can lead to success in the classroom because they are artificial and have arbitrary rules defined by the instructor. By giving students a starting point, a limited task, and the assurance that the writing is, after all, "just a game," exercises can circumvent students' initial anxieties about self-presentation and…

Presents step-by-step instructions to help developmental writing students write a cohesive essay by combining individually written paragraphs. (HTH)

Describes the methodology and results of a study to determine whether writing instruction caused anxiety. The results indicated that teaching technical writing in freshman composition was more effective in lowering student writing anxiety than were literary-essay or rhetorical teaching approaches. (HTH)

The rhetorical cycle is a step-by-step approach that provides classroom experience before students actually write, thereby making the writing process less frustrating for them. This approach consists of six sequential steps: reading, thinking, speaking, listening, discussing, and finally writing. Readings serve not only as models of rhetorical…

Suggests that a focus on traditional rules for good writing can create writer's block and offers strategies that focus on the topic and student's thinking for overcoming writing apprehension. (HOD)

Writing apprehension needs to be understood and solutions found for it so that students' fears can be lessened and their success with writing increased. Carl Roger's client-centered, nondirective psychotherapy applies well to teaching composition. Composition teachers need to be real, empathic, and accepting, and should thus shed their…

Describes a method for using the press release to introduce basic technical writing principles and increase students' writing confidence. Includes lecture format and writing assignment. (HTH)

"Aerobic writing" is a writing center strategy designed to keep students in writing "shape." Like aerobic exercise, aerobic writing is sustained for a certain length of time and done on a regular basis at prescribed time intervals. The program requires students to write at least two times a week for approximately an hour each time. Students write,…

The William Perry model of learning is directly parallel to what has been learned about writing processes. He observed that the student is essentially a dualist who sees everything as right or wrong. This stance of absolute acceptance wavers when the student encounters varieties of or disagreements among truths, thus gradually evolving into the…

This annotated bibliography contains 26 references on writing apprehension found in the ERIC database. The bibliography contains citations from the period between 1985 and 1989 and is divided into four sections. The first section lists sources of teaching ideas. Citations in the second section deal with the use of computers in alleviating writing…

Advocates teachers' belief in students' ability to achieve writing success, rather than assuming failure that results in self-fulfilling prophecy. (HTH)

Describes a method for teaching developmental writing using reader-response theory and the works of James Joyce and Plato. (HTH)