Tag: writing

Influential teachers in reading and writing – who inspired you?

Daren MansfieldLeave a comment

In a conversation with an esteemed colleague, we started discussing influential teachers at school. We may forget the names of many people in our lifetime, but influential teachers hold enduring resonance.

My inspiration, the one who really got me into reading and writing, was Mr. Edwards, a Welsh teacher in a primary school based in Runcorn, Cheshire. It was a difficult time. I had missed out on significant amounts of schooling owing to moving house and emigration. I struggled to read and had, at times, received reading interventionist strategies and a potential screening for learning differences. There was nothing conclusive, but in all honesty my reading ability took years to catch up. Three eureka moments spring to mind when I think of Mr. Edward’s influence.

  • Creative writing. Mr. Edwards particular stroke of genius was to write a sentence on the blackboard during lunchtime which was the first line of a creative writing essay. My friends and I were so enthralled by this thread that we peered into the portacabin’s window and tried to read what he had written. We discussed the endless possibilities in continuing the story. It was an immediate trigger for our imagination to be let loose. That class got me into writing.
  • Silver Sword: Furthermore, Mr. Edwards read Silver Sword by Ian Serralier. It was an absolutely gripping tale. I was there, living the experience with them as refugees on the run trying desperately to find their parents; the fabled Nostos theme originating from the Odyssey. I now recognise the serendipity of that moment. At the age of eight or nine, this escape story held me on the edge of my chair for weeks. I longed for more books. As a family we had moved from place to place, country to country, house to house. Serralier’s more exciting story was set in wartime, escaping Poland’s apocalypse to the safe neutrality of Switzerland, perilously on the run from Nazis like hunted animals. Uprooted, they longed for safer borders free from terror and anxiety. To a child’s unfettered imagination, it was magical. At that age, there is a transitional period between magic and the beckoning dawn of reality, so brilliantly captured by Halldór Laxness in Independent People; that becoming self-aware from the innocent shelter of early childhood, you start growing up. That book got me into reading.
  • Book clubs: A monthly book club also came to Mr. Edward’s class. As his dedicated pupils, we eagerly sifted through a catalogue of book covers that electrified our imaginations. The book club got me into reading escape stories and adventure books as I continually rekindled that sense of uprootedness and Nostos within me. Even though I work in a Library and books are easily borrowed at no cost, I have always enjoyed buying and owning a book. Possessing a book always seem to be satisfying, like anchors reassuringly holding everything together, as we drift through life trying to find meaning and seize something more tangible.

Mr. Edwards had a significant impact on me. English was my strongest subject at school. Now, in Writing Development, I can help others like Mr. Edwards helped me. Who inspired you at school to read and write?

Inviting a welcome friend: using text-to-speech software to read assignments

Daren MansfieldLeave a comment

AI is everywhere now. Some hail the positives, while others concede the negatives of job losses and increased automation of the workforce, seemingly unstoppable since the Industrial Revolution. Personally, I’d rather go to a till staffed by a friendly employee than use a self-checkout machine in a supermarket. Society needs human contact, which is essential for our emotional wellbeing, mental health, and a sense of belonging. One of the positives to come out of AI is undoubtedly text-to-speech software which converts text into spoken words, effectively reading it for you. As our awareness of neurodiversity grows, so too our knowledge and appreciation of assistive technologies. Text-to-speech has come a long way since it was first developed in the 1930s.

Development of text-to-speech software

Text-to-speech has surprisingly long origins. The first computer-based speech-synthesis systems emerged in the 1950s, yet the earliest known text-to-speech programme was VODER , developed by Bell Laboratories in 1939 and was demonstrated at New York’s prestigious World’s Fair. In a fascinating blog post Grundhauser (2017) described that this first attempt at replicating the human voice apparently spoke ‘like a robot demon’ and ‘could create 20 or so different electric buzzes and chirps, which the operator would manipulate using 10 keys, a wrist plate, and a pedal’. It is even credited with inspiring Numbers by Kraftwerk that transformed musical genres as diverse as techno, hip-hop, new wave, and early rap (Sanusi, 2023). A general English text-to-speech system was developed by Noriko Umeda in 1968 at the Electrotechnical Laboratory in Japan.

