Resumen de Kate's Story:: Helping a Student with Essay Writing
In this essay, I consider ways of helping students with writing assignments for higher education through individual ‘study counselling’. Examples of activities I use are given, together with some of the rationale for my approach, in relation to my work with a particular student, ‘Kate’, who came with a writing block. 1 go on to relate this work to what I came to think of as Kate's ‘story’, a brief narrative about her childhood in Northern Ireland, which made me see the nature of her study difficulties and the help she needed in a new light. Here, I focus particularly on two well‐rehearsed precepts of study counselling: the importance of confidence for learning, and the need to start from the student's own position. This, then, is an account of reflection on practice, on the part of both the student and the tutor.
