Post #4 Callie

I've been thinking a lot about what Chris and others said regarding students' appreciation of their own "ideas" rather than "structure." I think that students are often confident in what they know, but are afraid to make it "real" by writing it down. There is something about putting knowledge or ideas into words that can be very daunting, and it understandably makes students very anxious. I have heard from several of my students that the hardest part of writing an essay is just beginning the process - it's so daunting to think about the final work that they lose sight of the process and grow too intimidated to do anything at all.

I think framing rough drafts as just that - rough - is more important than it appears. In my experience, it seems to stress students out far less to refer to even a fairly completed draft as a work in progress. It allows them to feel comfortable acknowledging problems and making edits. It also reduces the intimidation around actually starting a project if the assumption is that it will be rough and unpolished, and that there will be no judgement around it.

Every writer's process is different, and it behooves a tutor not to judge each student's rough draft or outline on a universal basis. Students write at different speeds, edit more or less at each stage of writing, and can be coached to see and fix mistakes in different ways.