User:Jadams46/Writing process

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A writing process describes a sequence of physical and mental actions that people take as they produce any kind of text. By focusing on the writing process, learners come to understand themselves more and find how to work through the writing. They may explore what strategies conform to their style of learning.Writers focus on syntax, grammar, context, mechanics (spelling, punctuation, handwriting, etc.), organization, word choice, audience and purpose in order to generate clear, fluent and effective communication ideas (p.6). Therefore, teaching writing is also a process that involves all of these areas of languages.

Historical

In 1972, Donald M. Murray published a brief manifesto titled "Teach Writing as a Process Not Product", in which he argued that English teachers' conventional training in literary criticism caused them to hold students' work to unhelpful standards of highly polished "finished writing". Teachers, he explained, ought to focus less on correcting students' written products and focus more on involving students in "discovery through language", which Murray believed for "most writers most of the time" involved a process: i.e., stages of "pre-writing, writing and rewriting". Though Murray was not alone in advocating process-based instruction, this manifesto is regarded as a landmark vocalization of the differences between process and product orientations in the teaching of writing. The teaching of writing to a large extent. These developments in writing research and writing theory lead to a more process oriented approach of writing. An important element in these models is not only the non-linearity of the process, but also the importance of the ‘task representation’ (Carey & Flower,1989). As Van Weijen, Van den Bergh, Rijlaarsdam and Sanders (2009) clearly explain: “At the start of the writing process, writers form a representation of the task at hand. Subsequently, this representation changes as they write under influence of various factors, such as topic knowledge, reading the text-produced-so-far, rereading the assignment, or generating new ideas.

These categories were theorized more fully in subsequent scholarship. For example, pre-writing was defined by Project English experimental researcher D. Gordon Rohman as the "sort of 'thinking' [that] precedes writing" and the "activity of mind which brings forth and develops ideas, plans, designs". According to Rohman, writing begins "at the point where the 'writing idea' is ready for the words and the page". Even today, much "process-based" teaching has continued to broadly conceptualize writing processes along these three phases. Some have linked this three-stage process to the five canons of rhetoric: pre-writing to invention and arrangement, writing to style, and revising to delivery and sometimes memory.

Contemporary Perspectives[edit]

The contemporary research on writing processes still accepts that some kind of process is necessarily involved in producing any written text, it now collectively endorses "the fundamental idea that no certifiable or generalization writing process exists or could exist". In this view, "writing processes are historically dynamic – not psychic states, cognitive routines, or neutral social relationships". In terms of "pre-writing", for instance, writing processes often begin long before any visible documentation work or easily categorization steps are observable. From the contemporary perspective of composition studies, it is thus inaccurate to assume that any authentic writing process (i.e., one not contrived as part of a school assignment or laboratory setting) necessarily involves a linear sequence of "stages". Rather different kinds of activities emerge as overlapping parts of a complex whole or parts of a repeating process that can be repeated multiple times throughout anyone's process of composing a particular document. For example, writers routinely discover that editorial changes trigger brainstorming and a change of purpose; that drafting is temporarily interrupted to correct a misspelling; or that the boundary between pre-writing and drafting is less than obvious.

Approaches to process[edit]

Writing process has been described by composition scholars in a variety of ways with attention to "developmental, expressive, and social" elements.

Cognitive process theory of writing (Flower–Hayes model)[edit]

See also: Cognitive and linguistic theories of composition

Overview of cognitive model[edit]

Linda Flower ( a composition theorist known in the field of cognitive rhetoric) and John R. Hayes extended Bitzer's rhetorical situation and developed a set of heuristics that framed the writing process as a series of rhetorical problems to be solved. The heuristics focus on the generation and the structuring of ideas. Writers should choose goals with built-in guidelines that lead their content into certain directions. While generating ideas, four viable techniques are to write ideas without editing or filtering, to play out scenarios discussing the topic, to generate analogies, and to rest on ideas. When a writer is looking to push their ideas they should try to find cue words to tie complex ideas together, to teach the ideas to another person, to tree ideas into classifications of organization, and to read their own writing as if they'd never seen it before. The last tool is to write for a specific audience by finding common ground with them.

Flower and Hayes further developed the cognitive model in "The Cognition of Discovery" by observing writers in order to learn how they generate meaning. They outlined the rhetorical problem as a list of what a writer may address or consider. In doing so, they created a model for the rhetorical problem that can be split up into two main categories: The rhetorical situation and the writer's own goals.The rhetorical situation is what motivates a writer to create ideas. The writer's own goals are what guide how ideas are formed. The rhetorical situation is further split into the purpose of the writing, and who will be reading it. The writer's own goals are split into how the reader is affected, the persona the writer uses, the meaning the writer can create, and implementation of writing conventions.

They came to three results from their study, which suggests that good writers envelop the three following characteristics when solving their rhetorical problems:

1. Good writers respond to all of the rhetorical problems
2. Good writers build their problem representation by creating a particularly rich network of goals for affecting a reader; and
3. Good writers represent the problem not only in more breadth but in more depth.

Flower and Hayes suggest that composition instructors need to consider showing students how "to explore and define their own problems, even within the constraints of an assignment". They believe that "writers discover what they want to do by insistently, energetically exploring the entire problem before them and building for themselves a unique image of the problem they want to solve."

Writing is a complex cognitive skill, not a body of knowledge, teaching writers to analyze the product often fails to intervene at a meaningful stage in the writer's performance. Such teaching a teaching gap because it has little to say about the techniques and thinking process of writing a student (or anyone else). Our cognitive process theory rests on four key points, which this paper will develop:

1. The process of writing is best understood as a set of distinctive thinking processes which writers orchestrate or organize during the act of com- posing.