Sounds like a real human

In recent years text-to-speech has drastically improved since the mechanical narration it used to render. There are some exceptions to this innovation like eBook text-to-speech, for instance, which need some development. We have named some of the pros and cons in our Library Wellbeing guide. The deliciously-named IceCreamApps site provides a list of eight recommended eBook screen readers, if you are interested. The fundamental issue is that there is no universal screen reader that works for everything online. That aside, the revelation is Microsoft’s Speak text-to-speech feature. It reads like a dream. Or rather, like a human voice. The ’voice’ is female, well-spoken, annunciating to give emphasis, giving pauses where needed and is easy on the ear.  If you are not happy with the ‘voice’ then you can go to Microsoft’s Speech Platform enabling you to choose a different voice package. It’s a bit like choosing your speech choice on a SATNAV when you drive a car. Text-to-speech software has been humanised, the ultimate acclaim of any person-centred AI technology.

Drawbacks are minimal. Homonyms are occasionally an issue like the word ‘reading’ (e.g. reading text) pronounced as ‘Reading’ (the Berkshire town located west of London).  I have also caught myself anthropomorphising the ‘voice’ as a person (‘her’). There are many benefits to using text-to-speech.

Benefits on literacy

Although few studies indicate whether text-to-speech increases literacy, rates of listening comprehension was found in a study by Brunow & Cullen (2021) to be beneficial, although it is not comparable to the interventionist support of a human teacher. Research conducted by Svensson et al. (2019) have found that reading ability, motivation, and performance increases with the use of text-to-speech. These suggest that text-to-speech is supplementary, rather than comprehensive, and does not substitute human involvement in the educational process (Wood et al., 2018).

Visual stress

One of the benefits of using text-to-speech is to alleviate visual stress, reducing eye strain. This function is necessary when someone has a neurodiverse condition like dyslexia or ADHD. Text-to-speech relies upon auditory skills rather than the complexity of visually reading a page. This is a revolutionary step for dyslexic students struggling to read text on the screen.

Editing and proofreading

For the purposes of editing and proofreading the immediate benefits of text-to-speech are huge and impactful, allowing for error detection, spelling and grammatical mistakes, awkward sentence structures and consistency and coherence.  I have found it particularly useful in identifying word misplacement.

Writing style analysis

Even though I am not dyslexic I use MS Speak. I used it repeatedly for this blog post, both in Word and in WordPress. What does my writing sound like? Are there any errors, misplaced words, gaps, too many words..? How does it flow? What is the personality of my writing voice? These are simple questions and text-to-speech, I feel, has the ready answers. Such writing style analysis identifies your writing voice using natural language processing (NLP) tools, analysing writing patterns, sentence structures and other linguistic features.

The allyship of text-to-speech software

Text-to-speech software has become an indispensable ally in writing. Will you invite this accessible technology into your assignments and check your writing? Nowadays I would not write a longer piece of writing without it. Text-to-speech is a welcome friend in that regard.

References

Brunow, D.A. & Cullen, T.A. (2021). Effect of Text-to-Speech and Human Reader on Listening Comprehension for Students with Learning Disabilities. Computers in the schools: Interdisciplinary Journal of Practice, Theory, and Applied Research, 38 (3), 214-231.

Grundhauser, E. (2017). The Voder, the first machine to create human speech. Available from: The Voder, the First Machine to Create Human Speech – Atlas Obscura [Accessed 15th May 2024].

Icecreamapps.com. (2024). Best Text To Speech Book Readers 2024: Top 8 – Icecream Apps. Available from: Best Text To Speech Book Readers 2024: Top 8 – Icecream Apps [Accessed 21st May 2024].

Sanusi, T. (2023). From Hawking to Siri: The evolution of speech synthesis. Available from: From Hawking to Siri: The Evolution of Speech Synthesis | Deepgram [Accessed 15th May 2024].

Svensson, I., Nordström, T., Lindeblad, E., Gustafson, S., Björn, M., Sand, C., … Nilsson, S. (2021). Effects of assistive technology for students with reading and writing disabilities. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 16 (2), 196–208.

University of Lincoln. (2024). Screen Readers – Screen Readers and Accessibility – Guides at University of Lincoln. Available from: Screen Readers – Screen Readers and Accessibility – Guides at University of Lincoln [Accessed 21st May 2024].

Wood, S.G. et al. (2018) ‘Does Use of Text-to-Speech and Related Read-Aloud Tools Improve Reading Comprehension for Students with Reading Disabilities? A Meta-Analysis’, Journal of Learning Disabilities, 51(1), 73–84.

