Got Writer's Block? Get a Better Writing Teacher: A Literature Review on Overcoming Writer's Anxiety

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 9
  In Roundtable Session: Teaching Writers, Teaching Writing: Studying Writing Teachers’ Development

Abstract

This paper is a literature review regarding strategies for building relationships between the writing teacher and the student as a way to reduce writer’s anxiety. The focus of the literature review is based on Gee’s concepts of building writing Discourse through the mentor-apprentice relationship as well as Wenger’s ideas on communities of practice. An analysis of these articles gathers all of the various strategies on how to successfully build relationships and reduce writer’s anxiety into one paper that can help anyone who teaches writing how to improve their instruction and help their anxious writers. Reducing writer’s anxiety is an important task for the writing teacher because it leads to better student success.

Author

• Sonya Groves, The University of Texas at San Antonio