By Laura Hartmann-Villalta

Attitude Matters for Writing Success 

The latest writing scholarship agrees: your motivation to write; whether you believe you can be successful (including what you think success means); and how you manage your emotions while you compose all affect your writing. Writers of all levels often struggle to stay positive and engaged in their writing, especially with longer projects.  

Students’ ability to maintain a constructive attitude towards their writing is linked to two key concepts: self-regulation and self-efficacy. Self-regulation is about strategically managing the writing process: for example, regulating emotions like frustration, keeping on track in terms of deadlines, and asking for help when necessary. Self-efficacy, on the other hand, is defined as one’s personal belief in being able to perform and succeed in distinct tasks and situations. It is a factor that is crucial for academic performance and achievement. Simply put: the more a student believes that they will succeed in their writing assignment, the more likely they are to succeed.  

Of course, all of these – self-regulation, self-efficacy, motivation, and success – are interlinked and impact one another. Let’s tackle self-regulation first. 

Managing the Writing Means Managing the Writer 

Self-regulation is closely related to the writing process itself, as it deals with managing the negative emotions that arise while writing and practical concerns like keeping track of deadlines. As instructors, we can help students self-regulate by working with them to organize their ideas about a topic and set specific writing goals. We can encourage the student to meet those goals while being understanding if they don’t.  

The emotions students experience as they approach the writing project are related to how much they believe they will succeed. In a multistudy report, Christiane Golombek, Katrin B. Klingsieck, and Ingrid Scharlau worked through how self-regulation and self-efficacy are linked to each other at different stages of the writing process from the point of view of the student: 

• Anticipation about the writing project and initiating the writing process: I can set myself specific writing goals; I can organize my ideas even when I work on a complex topic; I can motivate myself to start writing; I can solve problems that occur during writing; I can develop an interest in writing; I can easily find ways to increase my interest in writing.  

• Reflecting while writing and working on the writing task itself: I can monitor myself while writing; I can concentrate on writing; I can use my time for writing effectively; I can organize my time so I that I can concentrate while working on my text; I can organize my workplace so that I am not disturbed while writing; I can change my writing strategy if I recognize that I am not successful; I can monitor my progress; I can work persistently on my text; I can overcome a writer’s block and go on writing. 

• Assessing one’s own achievements related to the writing task, applying feedback, and recognizing the quality of one’s work: I can realistically assess the quality of my text; I can meet the criteria for text quality I set myself; I can achieve the sub-goals I set myself when writing; I can realistically assess my progress; I can avoid repeating an error; I can use my experience to improve my writing strategies; I can judge what I have to do differently next time.  

An instructor or thesis advisor could easily flip these statements into questions to ask students when the writing isn’t going well for them. Presenting questions that address the structure behind the writing – how to apply learned experience, how to regularly get to work – can be especially helpful in longer projects such as a senior thesis or a dissertation, when self-regulation is particularly important. Flip the description into a question: “Can you motivate yourself to start writing? How do you recognize when your writing isn’t working, and what do you do to change that approach?” and see where the conversation goes. 

These categories also underscore the myriad demands that writing makes on an individual’s cognitive processes and psyche as writing is happening, such as self-control, reacting to what is written, and adjusting in real-time. It’s no wonder that writing is one of the academic activities that is highly procrastinated: it demands highly-attuned focus that is a constant back and forth between feeling like one is advancing and then adjusting and even backtracking and deleting writing.  

If You Believe You Can, You Will: Fostering Belief in Success  

Studies have shown that students with high writing self-efficacy, or the personal belief that they can succeed in their writing assignments, are more willing to participate in writing activities to begin with, set high goals, work hard on the assignments – and therefore, achieve higher levels of success than their less confident peers. In other words, it’s quite possible that when instructors convince students that success is achievable in their writing – thereby increasing their self-efficacy – then students will put in more effort and legitimately reach the instructor’s measure of success.  

A major influence on self-efficacy is instructor feedback on writing and how a student perceives that feedback. In large lecture classes, for example, with minimal face-to-face input from the instructor, assignment feedback may have an extra emotional charge because it might be the only interaction the student receives from the instructor. Students’ self-efficacy in the course plummets if the only feedback they receive is negative, with no path forward for success. In large classes with many students, it’s best to consider incorporating some strategy for instructor feedback on writing beyond the grade or numerical score, in order to put corrections and criticism in context. Make sure to point out what is going well, and never underestimate the power of an encouraging remark! If instructor feedback is logistically impossible, then adding an opportunity for metacognition gives students the chance to take ownership once more of their self-efficacy – and future success – in writing. 

Instructors may find that the hardest time to keep motivation and concentration high is when students are in the thick of writing a draft. Completing the draft requires persistence, knowing when to seek help, and using time effectively: all factors that can be sidetracked by negative emotions, which can in turn lower self-efficacy. As students produce a full draft, they sometimes have a difficult time self-assessing the quality of their own text and taking feedback to improve their writing without getting discouraged. At this point, self-regulation, and instructor intervention, can make a difference. 

Consider using a few minutes of class time to check in with students, talk about any difficulties that have arisen, and let students brainstorm strategies for staying on track. Sharing testimonials from accomplished writers, such as this video from Ta-Nehisi Coates, or talking about your own writing process, can help students understand that feeling challenged is not a personal failing.

If the Problem is Student Motivation, the Problem Might Actually Be the Assessment… 

Self-efficacy is closely linked to motivation, and educational psychologists have identified two loose categories of student motivation that relate to assessment: learning for mastery – where the goal is understanding the task or content and demonstrating competency – and learning for performance – where the goal is to demonstrate ability and to appear able rather than appearing unable.  

If the student perceives the instructor as emphasizing mastery goals, then the student is more likely “to use adaptive cognitive, emotional, and behavioral regulatory strategies, such as positive coping, help seeking, and expenditure of effort,” as Kaplan et al. write in the Journal of Education Psychology. In short: for mastery goals, the student’s motivation and self-regulation kicks into higher gear because their self-efficacy is higher.

In the writing context, the difference between mastery and performance is often clearest when students are asked to revise. A student who is performing revision will simply make the suggested changes, perhaps fixing some punctuation or adding a sentence or two for clarification. A student who is invested in mastery (and believes that the revision encourages mastery) is more likely to make appointments with the instructor for clarification, visit the Writing Center, conduct additional research, re-write passages, and re-think their argument.

To encourage mastery over performance, be explicit about how a writing assignment relates to the learning outcomes of the course. You can do so by explaining the purpose of the assignment as part of the prompt. Check student understanding with a quick, low-stakes writing exercise that asks students to explain the goals of the assignment in their own words, including what they will need to do to demonstrate success on the assignment and what they will gain in understanding or skills if they do so.

All in all, much more is at work when a student sits down to write than simply putting words up on a screen, and it’s up to the writer – with the guidance of the instructor or thesis advisor, hopefully – to navigate the motivations and emotions that lead to writing success.