Introduction

Writing has been a major means used by academic staff across

the disciplines in assessment of student learning in higher
education. Likewise, the ability to convey thoughts effectively in
writing has been deemed crucial for success in tertiary studies
(Crème & Lea, 1997; Lee & Stierer, 2000; Segall & Smart,
2005). Research into issues of student writing in higher education
has identified varied problems manifested at different levels that
students experience in academic writing. The student writers may
have inadequate linguistic means (e.g. poor language skills, lack
of subject specific vocabulary), or they may be unfamiliar with
some common textual and academic conventions (e.g. essay
structure, report format, referencing). Recent research has
revealed that a vital source of difficulties in student writing lies
in the student writers’ lack of understanding of the nature and
process of academic writing and confusion about the expectations
and requirements of academic writing assignments in their field
of study (Clerehan & Walker, 2004; Elander et al, 2006;
Emerson, Rees & MacKay, 2005; Lillis & Turner, 2001). Such
research findings point to the importance of developing not only
effective writing skills, but also sound understanding of the
fundamental nature of academic writing as well as subject-
specific requirements for writing in order for students to become
competent writers of academic texts.
Problematising the pedagogies that can be applied in writing
retreats is a potentially useful way to help academic staff survive
and thrive as writers in the current stressful university
environment. In this article I propose that freewriting is a strategy
that not only helps academics write freely and creatively; it also
helps academics problematise their tacit and experiential
knowledge, assisting them in recognising their own narratives
and in considering alternatives. The ability to do this develops
critical (self) awareness and critical reflection on different ways
of being and doing. The capacity for critical thinking is one of the
hallmarks of academic endeavour in all disciplines. In addition, I
argue that the generative and enjoyable aspects of freewriting
(Elbow 2000; Murray 2009) can be increased by making it a
central pedagogical practice in a ‘process-oriented’ writing
retreat.
Not only can freewriting help novice and experienced writers to
reflect backwards and forwards on experience and capture their
thoughts in writing; it can also assist them to activate or reframe
their tacit knowledge in an easy and enjoyable way, thus reducing
the anxiety that many writers experience (Murray 2013; Murray
and Moore 2006). Exploring a group of doctoral students’
reflections in hindsight about writing a thesis also has the
potential to sensitize others, for example, other postgraduate
students and supervisors, to some of their roles and practices.
Definition of Freewriting
According to Elbow and Belanoff (2000), freewriting is defined
as writing any ideas or thoughts that come to mind in a given time
period without stopping. Freewriting in the L1 was one of the
popular methods used during late 1960s and early 1970s as a way
of discovering new English instruction during the neoprogressive
movement, which began by opposing the teacher-centered
traditional instruction which paid little attention to creativeness
(Fox & Suhor, 1986). However, according to Fox and Suhor
(1986), its popularity withered in the mid 1970s as the back-to-
basics movement began because the advocates of this movement
considered the English instructional methods used during the
neoprogressive movement period, including freewriting, as
shallow and permissive instruction with no discipline. Discussion
on freewriting in other studies (Rodrigue, 1985; see also Piltch,
1979, and Shelis, 1975, both cited in Fox & Suhor, 1986),
showed such criticisms toward freewriting. In spite of the
criticism, many studies, including writing projects, have been
done on freewriting in the L1 since the neoprogressive movement
period Reynold (1984) commented that freewriting “survived
both its own period and the subsequent back-to-the basics
backlash of the 1970s” (1984, p. 81). His remark explains this
phenomenon of researchers‟ ongoing interest in freewriting in L1
writing instruction.
