Week of 3/3

Murray: “Teach Writing as a Process Not Product”

Summary:
Training us to be literary critics prepares us to “dissect” students’ writing but not to teach them how to improve the product/essay (3). We must shift the focus from the product to the process by which the product is constructed if we wish to design a “curriculum that works” (3). For Murray, writing is a “process of using language to learn about our world, to evaluate what we learn about our world, to communicate what we learn about our world” (4).

Murray outlines the three stages of the writing process, and he defines and analyzes each. Next, he considers how to “motivate . . . students to pass through this process . . . perhaps . . . again and again on the same piece of writing” (5). Murray notes the qualities necessary for teaching writing as process rather than as product, and he finally moves on to outline ten implications for the composition curriculum of teaching writing as a process.

Musings:
Well, I fail to understand how this approach removes the focus from the product. After all, the student doesn’t hand in a process, and the instructor doesn’t grade a process. Grading component parts of the process (e.g., prewriting, bibliographies, rewrites) doesn’t shift the focus from the product—it just creates bunches of little sub-products to be graded separately. Grading a portfolio at the end of the semester just shifts attention to a different product. And, in fact, by implication #6 the focus has shifted to the artifact—that is, assuming that the first use of “product” in the last sentence of implication #5 is an editorial error; if it’s not, then the focus shifts in implication #5. Moreover, contrary to implication #10, there are “rules” and “absolutes” (6). The rules include deadlines and due dates, format and style guides. The absolutes include the grade and the institutional requirements (number of words or papers that must be completed by the end of the semester, etc.).

Of course, these problems may not in fact be inherent to process-focused composition at all. Perhaps they instead arise due to the institutional context in which composition classes are required. If that’s the case, then process-focused composition might actually work outside the institutional setting—à la Elbow’s teacherless classroom. But I’m skeptical, and I suspect that skepticism’s linked to the idea that writing is supposed to produce knowledge. It seems to me that this claim just extends modernism’s Cartesian project(s) into the realm of writing.

Emig: “Writing as a Mode of Learning”

Summary:
For Emig, writing provides a “unique mode of learning” (7) because it is a “second-order process” involving “originating and creating a unique verbal construct that is graphically recorded,” with “originating” and “creating” being understood as distinct, “separable processes” (8). Emig moves on to outline 11 differences between writing and talking. Next, she outlines the correspondences between learning and writing. First, she says that like learning, writing requires that “all three ways of dealing with actuality . . . are deployed” (10). Writing requires the use of both of the brain’s hemispheres, encouraging linear, emotional, intuitional, analytic, epigenetic, and synthetic processes. It offers a visual product for the writer to evaluate and re-vision, and requires explicit subjects, unlike primarily “predicative” self-talk (12). Moreover, unlike listening, writers (who become readers as they write) can control the pace at which they re-vision. Unlike speaking, writing is, according to Emig, a practice, an action, and it is “more self-reliant than speaking” (13). Writing, also unlike speaking, allows us to connect past, present, and future aspects of “our experience to make meaning” (13).

Musings:
Emig doesn’t deal adequately with the first “distinction” that “should logically and theoretically” be considered (7): the distinction “between . . . writing and all other verbal language processes—listening, reading, and especially talking” (7). Here’s the thing: While “talking is natural, even irrepressible, behavior” (9), language use is not. Language use is learned behavior, just as writing is. It seems to me that talking is not in fact distinct from writing in the way that Emig wants to claim it is, unless by “talking” Emig just means “making noises with the vocal chords, lips, teeth, palate, and tongue.” Thus the claim, “Writing then is an artificial process; talking is not” is only true insofar as “writing” by definition involves using culturally significant symbols and “talking” by definition does not involve using culturally significant noises or sounds (Obviously, I don't theink that using technology is unnatural for human beings any more than I think it is for beavers and apes.).

Although the learning processes by which one learns to vocalize language are largely unconscious and those used to graphically represent culturally meaningful symbols usually are not, this difference does not mean what’s being learned in each process is fundamentally different.

Sometimes we do need to be explicitly taught about language use, even if it’s not written, or no one’s mouth would ever be washed out with soap. And sometimes we do not need to be explicitly taught about aspects of writing. Sometimes we just do it by imitation, without even knowing what we’re doing. Thus, just as vocal language use is largely imitative, written language use can be as well.

Additionally, Emig’s claim that “throughout history, an aura, an ambience, a mystique has usually encircled the written word; the spoken word has for the most part proved ephemeral and treated mundanely” (9-10) cannot be verified, since we cannot know how the spoken word was treated before the invention of writing. More importantly, her claim is ethnocentric and ahistorical; it’s possible to point to past and existing cultures that revere oral transmissions and in which both words and those who utter them are “encircled” by “an aura, an ambience, a mystique” that sets them apart from the everyday and the “mundane”—right off the top of my head, I’m thinking about the Greeks, some Native American groups and indigenous Australian cultures, as well as the Christians who believe that the originating act of creation was the spoken word…You know, the whole “God said” thing in Genesis.

