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Monday, April 18, 2011

Graph Phobia – Its causes and guidelines to overcome it


Graph phobia is an unusual fear of writing or handwriting.  It is usually found among students, semi-literates, those who do not enjoy good command over language, and those who were de-motivated to write due to several other reasons.

Reasons for Graph Phobia: There are several reasons for graph phobia as mentioned below.  
  • Bad Hand Writing: Some may fear or feel shameful to show others their bad handwriting.
  • Bad Grammar and Spelling Mistakes: Some may not have good command over the language and may fear of committing spelling and grammatical mistakes.  Such people get naturally de-motivated to let others know their linguistic and writing inabilities.
  • Lack of Subject Knowledge: It is quite natural that people feel tense to write about topics with which they are not much acquainted.   
  • Fear of lower grade: Some may fear to attend a test or competition with a fear of getting lower grades.  Sometimes, if a person keeps on getting lower grades continuously over a period of time, he/she may hesitate and even fear to face a test or competition.  Such kind of fear is usually found among students.
  • Gap between Thinking & Writing Process: Some may feel frustrated while writing as their writing or typing speed is not par with the speed of their thought process.  Such gap may frustrate the writer and may de-motivate the writer not to write anything in future.
Take the help of computers as most children can type long before they can handwrite at any satisfactory speed.  Elementary students who show any writing phobia should not be given graded assignments in writing. Writing should become a fun activity.

How to come out of Graph Phobia:

Following are some of the guidelines to come out of Graph Phobia: 
  • If your bad handwriting is the cause of your phobia, do not write anything by your hand but use a computer to write something.  Moreover, you join some hand writing training sessions in order to improve your handwriting.
  • If you are de-motivated due to the spellings and grammar mistakes that may occur in your writing, do not write on a paper, but instead type your content in Ms-Word file.  The Ms-Word file displays the spelling mistakes with green lines and grammar mistakes with red lines.  It even suggests correct spellings and correct grammatical versions of the wrong sentences. Thus, it helps you to cover-up and overcome your linguistic inabilities. You can also take the help of free grammar and spell checkers that are available online.
(However, this suggestion has some limitations too as Ms-Word supports only English)
  • If you are de-motivated due to the spellings and grammar mistakes that may occur in your writing, try to get your writings edited by a language expert or at least a friend.  You too put efforts personally to improve your language.
  • If lack of subject awareness is the cause of your phobia, try to improve your knowledge about the concerned issue about which you are supposed to write.  Internet is the best option to know about various unknown concepts time to time.
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  • While attending tests or writing competitions, stop bothering about grades.  Do your best in the tests and writing competitions and always remember that “You are concerned with work but not with result”.  You perform root cause analysis and try to identify the factor that is causing you to get lower grade and rectify the error.
  • Some writers often feel frustrated while writing as their writing or typing speed is not par with the speed of their thought process.  Such frustration may de-motivate the writer to write something. If you face such situation, prefer typing instead of writing hand.  Try to improve your typing speed by learning typing/DTP techniques. Practice DTP for at least half an hour a day.
  • Practice free writing technique.  Some psychologists and counselors suggest as the best exercise for curing Graph Phobia.
(Do you want to know about Free Writing, visit: http://csrkingdom.blogspot.com/2011/04/free-writing-introduction.html

Contact: S. Chandrashekara Reddy

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