The general characteristics of freewriting can vary depending on
context such as changing the amount of time allowed or giving a
specific topic (Fontaine, 1991). If there is no specified topic for
the writing, it is called unguided (self-sponsored) freewriting
whereas guided (teacher-sponsored or focused) freewriting
happens when a topic is given (Elbow, 1998b; Elbow &
Belanoff, 2000; Fontaine, 1991; Lannin, 2007). Elbow (1998b)
who is a proponent of freewriting argued that students should not
stop writing while doing freewriting because “the main thing
about freewriting is that it is nonediting” (p. 6, italics in the
original). These rules to keep writing and not edit make it possible
for students to increase writing fluency by producing text from
their stream of consciousness without being distracted by already
produced text (Elbow, 1998a). Some researchers like Polio
(2001) are concerned that focusing on fluency might have a
negative impact on writing quality; however, the quality of
writing is not considered an issue in freewriting. Elbow (1998b)
claims that what is accomplished through practicing freewriting
is “separating the producing process from the revising process”
(p. 14).
According to researchers who favor freewriting, both unguided
and guided freewriting have more benefits than just increasing
writing fluency and making a habit of nonediting while writing.
After analyzing over two hundred ten-minute unguided
freewriting samples gathered during two years of teaching,
Hilgers (1980) reported that practicing unguided freewriting led
his students to experience a bottom-up process which meant that
students began to distance themselves from their individual
experiences to more general, abstract state which is eventually
required in academic writing. Moreover, Fontaine (1991)
mentioned in her study that unguided freewriting gave students
the opportunity to “make meaning with language” (p. 13) by
letting them write about what they were interested in. This
process helped students organize and classify what they observed,
and more importantly, they began to form much concrete self-
concept by practicing freewriting. Fontaine (1991) defined self-
concept as “a sense of who they are, of what they value, and of
the bases on which they determine these values” (p. 13).
While the main benefits of unguided freewriting are considered
to be increasing writing fluency and finding self-concept, guided
freewriting is useful for getting started on the actual writing itself
which is considered to be one of the most difficult parts of the
writing process (Elbow & Belanoff, 2000). According to
Hammond (1991), who used guided freewriting to promote
students‟ critical thinking, students were able to have deeper
insights on given topics with the help of guided freewriting
because it let them to think inductively instead of jumping to
hasty conclusions. He claimed that guided freewriting helped
students identify all of the available arguments or points of views
and then make conclusions from first thoughts toward new
insights. Furthermore, he asserted that nonjudgmental feedback
such as sharing the writing or having discussions helped students
to strengthen their thoughts and yielded further insights.
Benefits of Free Writing
Free writing is a tool that many writers use to combat writer’s
block. The process of free writing liberates you from
expectations, opens up space for creativity and allows you to
download all of the thoughts, feelings and stresses that are
floating around in your head. It’s kind of like riding a gentle,
emotional wave without worrying about where the wave takes
you.
Even if you aren’t a writer, free writing can still be used to
enhance creativity and get over emotional blocks. Establishing a
regular free writing practice can make a huge impact on your
daily life and ability to cope with stressors.
1. Reduces expectations of perfection.
2. Provides unimpeded release of your thoughts and emotions.
3. Builds self-confidence.
4. Brings out emotional blocks and barriers to your success.
5. Helps you develop good, healthy habits.
6. Offers a blank slate for 100% honesty.
7. Provides practice in releasing self-judgment and judgment
from others.
8. Increases creativity and inspiration.
9. Uncovers thoughts and ideas you never knew you had.
10. Assists in sorting through difficult situations.
11. Acts as a forum for being truly authentic and YOU.
12. Allows you to be present in your day-to-day interactions.
13. Fosters a greater sense of clarity and focus.
14. Changes your perspective on challenging situations.
15. Increases awareness of patterns and themes in your life.
The Steps of Free-Writing
In Free-Writing, the use of imagination is also necessary. Barber
(2003) stated that in writing down how we "see," what we are
imagining, we gain control and can return to these visual and
emotional ideas again and again to discover ourselves.
Imagination is crucial to good writing, and at the same time,
undeniably connected to the acquired skills and knowledge. The
main difficulty with free-writing is to be going from nothing to
something. In this research, the researcher asked the students to
write down the sentence about whatever they wanted to wrote,
and the researcher just remained to the students to give attention
to the elements or the mechanics of writing when they are doing
Free-Writing exercises. Also, it offers a student center activity
that can be very beneficial for writing class.