Ego Problems in Writing Support

gfreestoneLeave a comment

The ego is sometimes used to mean a kind of self-agrandizing principle of the psyche. Ego-centric can also mean that we focus on ourselves at the expense of others; this is a related but not identical meaning to the first sense. These differing meanings are related insofar as they both entail some psychic action by which we seek to prop up ourselves as individuals, one by self-promotion, one by self-interest. Both generally are related to a degree of insecurity in the individual in question. All people are different and have different histories; the ego level is contingent up various factors related to these differences.

A one-to-one support session is necessarily a meeting of egos. There is an imbalanced power relation between the student and the support worker. This is not an ego-trip itself, but a position of necessity. The student wants help with their writing and the writing support worker theoretically has the skills/knowledge to help them. This means it is not only a position of necessity but a position of responsibility, that is, the writing support worker is responsible for the student. Interestingly this means the power relation is more complicated than it first appears, for from this perspective the student is actually in control. They place the burden of their writing problems upon the support worker, whom they expect, to a greater or lesser extent, to solve them.

The initial manifestation of the support worker in this relation will be varied, but we all can be seduced by the desire to please, to be liked. Much more important than being liked though, is needing the student to trust us; this means we need to have (some) confidence in ourselves. If we project confidence, the student will trust us —unless we screw up so much that it’s painfully laid out for them to see. There is a difficult borderline (depending on our ego-structures) between the successful projection of confidence with the aim of inspiring trust and the confidence which inspires ‘being-liked’. We’re not supposed to care about ‘being-liked’ but because of the borderline, it can sometimes be hard to not do so.

I have often found myself lost in the early stages of a consult. Worried I won’t know where to go with it. Listening to the student, scanning the work. Looking to convey a mixture of honesty, but not so much honesty to give away the rising sense of ‘what to do with this?’ whilst also bringing the aforementioned confidence. I referred before to periods of quiet reading in the session that help let the problems in the work show themselves. These periods enable me to find a space in which any desire to be ‘liked’ can largely be eradicated as I get deeper into the work. Slowly seeing the problems emerge from the reading and talking about what they are trying to say, brings has a satisfaction that is not egoistic but only has its own satisfaction, like finding the solution of a puzzle on one’s own.

However this is not the end of the struggle. If the problems are successfully identified and a path forwards (that is not too disheartening) is found, then the student will often be very pleased. This pleasedness is then projected onto the the support worker in the form ‘being-liked’. Which is worse now, as it is not artifical (in the sense of inspired by the projection of confidence) but a genuine pleasure that their writing problems (for now) are resolved. It is course hard not to take some excess of pleasure in the pleasedness of the student, however it is to be avoided as much as possible.

The reason for this is that the classical issue of hubris is a very real one. If we allow the either spoken, or unspoken praise of the student to go in, then we may generate an attitude that will serve us very badly on another occasion. The projection of confidence, secure in the knowledge this is a contrivance is one thing, but the real thing is perilous. The tempered projection of confidence, should always contain the possibility of admitting to not know the way forward —a piece of writing for another time- whereas when hubris crashes into such difficulties the result will be an embarrassing mess, leaving the student lacking faith in the service and the support worker with another level of ego crisis to resolve.

Signposting dyslexic students to Wellbeing

Daren MansfieldLeave a comment

Reflective insights from a three-point map

Over the years I have frequently encountered undiagnosed dyslexia during 1-1s. Lately I have been reflecting on my own responses when a piece of writing exhibits traits of dyslexia, breaking them down into three parts. Not that I am an expert. These are purely general observations gleaned through years of experience. A feeling or perception, in other words. In a meeting with a student common dyslexia characteristics may become known from the first or second paragraph. Little signs that might explain the student’s difficulty with writing an assignment, indicating that further exploration is needed and the three-point map is carefully unfurled.

These three steps that I recognise as my approach to signposting students to Wellbeing and advise them about obtaining a screening for dyslexia are a regular reminder that although I am not an expert, or sufficiently qualified to diagnose dyslexia, there are brilliant services available to students at the University helping them to progress in their studies through correct diagnosis. If they are diagnosed with dyslexia, students may receive funding for an accessible laptop or obtain software like Dragon Naturally Speaking.

1st step: Initial signs

When I first met dyslexic students, I was looking for such tell-tale signs as misplaced word order or spelling, but I am increasingly aware that these are not the most common traits. Nowadays, tell-tale signs are more likely to include spending ages on an assignment, difficulty with translating their ideas onto paper, disorganised structure, confusion around capitalisation, and muddled syntax.

These broad observations lead to a short series of leading questions, which might illuminate the path ahead.

