|
A key element in successful writing is the generation of ideas.
Many students benefit from the experience of just filling the paper with words on their subject. Peter Elbow in Writing Without Teachers advocates an entire process for writing papers by repeated drafting of whatever occurs to the writer in the moment.
Students with difficulties in handwriting, spelling, or punctuation often do not have the fluency with written output to reap the benefits of free writing. They feel that writing is so cumbersome a task, that to do it more than once is punitive. Often students who have clear resistance to the act of producing text, due to these difficulties, benefit from talking into a tape recorder or using a computer dictation program to readily explore the subject at hand.
Mind-mapping
Students with disabilities often benefit from creating a visual representation of their ideas in the form of a mind-map, showing how ideas are connected. For students who feel great resistance to handwriting, there are always computer programs that create visual mind maps. Some students respond quite well to using a dictation program, and dictating directly into the outlining program.
Brainstorming
Many students need to completely abandon the constraints and limits of written language and just freely generate words. If this is done using dictation software, and into a visual outlining program, the discrete words can then be reorganized into a coherent structure.
|