Based on Brown (2001) explains: You may follow these steps of
how to make a free-writing:
1. From your list of changes, choose one idea that interested you.
2. Write the idea at the top of a clean sheet of paper.
3. For ten minutes, write about this topic without stopping.
This means that you should be writing something regularly.
a. Write down everything that comes to your mind.
b. Do not judge your ideas.
c. Do not worry about your spelling and grammar.
d. If you run out of things to say, continue writing whatever
comes to your mind. This process is called free-writing. It is
designed to help in writing free ideas that you might not realize.
An essential aspect of Free-Writing is that you write without
being concerned about spelling, punctuation, or grammar. The
free-writing strategy can be suitably done when students do not
worry anymore about the mistakes or grammatical features. In
doing this, the students need reasonable confidence while at the
same time; they need to consider two aspects: content and
audience. Once ideas are down on the page, grammatical
accuracy, organization, and the rest will gradually follow.
Therefore, Free-Writing is essential because, in the act of writing
down what our imagination tells us, we are better able to
understand our meaning. The students also tend to choose Free-
Writing than other kinds of formal writing, because, in free
writing, they take time to re-write any events in their lives, and
shape the things that have actually happened.
Strategies of Freewriting
There are two types of free-writing strategy; they are:
(1) unfocused free writing: the writer chooses the topic and is
free to shift from subject to subject Often this is used to generate
ideas for a piece of writing on any topic of the writer’s choice;
(2) Focused Free-Writing: the writer focuses attention on a
specific subject, often in response to an assigned task. Focused
freewriting is often used in classrooms. Free-writing activities
enable students to try out their language in a freer way. However,
since the more language the children have, the easier it is to work
on free writing activities (Scott and Ytreberg: 2002: 74).
The Strengths and Weaknesses of Free-Writing strategy
1. Strength of Free-Writing strategy
a. Free-writing makes writing easier by helping you with the root
psychological or existential difficulty in writing.
b. Finding words in your head and putting them down on a blank
piece of paper.
c. Free-writing helps you learn to write when you don’t feel like
writing.
d. Free-writing teaches you to write without thinking about
writing.
e. Free-writing helps you pour more attention, focus, and energy
into what you write.
By using Free-Writing makes students more comfortable to get
and explore the idea of writing, increase creativity, more focus,
more attention, and energy as well as more enjoyable in writing.
2. Weaknesses of Free-Writing Strategy
a. The writer repeatedly stops, writers briefly, and is always
looking around. He/she never seems to concentrate for more than
a few seconds at a time.
b. The use of an eraser, liquid paper or scoring out of whatever
has been written indicate a writer with perfectionism as his/ her
ideal.
c. Frequent use of the pocket electronic dictionary or flipping of
dictionary pages indicates someone pursuing the most accurate
word possible.
d. Since a quiet class is usually required for this task, the talker is
immediately noticed above the silence of the classroom, either as
the buzz from the back of the class or audible words coming from
the corner.
e. The writer has another piece of paper on which is written a
topic, title, and even some notes or a plan. He/she can be seen as
copying or referring to it frequently. To solve those problems the
teacher gives solution such as: (1) the teacher asks the students to
make an outline (2) the teacher encourages students to be more
confident (3) the teacher gives the keywords in accordance with
the topic (4) the teacher control the class by having them quiet for
sometimes (5) the teacher monitors the class accordingly.
Focused Freewriting and Critical Thinking
Focused freewriting originated from the concept of “freewriting”
where students are asked to write non-stop, about “anything” that
comes to their minds for five to ten minutes. This strategy arose
from the observation that often, students have “plenty” to say
before and after the writing class. But whenever they begin to
write, they become “paralysed” and cannot write on paper
(Southwell, 1977, p.676). Freewriting was thus proposed as a
means to push the students to write and come out of this paralysis.
Peter Elbow (1998), the popular advocate of this teaching
approach, says that freewriting is like “writing something and
putting it in a bottle and throwing it in the sea” (p.3) as the
students are not required to submit their writing to their teachers
for feedback. Elbow (1983) contends that this teaching strategy
helps students to relax and get rid of the anxiety of getting a good
grade for the task. He also asserts that because students are told
not to edit their work as it may hamper their flow of writing, it
becomes easier for them to hop over the speed breaker that is
often referred to as writers’ block.