2. These processes have a hierarchical, highly embedded organization in which any given process can be embedded within any other.

3. The act of composing itself is a goal-directed thinking process, guided by the writer's own growing network of goals.

4. Writers create their own goals in two key ways: by generating both high-level goals and supporting sub-goals which embody the writer's developing sense of purpose, and then, at times, by changing major goals or even establishing entirely

Marlene Scardamalia and Carl Bereiter have looked at the ways children cope with the cognitive demands of writing. Well-learned skills, such as sentence construction, tend to become automatic and lost to consciousness. Because so little of the writing process is automatic for children, they must devote conscious attention to a variety of individual thinking tasks which adults perform quickly and automatically. Such studies, which trace the development of a given skill over several age groups, can show us the hidden components of an adult process as well as show us how children learn.

Historical approaches to composition and process[edit]

A historical response to process is concerned primarily with the manner in which writing has been shaped and governed by historical and social forces. These forces are dynamic and contextual, and therefore render any static iteration of process unlikely.

Notable scholars that have conducted this type of inquiry include media theorists such as Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, Gregory Ulmer, and Cynthia Selfe. Much of McLuhan's work, for example, centered around the impact of written language on oral cultures, degrees to which various media are accessible and interactive, and the ways in which electronic media determine communication patterns. His evaluation of technology as a shaper of human societies and psyches indicates a strong connection between historical forces and literacy practices.

Criticism of cognitive model[edit]

Patricia Bizzell ( a professor with a PhD in English and former president of Rhetoric Society of America) argues that even though educators may have an understanding of "how" the writing process occurs, educators shouldn't assume that this knowledge can answer the question "about 'why' the writer makes certain choices in certain situations", since writing is always situated within a discourse community. She discusses how the Flower and Hayes model relies on what is called the process of "translating ideas into visible language". This process occurs when students "treat written English as a set of containers into which we pour meaning". Bizzell contends that this process "remains the emptiest box" in the cognitive process model, since it de-contextualizes the original context of the written text, negating the original. She argues, "Writing does not so much contribute to thinking as provide an occasion for thinking."

Social model of writing process[edit]

"The aim of collaborative learning helps students to find more control in their learning situation.

The social model of writing relies on the relationship between the writers and readers for the purpose of creating meaning. "Writers seldom write exactly what they mean and readers seldom interpret a writer's words exactly as the writer intended."

Even grammar has a social turn in writing: "It may be that to fully account for the contempt that some errors of usage arouse, we will have to understand better than we do the relationship between language, order, and those deep psychic forces that perceived linguistic violations seem to arouse in otherwise amiable people". So one can't simply say a thing is right or wrong. There is a difference of degrees attributed to social forces.

Expressivist process theory of writing[edit]

According to the expressivist theory, the process of writing is centered on the writer's transformation. This involves the writer changing in the sense that voice and identity are established and the writer has a sense of his or her self. Writing is a process used to create meaning, according to expressivist pedagogy. An author’s sense of self is emphasized for bringing social change. This theory became popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s. According to Richard Fulkerson's article "Four Philosophies of Composition", the focus of expressionism is for writers to have "... an interesting, credible, honest, and personal voice". Moreover, proponents of the expressivist process view this theory as a way for students to become fulfilled and healthy both emotionally and mentally. Those who teach this process often focus on journalist and other classroom activities to focus on student self-discovery and at times, low-stakes writing. Prominent figures in the field include John Dixon, Ken Macrorie, Lou Kelly, Donald C. Stewart and Peter Elbow.

Process Writing Approach(PWA)

PWA suggests a systematic procedure for writing. It presents a clear to-do list for each step of writing because it views writing as a combination of separate language functions or areas. PWA refers to a broad range of strategies that include pre-writing activities such as defining the audience, using a variety of resources, planning the writing, as well as drafting and revising. It is a common fact that writing is a recursive process in which students plan what to write, write down their ideas and review what they have written. In PWA, students have a chance to accomplish their writing process along with suitable feedback both from their instructors and peers. In PWA, students are planners, writers, feedback providers and editors, First of all, they think and organize their writing before they begin to jot down it. Secondly, they check and assess their own and friend’s drafts after writing their drafts. They explain their ideas about the draft and suggest changing something or correcting errors in it. Therefore, students are required to think critically and objectively as well as to reflect on what they have learned during the class. As a result, PWA encourages students to assume responsibility for their writing development.

Placing responsibility on students for their learning is not one and only benefit of PWA. There are other advantages, some of which are summarized as follows:

1. It heartens learners to feel free to transmit their own thoughts or emotions in written messages by supplying them with time and opportunity to rethink and revise their text, and it makes them seek help from outside resources like the instructor at each stage.
2. It focuses the process which writers go through in forming texts.
3. It brightens collaborative group work among learners as a way of enlarging motivation and having positive attitudes towards writing.
4. It encourages the development of skilled language use and a series of attractive classroom techniques.
5. It gets learners to transfers comments or responses

When the details of these different ideas about the stages of PWA are examined, it is seen that the stages are the same, but the specialists prefer different names for them. It is obvious that PWA is mainly composed of five stages which are planning/pre-writing, drafting/writing, revising, editing and publishing/proofreading/sharing. For the purpose of this paper, it is determined that PWA is a set of stages such as pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading.

Disadvantages:

As such, the learning environment does not force the students to follow a specific learning path and allows them to explore the learning materials in line with their learning style. Moreover, the quality of the texts produced is similar for participants with different learning styles and irrespective of the path they choose. A novice is defined as a writer who may have sufficient domain or genre knowledge but lacks process and procedural skills to effectively and efficiently write a coherent text. For these novices, little of the writing process is automated and therefore they must devote close attention to a variety of tasks and processes simultaneously.