2nd step: Leading questions

The second stage in the process of considering signposting a student with potential dyslexia to Student Wellbeing might involve the following:

Q. ‘So, how long did you spend writing this 2000-word essay?’

A. ‘It took me all night to write two paragraphs’ or ‘I spent all day in the Library and produced nothing’.

Q. ‘Have you struggled with writing?’ (i.e. an open-ended question.

A. ‘Yes, when I was at school…’

Then we may comfortably enter into a discussion about screening: ‘have you ever thought you may be dyslexic?’

I would then point out where Student Wellbeing is located on the Brayford campus and their drop-in times.

As I indicated earlier in one of my blog posts, establishing the therapeutic relationship is essential in sensitively handling this discussion and attuned to whatever the student is saying through employing active listening skills (not interrupting, listening not responding, withholding judgement, and so forth). Otherwise, such a discussion might upset the student and discourage them from seeking further help.

3rd step: Learning strategies and signposting

Following on from this stage, we might discuss blue-sky thinking, problem solving, mind maps….getting the student to think visually; exploring ideas, not sentences.  LinkedIn has recently championed Dyslexia Thinking as a skill, not as an impediment.

Writing sentences can be a great inhibitor for a dyslexic student. Hurdles in word form. Breaking a sentence up into constituent parts drawn from ideas or images from a mind map is a great way of formulating a sentence. Bullet points can also kick-start an essay; an easy way to get started without worrying about the mental block of paragraphs. Think of small starts, but with big ideas.

It is often a relief for the student to realise that there is an issue where their struggles at school and college could be explained. Such a moment can be life-changing. Dyslexia is often hereditary. One of the student’s parents might be dyslexic. It may be common knowledge that they struggled in school and experience the same issues as their children, but it can be largely unspoken in family circles. Understood, but not officially diagnosed. As society moves on from the notion that dyslexia is an obstacle – as LinkedIn has recently done – students can feel confident at achieving academic success, and look forward to a brighter future.

Helping Students by Looking for the Animating Principle in Their Work

gfreestoneLeave a comment

After looking at many pieces of student’s work in a one-to-one setting, I’ve come to identify a kind of process of how my ability to help appears to work. What follows are some kind of reflective notes on this process. As my reflection proceeds I make recourse to a concept I am calling the ‘animating principle’ of the writing to try to describe what’s going on.

When working with a student the very first thing is to put the student at ease with a friendly introduction. Next I need to find out what they need help with. They may have quite a specific kind of issue, for instance they want to know how to be more critical in their writing, or it may be something more general like how to write more academically.

Knowing my own mind and abilities, I am aware it’s very important that the whole situation be relaxed. If tension exists in the system, this will impair my ability to read their work/understand their issue and hence to give any useful advice. Also since I now likely have to digest the issue, either from reading their work/brief/learning outcomes, I always feel I have to spell out that I’m now going to do some reading and thinking but that they shouldn’t worry about the silence. This is all about removing tension. I think it’s important to spell this out as, whilst it might seem obvious, if I don’t say it they may feel uncomfortable or even keep interjecting and neither of these are desireable —though interjecting might be later on.

For me, this initial reading may not be massively in depth. I am trying to keep my focus on reading carefully, whilst also taking note of how long the text is and also trying to bear in mind the issue they’ve asked me about. This can get more complicated because I may notice other problems with the writing. If these are outside the remit of the query, then there is something of an ethical dilemma. On the one hand I do not wish to gloss over aspects of the writing that need looking at, but on the other the session is finite, so if I begin to spread out into too many issues I may a) overwhelm the student with information and b) not cover the issue they came for in a satisfactory manner. The resolution of this may be to recommend another session or to check in with them as to what stage they are at in the writing —the student may be aware of some things and expect to pick them up themselves later on. Some form of acknowledging these issues is required though.

After this initial reading I may have a general sense of major issues and may be able to offer advice about the work. I am always aware (or rather I should be aware) that at this stage the student’s work will likely not have disclosed itself properly to me. So at this point I will relay my thoughts so far back to the student and talk to them variously about it. This will usually give me a deeper connection to what they want and let me see if I am working in the right area.

I will then make a second reading of the work. By now the work and the learning outcomes have seeped into me at a deeper level and I am able to see the work clearer. The areas of the work start to become clearer, the structural problems, the lacks of criticality. This stage will involve less intense silence, but there may well be some. Again if I am thinking for a moment I will let the student know, so they understand I am not just sat in silence.

