Reluctant Writers/Lack of Motivation

Who are Reluctant Writers? and What is Lack of Motivation?

There are many reasons why students may be reluctant to write. Some reasons include dysgraphia, boredom, poor knowledge of the necessary sub-skills, and/or lack of interest in the topic (LDOnline.com). Students that have lost interest or have been discouraged by past poor writing assignment create a lack of motivation to write. This is typically observed in the pen and paper platform. By introducing new methods and opportunities to write, student will begin to demonstrate a willingness to write.

Challenges for Reluctant Writers

Writing should be approached as a process. After selecting a topic, the students need to consider five basic activities: Preplanning and organizing, Writing the draft, Proofing (looking for errors) and rewriting, Editing (elaborate and enhancing the content) and rewriting, and Writing the final (LDOnline.com). There are a many challenges that become a barrier for many reluctant writers including getting started, formulating ideas, organizing important events or thoughts, creating the sentence structure, identifying the main concepts and writing their options–to name a few. The development of technology is starting to demonstrate the ability to assist students who lack these abilities in a positive manner. By creating interactive lesson plans that incorporate several different types of technologies, teachers can begin to reintroduce struggling writers to the love of writing.

Solutions for Reluctant Writers

Students that are reluctant writers need more tools and motivation, in order to practice their writing skills. By using online resources, as well as applications on phones and tablets, teachers might be able to create more interest for students to write rather than just using the old pen and paper methods. By using social networking tools, teachers can create collaborative online environments for students to practice writing and share ideas amongst each other–such as creating blogs. Also, using graphic organizers, mind-mapping and comic strips can assist students in creating ideas, organize thoughts and record important information before they write. With these tools students will be more prepare to write in various formats in the classroom environment.

Research to support Reluctant Writers

Research shows that reluctant writers have the ability to improve their writing skills with practice. Students gain a sense of independence and remain motivated to engage in the writing process as they work in a multimedia environment (Rao, Dowrick, Yuen & Boisvert, 2009). In today’s tech-age, students at almost all levels and grades have some sort of comfort level with technology, thus incorporating technology into their writing habits will only heighten their interest and abilities in writing. Parents and educators must be fervent in searching for technology-based writing tools that assist, scaffold and support student writers in each phase of the writing process (Edyburn, 2013).

The research is beginning to demonstrate that students with poor writing skills are increasing their writing abilities with the use of technology, especially with the use of word processing. Students now have tools to help them spell check, find definitions easier, catch grammar errors and sentence structure issues. Meta-analyses of studies that compared writing instruction with and without word processing have found moderate positive effects on the quality of compositions with larger effects for low achieving students (MacArthur, 2009) Using a multimedia environment to author a story provides students with nontraditional avenues to practice and gain confidence with their writing skills (Rao, Dowrick, Yuen & Boisvert, 2009).

Tools for Reluctant Writers

Many of the tools for reluctant writers are just simply changing the way they view writing–from seeing it as boring to having the ability to have students express their opinions and ideas in different ways. Social networking platforms and collaborative approaches can get students to write about topics of personal interests and share ideas with others. The more practice students have with writing the better their skills will develop.

Google Docs— enable a collaborative writing environment where students can work together on one writing assignment or they could share individual assignment to be peer edited.

Word Press— is a blog site, where students can create personal journals and submit writing samples online in various formats and the sites can be personalized to demonstrate the thoughts, ideas and personalities of each individual student.

Livescribe-– special pens that allow struggling writers to write notes and ideas down, while the pen records their voice and verbal ideas. Students can then download their writing sessions from the pen and it will transcribe their verbal notes and written notes, so the student can identify exactly what their thoughts and ideas were.

Padlet–online collaborative environment for teacher classrooms. Students can follow discussions, post ideas and thoughts and organize concepts.

Wordle— creates “word clouds” from text to give students a visual aide to identify words that key words used from the reading.

Popplet— mind-mapping tool for the Ipad that allows students to organize ideas.

Evernote–online workspace where students can write, collect, share, discuss, present and store key information or ideas for themselves or with classmates.

Links to Comic Strip Apps–Apps that allow students create stories using comic strips.

Links to Graphic Organizer Apps–Apps that create graphic organizers for students to be able to organize key concepts and ideas or thoughts.

Videos of solutions for Reluctant Writers

Livescribe pen video demonstration.