‘Fail better’: Reconsidering the role of struggle and failure in academic writing development in higher education

ABSTRACT

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better (Samuel Beckett). [Quoted in ‘Samuel Beckett Talks About Beckett’ by John Gruen, in Vogue, (December 1969), p. 210.]. ‘Fail Better’ is an approach which supports first-year students’ successful transition to higher education academic writing practices. ‘Fail Better’ uses a broadly academic literacies model of development to address students’ failure and struggle with writing. Rather than blaming students for ‘poor writing’, ‘Fail Better’ maintains that experiences of struggle and failure with academic writing are part of an inevitable and necessary process as students ‘write themselves’ into new disciplinary-based academic writing communities. The final part of the paper explores how subject lecturers, who are often not confident or willing writing developers, can, through the application of ‘Fail Better’ principles, offer their students a time-efficient, proactive and supportive model of writing development. It argues, moreover, that universities must reject deficit discourses around students’ struggles with academic writing and radically reconceptualise the issue of academic writing support in order to support students more effectively through their struggles and failures.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic writing development
• student identity and transition to higher education