Summary Rose,Mike. Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans, and the Stifling of Language: A Cognitive Analysis of Writers Block.

College Composition and Communication 31.4 (1980):389-401. Print Overall, Mike Roses article summarized what causes students with writers block to freeze up and not be able to write papers. Throughout the excerpt he compares students that breeze through writing papers to students that are extremely terrified of not upholding the rules of writing. A rule that was constantly repeated that created writers block was the fact they had to make an interesting introduction paragraph. The people without a block do not stress this rule; it comes naturally because they look at it heuristically. This means that they can view a rule loosely are make the rule fit to the plan that they already have for their papers. Algorithmic writers (people with writers block) panic because they feel the need to follow each rule step by step. Mikes solution to helping to solve writers block was to interview with each student to learn their writing background and the knowledge theyre coming with from previous English classes.

Castia Hunter ENC 1101 Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 1130am-1220pm 0045 Analysis Being that weve been talking about Sheldon a lot in class, I have decided to approach this analysis portion in a different way. I would like to analyze how effective Roses article on writers block is. Starting from how writers block should be treated, the proposed treatment is not very effective. It is one thing to interview the student to see the rules that they already have engraved in them, but it is another thing to teach them how to correctly select the appropriate rules for each problem. You might as well not interview the student to see what they have already learned if youre still going to give them another method to learn. Thats not only adding to the set of rules that they already have to follow, but it will be another difficult task to accomplish because youre asking them to basically go back and re-learn how to write using these new tactics. Another thing that I felt could possibly be a problem for writers block students is Mikes use of blue prints instead of plans. Although this strategy was used in order to help writers to be more open, it may cause them to go even deeper into the algorithmic category. Even though you are giving some one more creative freedom, if their used to always following the rules and steps the questions like What exactly is ok to put in my essay when I am expressing myself? and Is there a point where too much expression can be a bad thing? start to occur.