http://derekbruff.org/blogs/tomprof/2012/04/23/tp-msg-1172-writers-block-an-essay-test-takers-bane/
Last semester I had a student in my class who was a real
conundrum. He was very smart, very engaging, very eager to learn . . . and very
rotten at the essays on the test. He did fairly well on the multiple choice
items. When we had discussions in class, his questions and answers were very
insightful and showed that he really did understand the material. But sometimes
he wouldn?t even try to write the essay answers.
I confronted him after a class in which I returned yet
another test on which he hadn?t done the essay questions. He said that he froze
up when he had to write something out. He knew the answer, but didn?t know
where to begin. Rather than waste time trying to get going on the essays, he
put his efforts into getting the other questions right. He looked pretty
discouraged, so I asked him to come see me and we?d figure out how to overcome
his block, because that?s really what it sounded like?writer?s block.
Obviously my student was suffering from a common malady,
something we?ve all experienced. Staring at a blank space on a page and trying
to corral our roiling thoughts is frightening. For a student who is shaky in
his self-efficacy for learning in the first place, this could be interpreted by
him as yet another example of why he doesn?t deserve to be in college.
I?m not an expert in writer?s block, but I know about
learning. I decided to disentangle the two parts of an essay in order to give
him a chance to practice what was causing the most problem. He knew the
material already; he just couldn?t get started writing. First we decided that
he needed to convert his success with multiple choice items into support for
writing practice. I suggested he take an old exam and convert the multiple
choice questions he?d answered correctly into essay questions and write out the
prose answer that caused him to choose the answer that he chose. So, for
example, if the multiple choice question stem said ?Which of the following
examples illustrates the idea of cognitive load?? he would write out why he had
chosen the answer he had. Since he already knew his choice was correct, he
didn?t have to worry about his reasoning.
A second technique was for him to write out essay
questions that he figured I would be likely to ask on the test, a strategy
frequently used by good students. Then he could write his own answer as well.
This has two benefits. First, by thinking about what I might ask, he would be
focusing on key ideas. Second, by writing about this before the exam, he would
have an opportunity to think through an answer before he was under the pressure
of the actual exam. This technique separated the coming up with an answer from
the writing it down. In the real test, he had to do both. By doing a little
forecasting about what would be on the test, he?d only have to remember what he
had already written during studying.
The third strategy was to find a test preparation buddy,
a classmate who would trade essay question ideas before the test. Both of them
would write out five or six questions and exchange them. This should help
because he would now have reached the stage of responding to someone else?s
questions, just as he would have to do on the real test.
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