It is around the stage of this second reading/talking that I find the truly fascinating part of the process occurs. What roughly tends to happen is that, if I have remained relaxed and open, absorbed the work/inquiry and applied thought to the issue (asking myself, what is needed here? what nudge does the work need to cohere?) the general solution/advice will disclose itself by a some means I do not pretend to understand. There is a moment when something clicks and then I have the strong sensation that the way forward is clear. From this opening, I will feel a sense of where the essential problems are in the work, and begin to work out advice on how they might solve them.

This does not mean I will not offer nuts and bolts writing advice. As stated, there is always a question about where do you should focus. However if we are trying to work on issues such as structure, criticality, analysis or flow, then though the individual problems may look extremely various, it is often the same fundamental issue that drives them. This is what I have elsewhere referred to as the lack of an animating principle in the writing.

The repeated readings and questions then, are probes that try to find the animating principle (or lack of one) in the writing. This is a kind of holistic approach, as the aspects we are taught about academic writing come much more naturally if the writing has an animating principle. Criticality for instance arises by itself if we are truly interested in the topic; our interest will make us question the veracity of statements in our desire for understanding. Likewise our logical coherence will flow, because we have a tale we are trying to tell and our rhetorical powers of persuasion (if appropriate) will also be improved because we are invested in the movement of the writing.

It is true that the animating principle is easier to track and utilise when the writing has hit a certain level. However at all levels there is still the question/title that has been set by the tutor. Engaged thinking about this question can help bring out an interesting perspective in a question that might appear quite uninspiring. Yes of course, there can be many issues that might need fixing at the level of grammar and spelling, but improving these details after engagement has been achieved (or even suffering them to some extent to work on over time) will still yield a better piece of work than simply mopping up the periphery.

Teaching the therapeutic relationship

Daren MansfieldLeave a comment

It is, perhaps, not talked about much in academic circles how much we learn from students: what they teach us in a variety of ways and support the staff-student experience is, indeed, underrated. Yet during the Covid-19 pandemic when we picked up our newly acquired laptops and headed home for an uncertain future, when teaching online was a relatively unknown phenomenon and MS Teams was (virtually – pun intended) unheard of, I realised this crucial interrelationship.  At the start of the pandemic (almost) everyone struggled with MS Teams and Wi-Fi connection. Yet Teams slowly became liberating. It was a highly flexible, convenient, responsive solution to not being on campus. On the other hand, it formalised the working day. Gone, it seemed, were the informal ad-hoc get together meetings with colleagues; ushering in a new code of conduct where meetings could take place in an instant. How would I ever sound genuine talking to a screen? Sometimes we would present to hundreds of students without seeing any of them.

One of the major obstacles to begin with was to sound like you are in a real classroom talking to real people. In other words, making the virtual classroom an authentic place of learning. Can this authenticity be achieved in a virtual world and the subtleties of an-person meeting be replicated? It took a while to realise, but student nurses came up with the answer – meeting them via Teams taught me a lot about the softer side of teaching. When writing their assignments they often refer to the NICE guidelines and one of its guiding principles – the therapeutic relationship (NMC, 2018). They taught me how to teach online. It was a revelation to learn how one of the central practices of the nursing profession could help me teach: a door had been opened into a new perception of myself and my tutoring role. I was about to apply the nursing code of conduct in teaching.

Though it may be little discussed, students educating tutors is fundamental. The qualities such as being authentic, trustworthy, approachable and honesty lends itself to a 1-1 setting (Wright, 2021). Why is the therapeutic relationship, and more broadly the principles of nursing, so key in underpinning the tutor-student relationship? It empowers the student to carry out their studies. They believe they are being listened to – not just another student writing an assignment – but as an aspiring individual wishing to succeed in their studies. It individualises the conversation, adding value to the meeting. Such a rapport makes them believe in themselves, ultimately giving them empowerment. The therapeutic relationship becoming an empowering tool remains one of the core elements of the tutor-student relationship, particularly in the digital age when humans and technology are increasingly blended, and an authentic experience is sought and thereby defined.

References

Nursing and Midwifery Council. (2018). The Code: Professional standards of practice and behaviour for nurses, midwives and nursing associates. Available from: The Code (nmc.org.uk) [Accessed 13th February 2024]

Royal College of Nursing. (2024). Definitions and principles of nursing. Available from: Definition and Principles of Nursing | Royal College of Nursing (rcn.org.uk) [Accessed 13th February 2024].

Wright, K. M. (2021). Exploring the therapeutic relationship in nursing. Mental Health Practice. 24(5): 34-41. Available from: Exploring the therapeutic relationship in nursing theory and practice (rcni.com) [Accessed 13th February 2024].