The Notion of Giftedness and Student Expectations About Writing

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Research reported by Daly, Miller, and their colleagues suggests that writing apprehension is related to a number of factors we do not yet fully understand. This study suggests that included among those factors should be the belief that writing ability is a gift. Giftedness, as it is referred to in the study, is roughly equivalent to the Romantic notion of original genius. Results from a survey of 247 post-secondary students enrolled in introductory writing courses at two institutions indicate that higher levels of belief in giftedness are correlated with higher levels of writing apprehension, lower self-assessments of writing ability, lower levels of confidence in achieving proficiency in certain writing activities and genres, and lower self-assessments of prior experience with writing instructors. Significant differences in levels of belief in giftedness were also found among students who differed in their perceptions of the most important purpose for writing, with students who identified “to express your own feelings about something” as the most important purpose for writing having the highest mean level of belief in giftedness. Although the validity of the notion that writing ability is a special gift is not directly addressed, the results suggest that belief in giftedness may have deleterious effects on student writers. Throughout all my schooling I was led to believe that creative talent was the possession of only a few “gifted and artistic” individuals. Thus, the rest of us were resigned to concentrate on the mechanical aspects of writing and producing well researched and well supported term papers. I can’t recall ever being allowed to express my thoughts about a topic I was interested in. —Graduate student in rhetoric commenting on her previous instruction in writing The expectations of learners and teachers powerfully influence what happens in school. If we do not already know this in our bones, we can find it documented in studies of learning. It is a truth both reassuring and disturbing, reassuring because it reminds 518 us that not all students who have been judged academically inferior are necessarily or natively so, disturbing because however unsound such judgments may be at the outset, they do tend gradually to fulfill themselves, causing students to lag behind their peers a little more each year until the gap that separates the groups begins to seem vast and permanent. —Mina Shaughnessy, Errors and Expectations (275)

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