I think of two types of struggle when considering the student experience in my class. One type of struggle I would consider unproductive and constraining, while the other I would say is an almost necessary condition for any deep, lasting learning. Shaughnessy’s line about “written anguish” as an alternative “English” felt like an apt characterization […]
struggle
The Struggle is Real
My student’s struggle with writing is the struggle of all writers against that eternal fiend which is ever present: Apathy. I could talk about sentence structure, transitions, reading drafts aloud and so on, but I find these deficiencies all pale in comparison to people’s ability to give a crap about what they are doing beyond […]
Struggling to Write = Writing Successfully?
The idea that my students “struggle as writers” implies that that there is an unproductive or, at the very least, less productive way to write. While in the wide world of academic writing at large—and certainly in my own experiences with procrastination and revision—this is almost certainly true…is it true in the environment of English […]