Since 1979, over 300 adults have participated in writing anxiety workshops at Northern Virginia Community College. The self-identified, self-diagnosed sufferers of writing anxiety have had problems in one or more of the following areas: letter writing, memo and report writing, writing for academic purposes, writing demanded of women reentering the…

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…

Discusses why writers write, and cites caring about the response to writing as the key to development. Urges teachers to be sensitive to the social nature of writing and to the vulnerability of writers, and to demonstrate and encourage writing for fun, enjoyment, and power. (MM)

Outlines research done by teachers on writing apprehension and concludes that teachers are natural researchers because they continually pose questions about the nature of their students and the effectiveness of their teaching. (SRT)

Reports the results of a study indicating the anxiety of returning students is not as high as instructors think it is and that returning students experience a greater reduction in writing anxiety than do regular students in a freshman composition class. (AEA)

Emphasizes the importance of paying attention to how writers feel about their writing as well as what they think about it. States that textbooks deal with writers' feelings incidentally. Defines "flow" as being the opposite of writer's block. Defines "liking" and its implications for a writer's work-in-progress. Asks whether…

Reviews the scholarship on the connections between meditation and writing. Analyzes objections to the use of meditation in the writing classroom. Relates experiences using meditation techniques with various writing students. Suggests that writing teachers use meditation techniques with apprehensive or blocked writers. (HB)

Examines the online communications behavior of students with high degrees of writing apprehension as they communicated with both familiar and unknown audiences via Internet newsgroups. Finds that low-apprehensive writers tend to exhibit similar communication strategies in both types of newsgroups, but high-apprehensive writers contributed more and…

Research on the composition process and writing instruction has reiterated that red-pencilling students' literary efforts achieves mostly negative effects. Researchers contend that if teachers ignore the mechanics used (or misused) by beginning writers, if they encourage and stimulate the production of both oral and written language, reward the…

In a study to determine whether the writing apprehension of college writers is diminished by regular freewriting and whether apprehension affects the quality of writing, two experimental classes spent ten minutes freewriting each day while two control classes spent ten minutes on vocabulary building. The pretest and posttest consisted to two…

Offers suggestions to help writing teachers overcome inertia and fear and begin writing themselves. (FL)

Analyzes more than 5,000 examples of "self-talk" gathered from blockers and nonblockers during the initiation and completion of writing sessions to reveal seven cognitive components of blocking: work apprehension, procrastination, dysphoria, impatience, perfectionism, evaluation anxiety, and rules. Indicates that blockers are more likely…

No matter how intimidated or how blocked, any writer can tap into the vast oceans of creativity within by following the exercises in this book. Broken into small steps, each exercise is easy and takes only minutes to do. Yet each one forms a wave that brings with it a rush of ideas, images, and scenes as it crests. Chapters in the book are: (1)…

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)

Examines groups of business writing students containing high- and low-apprehensive writers, communicating about writing in both a face-to-face setting and through electronic mail. Concludes that, for both types of writers, collaboratively planning documents on e-mail enhanced the collaborative process. (MM)