Creating Learning Partners: A facilitator’s guide for training effective adult literacy tutors

Section 1 Beliefs About Writing

In this section, tutors will first explore their experiences and feelings about writing. Then they will explore their beliefs about writing. Finally they will look at the misconceptions their learners may have about writing and brainstorm ways to help their learners overcome them.

Activity A

Experiences of and feelings about writing

People often think that they don’t write as well as they read. Many have negative feelings towards writing for one reason or another. This activity will help tutors to assess their own feelings and experiences with writing.

Reflection, discussion, work in pairs
STEP-BY-STEP PROCESS Have tutors imagine a line in the room to be a scale from to 0. Ten represents a really good reader and one is a really poor reader. Ask tutors to stand on the line based on how well they think they read. If they see themselves as good readers, they will be close to the end of the line and vice versa. Then ask tutors to stand on the line based on how well they think they write. Most people will rank their writing lower than their reading. Ask tutors why they think they are better readers than writers. Have tutors pair up and discuss what type of writing they have done how they feel about their writing why they think many people have negative feelings about writing Have each pair record their discussion on flip chart paper. They can either make a list or a picture/diagram to capture their discussion. Have each pair share their list or picture/diagram with the group.

Reflection, discussion, work in pairs

STEP-BY-STEP PROCESS

Have tutors imagine a line in the room to be a scale from to 0. Ten represents a really good reader and one is a really poor reader.
Ask tutors to stand on the line based on how well they think they read. If they see themselves as good readers, they will be close to the end of the line and vice versa.
Then ask tutors to stand on the line based on how well they think they write. Most people will rank their writing lower than their reading.
Ask tutors why they think they are better readers than writers.
Have tutors pair up and discuss
- what type of writing they have done
- how they feel about their writing
- why they think many people have negative feelings about writing
Have each pair record their discussion on flip chart paper. They can either make a list or a picture/diagram to capture their discussion.
Have each pair share their list or picture/diagram with the group.

Writing is a learned activity, not an acquired skill.

Anna De Luca

Variation

It might feel too personal for tutors to reveal how well they read and write to the whole group. Instead, for the first part of this activity, they can work in pairs. Each pair can discuss how they see themselves as readers and writers, on a scale of 1 to 10, and why they might be better at one skill than the other. The same pairs then continue with the rest of the activity.