However, despite its usefulness, many researchers also believe
that freewriting has its demerits. Firstly, they argue that it cannot
be considered as a part of academic writing as a student may
choose to write a personal, instead of an academic essay when
doing freewriting. Secondly, as the teacher does not check the
students’ work for grammatical accuracy and logical arguments,
Bartholomae (1995) doubts that they will be able to learn how to
write well. Hilgers and Marsella (1991) also believe that
freewriting does not hold much “promise” other than being a type
of personal writing (p.93). This type of writing, they argue, gives
students a “powerless” voice because they use colloquial
language instead of the appropriate academic register. It also does
not let them go beyond the realm of personal thinking to explore
the ways of thinking academically (Bizzell, 1982). Indeed,
Fawcett (2018) remarks that freewriting is a powerful way of
expressing thoughts into writing that sometimes may produce
“only nonsense” (p.10).
Such criticisms of freewriting paved the way for focused
freewriting as a more acceptable form of freewriting (Fawcett,
2018), where a student chooses a specific topic and writes non-
stop about “only” that topic for five to ten minutes, and later looks
at the writing to exclude the irrelevant ideas that would not
support the main argument. Similarly, Wallack (2009) states that
any writing that has a particular point of focus and that helps the
writer to “discover” (p.29) more about a topic can be considered
as focused freewriting.
The literature provides ample evidence for the benefits of focused
freewriting. Vilardi and Chang (2009), for instance, believe that
the writing prompts or questions posed during focused
freewriting allow students to think silently and critically about the
issues concerned. This silence, according to the researchers, is
essential in giving shape to their discovered ideas and
perspectives. Similarly, Rosenwasser and Stephen (2012)
propose a passage-based focused freewriting (PBFF) strategy that
asks students to read a passage and write freely on its key points.
It helps readers to comprehend the meaning of the passage well
and develop their critical thinking. Shaarawy (2014), in a study
on focused freewriting involving Egyptian undergraduate
students, also found that the students who were asked to write
weekly journals on the topics they had studied were able to think
more critically than the group without the journal writing task.
Likewise, Munday, Cartwright, and Windham (1990), in a
study on the effects of using focused freewriting activities in a
class of pre-service teachers, found that the 22 teachers who went
through eight sessions of focused freewriting believed that the
activities contributed toward enhancing their critical thinking.
As emphasised by Combs (2016), focused freewriting has an
“extraordinary impact” (p. 70) on independent writers. It teaches
them how to think critically on a topic and write early sentences
that they can rewrite in the final drafts. On this note, Hammond
(1991) states that focused freewriting fosters critical thinking by
giving students the opportunity to identify “all the available
arguments”, looking at “issues or images in all of their
complexity”, and thinking “inductively from first thoughts to new
insights” (p.89). In her study, focused freewriting was in the form
of writing memos at different stages of thinking on an issue. The
process of focused freewriting, revising, and finally rewriting,
helped them to understand the issues well and write critically
about them. Indeed, this is precisely how, as Castle (2017)
argues, focused freewriting enables students to make connections
between ideas; and that is, through logical reasoning.
The benefits of using focused freewriting motivated us to write
this paper, which aims at exploring how the focused freewriting
sessions and discussions during the prewriting stage can help the
students to stimulate ideas and think critically.
The Difficulties of Producing Freewriting
As one of the type of writings, free writing seems easier to be
practiced. Indeed, it consists of a number of steps to be concerned
to produce ideas that is very beneficial for writing. One of the
hardest tasks in writing is getting started (Hedge, 2000, p. 308).
What make the writing skill, in general, becomes more difficult
to be applied is that its components that should be seriously alert
by the writer. Brown (2004, p. 218) believes that writing is a
unique skill with its own features and conventions, and it is
difficult to write ‘well’ in any languages, even in the writers
first language. This is also pertinent to what Nunan (1999, p.
