What's so hard about the academic essay?

From reading chapter 2 of Engaging Ideas, I found it helpful that Bean identifies the reasons that students struggle so much to write the academic essay. For some, the misconception of how one writes a paper or why one writes a paper might cause problems. For others, the underdeveloped ability to think abstractly or to consider another person’s perspective—limiting their ability to write for an audience—might cause problems. I think it is relatively easy to correct students’ misconceptions about writing—the instructor can simply explain the goals of the assignment and describe the writing process. It is much more difficult to get some students to master complicated skills. I appreciate Bean’s list of what instructors can do to help their students think abstractly and consider their audience. Instructors can present writing as a process. I never fully considered the benefit of teaching a process model of writing before. From my tutoring experience in the writing lab, I get the sense that students aren’t accustomed to revising their papers. Most students I talk with seem to think that there is writing and editing with little work in between. So it’s no wonder that they find analytical writing so difficult—most scholars cannot write a successful analytical essay in one draft. Nor can students fully develop their ideas and adequately consider their audience and meet the other criteria of a well written essay in one draft. The best way for students to improve their ability to think on a deeper level is practice and, thankfully, the process model of writing provides that.