ABSTRACT
A student in tears is a depressing sight. From time to time, towards the beginning of the academic year – say in mid-October – a woebegone first year may be found hovering around at the end of a lecture, when everyone else has gone. After paper hankies and a sympathetic ear have been provided, it emerges that the student is upset because she has been asked to produce a piece of writing – a story, let’s say – and later on, to share her first draft with a fellow student with a view to developing it further. So far, it isn’t too difficult to understand her anxieties, but sometimes I have found that the next statement stretches sympathy to the utmost. It goes something like this: ‘I want to work with little ones and I came on to a primary course because I thought I would only have to teach them sentences and where to put full stops and capital letters.’