272) asserts that the writer should be able to decide how to
package information within a sentence and what grammatical
forms to use, regarding tenses and clauses.
In order to produce a qualified free writing, the students should
set the writing activity accurately. Planning and organizing ideas
are the essential stages to be concerned on the topics preparatory.
The students, then, are expected to engage the whole steps of
writing by classifying the ideas based on the need of the writing
itself. The teacher, as a consequence, has to assist the students to
select the information required to fulfill the tasks as well as
helping the students to get their ideas (Hedge, 2000, p. 308). At
the end, the students are able to produce competent writing
without hesitate after practicing more about the context of
writing.
Tips and Techniques for Freewriting
One of the beauties of freewriting is that there are no rules to the
technique, other than not being bound by previously drafted
outlines or notes. However, some approaches are more successful
than others. Here are some tips to making your freewriting a fun
and productive undertaking.
1. Just write. Any writing coach or writing teacher will tell
you that you must segregate your writing process from your
editing process. When it comes to freewriting, first drafts
are repositories for every idea that comes to mind, however
vague or tangential. Don’t worry about word count, don’t
worry about market viability, don’t worry about sentence
structure, don’t even worry about spelling. Unleash your
creativity, let the ideas flow, and trust that there will be time
for editing later. This rule applies whether you wish to write
a novel, a play, a short story, or a poem.
2. Gather topics beforehand to avoid using outlines.
Freewriting doesn’t necessarily mean you write without
having an idea about your topic or story. Even the most
committed freewriters tend to have some degree of a
prewriting technique whereby they ruminate on their
subject matter in a broad, general sense. You don’t have to
pre-plan details before you start writing, but it helps to know
in the broadest sense what it is you think you’ll write about.
3. Time yourself. If you are experiencing writer’s block,
commit to getting words down on the page within the first
60 seconds of writing. Perhaps those first words will not
yield anything, but think of them metaphorically as the first
drops you put into the five gallon bucket that is your novel.
There is nothing to be gained by staring at a page or
computer screen for any great period of time.
 4. Combine freewriting with traditional outlines or notes.
While it can be quite satisfying to say that one wrote an
entire novel using freewriting techniques (as Jack Kerouac
is said to have done with On the Road) what readers care
about most is the quality of your writing. With this in mind,
start a project with a substantive freewriting session.
Depending on what you produce, you may want to use that
content as fodder for a formal process that more closely
conforms to the traditional rules of writing (outlines, notes,
etc.). Let that outline or set of notes guide the remainder of
your writing on the project. Remember, too, that you can
always toggle back to freewriting at any point.
5. Do bring ideas to your sessions. Some writers, particularly
poets, begin sessions with no ideas or themes they plan to
tackle—they simply begin writing with the first word or
phrase that comes to mind, and then they let the process
unfold from there. While you can work toward this point, if
you’re new to the medium of writing and are seeking to
unleash the writer within, plan your freewriting sessions
when you have a strong idea of your story or theme. The
most effective writing has thematic or narrative
consistency, and starting with a small germ of an idea may
help you achieve that consistency.
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writing-with-freewriting#5-tips-and-techniques-for-freewriting
 Conclusion
Freewriting is a means of teaching students that personal and
emotional aspects of the "self" are welcome and are often seen in
all types of writing, including academics. The "academic" writing
that one is taught in high school often discourages the use of the
personal or emotional to get a point across. What every reader
must realize is that there is a bit of "personal and emotional"
influence in every written work. If students "avoid personal or
emotional topics, a source of motivation and interest is lost"
(Connors 26), and they develop a resistance to writing anything.
Expressive writing, specifically freewriting, if taught correctly
can foster critical thinking skills in freshman composition
students. Therefore, dispelling the myth that freewriting is merely
a senseless activity that discourages students from learning
academic language. Freewriting, according to Peter Elbow,
professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst,
is "to write and not stop for anything. Go quickly without rushing.
Never stop to look back, to cross something out, to wonder how
to spell something, to wonder what word or thought to use, or
think about what you are doing".