Response to Readings for 3 Mar 08

“Teach Writing as a Process Not Product” by Murray

Murray addresses composition teachers as he advocates a change in the way we typically see writing instruction. Rather than viewing an established text as something to model, he suggests we allow students the time and space to develop their own ideas. On one hand, I have to agree with Murray that each student must develop in his/her own way. Every one of us is unique and therefore will go about the invention process a little differently. For example, my version of the “prewriting” process always involves a great deal of chocolate eating and house cleaning. I’m not proud of my dependence on the two activities which are necessary to my creativity, but there you have it. I also see value in Murray’s assertion that we shouldn’t rely on the modes of discourse, although I think some discussion of modes is important if students are truly going to be able to respond to “audience demand” (6).

On the other hand, though, I have to wonder how we could best incorporate Murray’s ideas into a typical semester of composition. First, we typically don’t have the time to allow students “the opportunity to write all the drafts necessary for him to discover what he has to say” (5). Our students must accomplish certain requirements before the end of the semester, so we have to move their writing process forward. Second, I think Murray discounts the potential value in modeling the writing process when he asks us not to do any prewriting for students. I understand we shouldn’t tell students what to write, but students often benefit from seeing how another writer approaches the process. In a class I took, for instance, the professor wrote his own paper as we were writing our required texts for his class. Seeing how the professor went about the different tasks was very enlightening to me.

“Writing as a Mode of Learning” by Emig

Showing how the traditional kinesthetic, visual, and auditory styles of learning are combined in the act of writing, Emig makes an interesting case for writing as an all-encompassing – and thus unique – form of education. I have to admit I never really thought of writing in the way that Emig does in her article, but I can now see how writing does involve most of the senses. This idea is very intriguing to me because I believe students learn best when they are engaged on multiple sensory levels in an activity. Since it was also Emig (in Reynolds et al’s article for our 4 Feb 08 readings) who suggested writing should be seen as “composing,” I would like to read more of Emig’s work when I can. (Although, I’m sure Hillocks might not share my enthusiasm for Emig since she doesn’t support his view of experimental research.)

I also appreciate the way Emig’s list shows the differences we need to be aware of when using talking as prewriting. For example, she points out that talking is natural – a premise that is well covered in Stephen Pinker’s The Language Instinct – while writing is acquired. This affinity for talking is one of the reasons I like to engage with groups in a face-to-face session because it seems more natural than trying to conduct a discussion online. At the same time, it would not be helpful to simply record what we said. Instead, the group members would have to reflect on the conversation and have the time to write about their observations. Item number five on Emig’s list of differences (9) seems to conflict with Perl’s study, however, because Perl demonstrates that writing is possibly as “redundant” (by which I mean there is reiteration) as talking can be.

“The Composing Processes of Unskilled College Writers” by Perl

Focusing on less developed writers, Perl provides us with a quantitative analysis of individual writing processes. Her overall message is that writing teachers can misjudge the needs of unskilled writers, spending too much time on the technical aspects of a product versus addressing the more important issues in a student’s approach to the process. I have to admit that I recoiled initially when I skimmed Perl’s article. I assumed (wrongly) that I would not take much away from a piece full of charts and tables and coding structures. I was pleasantly surprised by all of the “ah-ha” moments I had while reading Perl’s explanations for the data.

For me, the most interesting aspect was the section about “miscue analysis” (24). From my experience in the UNLV writing center, I already knew that weaker writers often misread the text from their own papers. This is the very reason why we always had students read their papers aloud during their visits to the writing center. Still, I could never figure out why a student continued to misread their paper even after I had asked them to slow down or highlighted areas they tended to change when they verbalized the text. It was as if the students could not understand or see the words on the page. Perl shows in her analysis, though, that this is a natural tendency for some writers. The information about miscuing also made me wonder if there are writers who compose aloud in vernacular English while encoding in SWE. In other words, could a student compose aloud using the word “axe” but literally write down “ask” or vice versa? This would be an interesting study from the aspect of code switching.

Another interesting idea in Perl’s piece is the premise that writing is possibly more recursive than we might think. The observed behavior in the study certainly indicates that it might be. As I mentioned earlier, since the writers in the study were asked to compose aloud while writing, this also appears to contradict one of Emig’s differentiations between writing and talking. It makes me question if the talking (composing aloud) required in Perl’s study may have actually influenced or increased the recursiveness of the writing process.

“Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers” by Sommers

Sommers illustrates the different ways in which student writers and experienced writers view revision. She explains that revision is a process that should be taught because it is ignored in current models. I think Sommers made several good points about the way student writers often get bogged down in the weeds when they need to be looking at the forest. For example, my own students have a rough time with peer reviews at first. They will usually point out mechanical errors and ignore the fact that the writer has completely missed the purpose of the assignment. It takes me a while to convince my students that they have to think globally when they revise. So, I definitely understand what Sommers is saying, although part of the difference between student writers and experienced writers is exactly that – experience.

I do have to confess, however, that I was perplexed by the semantics in the article. Sommers insists that revising is not rewriting; however, she goes on to use the terms interchangeably in her piece. For instance, she states, “Each writer…rewrote each essay twice…Each writer was interviewed three times after the final revision” (45). Furthermore, when demonstrating the enlarged view of revision that experienced writers possess, Sommers shows that four out of the six writers call revision “rewriting” (49). I realize this is a minor distraction, but I had to keep re-reading passages to ensure I hadn’t missed something.

“What Works in Teaching Composition: A Meta-analysis of Experimental Treatment Studies” by Hillocks

Refuting claims that research on experimental methods has no value for composition teachers, Hillocks performs a quantitative meta-analysis of various studies. While his article is difficult to read at times due to the volume of methodological terms, Hillocks clearly illustrates how experimental research can inform writing instruction. I struggled a bit with the terminology, but I found Hillocks’s article to be extremely eye-opening. He practically sets Elbow’s theory of writing without instruction on its ear because Hillocks’s data reflects teaching practices, such as the “natural process” (143) are not as effective as we might suppose.

I could not help trying to situate my teaching behavior into the different modes of instruction as I was reading the article. I would guess that I fall somewhere in a gray area between the presentational mode and the environmental mode most of the time. As an instructor, I was trained in Instructional System Design (ISD), so I tend to set specific objectives for my students, but I also try to allow the students to gain hands-on experience after a short discussion in class. In truth, my determination would really depend on the class session because some days I feel I need to provide more instruction than I do on other days. Overall, I was happy to see that the environmental mode is actually more effective than I would have thought.

The only aspect of Hillocks’s piece that confused me was his statement that “…although we know that the environmental mode appears significantly more effective than other modes, we do not know how it interacts with the various focuses of instruction” (163). I might be oversimplifying here, but to me it seems fairly obvious that certain focuses of instruction would fit seamlessly with specific modes of instruction. In other words, wouldn’t an instructor using the environmental mode tend to focus more on models or inquiry? And wouldn’t an instructor using the natural process mode tend to focus on freewriting, etc? At least that’s what the results of the meta-analysis implied to me.