Responding to Students with Writing Anxiety
Anxiety may result in assignments being late or not turned in at all. A history of incompletes may be a sign of writing anxiety. Often the student is emotional when discussing his/her writing.
Writing anxiety can be related to:
- a failure to understand the assignment
- the lack of pre-writing techniques for starting the assignment
- lack of general time management skills
- procrastination
- poor organization skills
- problems with grammar
- poor grades on writing assignments in the past
- a learning disability
- Have a private appointment with the student.
- Listen carefully to the student’s explanation of the problem.
- Look for patterns and repetition of the problem behavior.
- Refer the student to the following Academic Resources
- Refer the student to the Writing Center of the English Department (301) 405-3785.
- Refer the student who speaks about a learning disability to the Accessibility and Disability Service of the Counseling Center (301) 314-7682.
- Refer the student to the Counseling Center (301) 314-7651 for psychological counseling, if needed.
- Concluding that the student is only trying to obtain extra time for the assignment.
- Assuming the student can simply control the behavior by him/herself.