A Tutor's Tale #6: There Must Be Ways to Enjoy Writing!

I was pondering on what to write about for today when I stumbled across a conversation between @mariannewest and @crowbarmama. @crowbarmama mentioned that she has been using the freewrite daily prompts as writing prompts for her children too. I immediately felt that's the most brilliant idea I have ever heard and I jumped on board to talk about it too with them on @crowbarmama's post (oops!) @mariannewest even went ahead to suggest a tag, #freewriteyouth for it. I was beyond excited and decided to try it out on my students who complain every single time when it comes to writing practices. Coincidentally, I was scheduled to tutor Salby (not a real name) today and you can guess what I had her do for class today!

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YES, FREEWRITES!!!

If you know my students (maybe not all students are like this), they are very reluctant when it comes to writing. They would groan as if I have incurred pain on their physical body, complain as if I am going to make them do something impossible, make excuses so on and so forth. It is ALWAYS a real struggle, a serious tug-of-war. They would rather do Maths, you know!

However, I refuse to believe that they cannot write. I understand that not everyone can be a book author but I believe everyone can write and can enjoy writing, regardless the outcome to be very impressive or not. I try to find topics that they are interested in to write, a real-life situation they have gone through to process it through writing or even write about the things they want to have. I have asked them to write about their favourite K-pop stars, write about some fiction incorporating the people they know or a situation they were involved in, write about the places they want to go, the things they want to do if there were no restrictions.

Still, writing has never been pleasurable for them. I am determined to find ways to encourage them to write.

Growing Up Enjoying Writing

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Growing up, I learnt writing because of the school educational requirements. My vocabulary has never been good or extensive but I quite like writing. I wrote letters to myself when I was sad the time my tuition teacher had to leave for her studies. I wrote about the dramas I watched so I would not forget the stories in an exercise book. I wrote fictions, inspired by the movies and dramas I watched in my essay writing examinations and I would smile as I wrote like a crazy person. I wrote a lot of my secrets in my diaries with codes that only I can understand. I wrote letters to my girlfriends across the class. I got myself pen pals and we wrote to each other for years. I wrote articles and tried to submit to the local newspapers but never got picked. I wrote my own fictions which were never completed because I had some difficulty articulating everything I was thinking about.

It was just enjoyable for me and you can tell why I am here on Steemit and steempress. I admire people who write wonderful stories with bombastic words, so I continue to improve myself in my vocabularies and learn from those who write well. Steemit is like a heavenly library for me because there are excellent writers all around. I have been learning so much as well as being empowered by the contents other have posted and it is a platform where there is nothing wrong with what we want to write about and how we want to write about it. Steemit has also become my therapy for thoughts life to get out instead of being trapped within me, because it becomes an outlet for me to process thoughts and also emotions.

I saw the same glow on Salby's face today!

Back to my tutoring class today. I gave Salby 4 prompts to explore on for today: sign, school, table and pink, randomly. I wanted to let her try the freewrite prompt today by @mariannewest but I thought maybe a single word would be easier for her to just try and get started first. Instead of 5 minutes, I gave her 15 minutes for each prompt, proposed that she could use the first 5 minutes to think and plan a biit, if she wants to. Of course, the most important part I told her was there is no right or wrong, just let her creativity and thoughts flow. She listened quietly as I explained. I was actually expecting to see her sulking face, as usual and especially now because it is her school break. To my surprise, that face did not appear. This face appeared instead, the thinking face.

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Salby's first attempt on "sign" as her prompt

She wrote quite a funny fiction in her second prompt.

There was a huge difference between her first and second prompt. She was still testing waters with her first attempt so she dared not write anything more than the definitions she knows about "sign". For her second prompt on "school", she wrote a very funny story, in my opinion. Here I am trying to paraphase and summarize it:

In a school, a green bean was studying there. His name was Red. One day, he failed his exams and he was too sad. He went up to the balcony of the school and jumped down. He died. When they discovered his dead body, they started calling him red bean.

Hahahaha! I actually laughed at it. She was laughing when she was writing about it.

For the third prompt, it was about "table". Salby wrote another story where someone died too. She was laughing when she had the idea again. It seems like she likes to write some funny stories. It goes something like this:

A thief came into the house and went into the kitchen. He was hungry so he tried to find some food. He took something to eat from the table, mistaken it for another thing. It was too spicy so he tried to gobble down some sugar which turned out to be salt. Then, he went for something else, but turned out to be a knife. He fell on it and died.

It may sound ridiculous and illogical but I cannot say that she is not creative. I sometimes try to "read" my students through their writings too, to see if they want to say something their writings, especially if they need to process a frustration, sadness or disappointments. But in this case, I think Salby was just having fun. She reminded me of the crazy cartoons called Happy Tree Friends and also Dumb Ways to Die.

As for the last prompt, it was on "pink". She wrote about a dream when she woke up to everything turned into pink, though she likes pink in real life. In her freewrite, she wrote that she got really shocked and scared. She was relieved to wake up to it being just a dream.

I was so glad to see her happily writing today, without much convincing on my end. As long as she can enjoy writing, anything else can be worked on. After all, her school is requiring her to write about 700-800 words per assignment for her grade 9. If she does not learn to enjoy doing it but dreading it, it would be a miserable time for her.

Having seen her faces while she did her writing today, perhaps the new academic year will be a better experience for her when it comes to writing, hopefully.

Since we have to do certain things anyway, why don't we find ways to enjoy them while doing?

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Okay, now that I have sort of "settled" Salby, I am bringing this experiment of freewrites to my other students too. I am not sure how their reactions would be but I am willing to try this new method to encourage them to pick up their pens again. Maybe this will be a turning point for all of them and me as well. They know I am active on Steemit and they know I have been finding materials or topics to write about. They have been throwing ideas for me to write about. Perhaps it is now their time to also participate along. Only one among all of them has a Steemit account but he has abandoned it long time because he took too long a time to complete a post. Freewrites would be an awesome approach since it has a timer to let them know when to stop writing and it would help them in the future, because they sometimes come back to me saying they did not have time to complete their essays during examinations. Why didnt I thought of this earlier?

I would love to thank Steemit and also @steempress.io for making writing so easy these days for amateurs like me. Because of steempress, I can now have my own blog site too on wordpress. It becomes something that I can keep for myself and I enjoy reading back to see how I have grown. Thank YOU too for willing to read through what I have written for today.

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Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://happycrazycon.vornix.blog/2018/07/11/a-tutors-tale-6-there-must-be-ways-to-enjoy-writing/

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