The idea that writing is “naked as a medium” is also a bit perplexing. First, I am not sure what this means. If it means that writing is transparent, well, plenty of theorists since Augustine have dealt with that claim. And what does it mean to say that “[w]ith writing, the audience is usually absent” (9)? What about the idea that the audience is constructed by the text?

I guess some of my difficulties with this article can best be summed up by saying that it was written a long time ago. Many of the assertions I find so troubling were, perhaps, not so difficult to accept when Emig wrote the article, but upon examination in light of relevant available information today, they are not convincing. I do not mean to claim that there are no significant differences between written and spoken language. There are, beginning, but not ending, with the fact that one leaves behind an artifact and the other doesn’t. I just don’t think Emig’s nailed the significance(s) of the differences for composition education in this article.

Perl: “The Composing Processes of Unskilled College Writers”

Summary:
Perl notes two particular shortcomings with writing-process research: the methodological problem of relying on “[n]arrative descriptions of composing” and the population problem of studying only skilled or “ ‘average’ ” writers (18). Her study is designed to address both of those problems, the first by “rendering the composing process as a sequence of observable and scorable behaviors” and the second by studying a population of those whose writing samples allowed them to be identified as unskilled writers and who were willing to participate (18).

The goal of Perl’s research was to “devise a tool for describing the movements that occur during composing” by collecting “three kinds of data” (19), only two sets of which are provided in the article, and by searching for patterns in the composing process. Identifiable processes are coded for in order to allow for graphic depiction of “duration and sequence” of processes along one-minute time intervals allowing the researchers to chart a variety of information about how, but not what, each subject wrote and what behaviors each engaged in at different moments during the process. Miscue analysis was adapted to “provide insight into the writing process” (24). Three categories of miscues were identified for encoding, and four for decoding, with encoding and decoding being functions of whether the student spoke as s/he wrote or read aloud what s/he had written, and two content styles were used: extensive (impersonal) and reflexive (personal/subjective).

After Perl identifies her population and lays out her method, coding procedures, and content, she provides a case study, including background of the subject. Then she moves to a summary of the findings across her population. Perl concludes that although the products of beginning writers’ processes may appear random, there is little randomness about the processes they deploy to write. Moreover, she says, although it may seem as though students sometimes began writing “prematurely,” in fact writing often helped them clarify their topic in ways that allowed them to use writing as a planning strategy. The study demonstrated that writing is a recursive process for “unskilled” writers, one that “always involves some measure of both construction and discovery” (35). The study also showed that students edited throughout composing processes focusing on a variety of concerns, but that their skill sets were inadequate to the “complicated structures they produced” (36). These writers also often assumed that their audience had access to information that it didn’t.

Perl’s final section delineates the implications of her research for teaching and further research. One of the most important, she says, is that focus on the “surface features” of the unskilled writers’ texts that “interfere with the extraction of meaning from the page” leads to pedagogical methods and foci that “cut off” the “excitement of composing, of constructing and discovering meaning . . . almost before it has begun” (38). The study suggests that teachers must identify what habits their students have, and which of those habits “inhibit” and which “facilitate” writing. The successful coding of process components also provides a tool for “longitudinal study of the writing process” and for comparative study of the process “across individuals” (39). Finally, Perl claims that the study shows that composing is “the carrying forward of an implicit sense into explicit form” (39).

Musings:
I don’t really know what to say about this. I’m interested in knowing a few more things: Are the findings the same across gender? Class? Race? Ethnicity? Pretty much the same questions I had after reading the last empirical study. Doesn’t this come back to the issue we began to approach last week in class: Is writing a science or an art? It sure seems to me as though these kinds of studies assume that it’s a science. But maybe I’m being too hard on the researchers. I like the fact that they allowed for two different kinds of content. But on the other hand, if the subjects know that they’re being studied, mightn’t they adjust their processes to align with what they believe the researchers want to see? I’m always, I guess, a little leery of studies in which the populations know they’re being studied.

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

Summary:
Sommers hopes that her research will fill in a gap in composition research by addressing revision strategies, an area she says “has been noticeably absent” (43), because, she hypothesizes, linear paradigms of composition that “model themselves on speech” neglect to account for composition’s “recursive shaping of thought by language” (43). For Sommers, revision is not a separate stage that takes place at the end of the writing process as it must be for those who model composition on speech. For Sommers, as for Barthes, “[t]he spoken word cannot be revised” (45), and this is what distinguishes speech from writing. Sommers’ work led her to redefine revision as “a sequence of changes in a composition—changes which are initiated by cues and occur continually throughout the writing of a work” (45).

Like all of the empirical studies we’ve seen so far, Sommers follows the traditional APA style guide, first providing an outline of methodology and definitions. Her subjects wrote in three modes, three drafts of each essay. Data were gathered by interviewing the subjects after they completed each final draft of each essay. Each subject also provide suggestions for revision on anonymously written essays.

Changes in each draft of each essay were counted and categorized, resulting in the identification of four revision strategies and four levels of revision. Results were coded for frequency of level and strategy. Researchers developed a “scale of concerns” for each subject by examining transcripts of tapes on which subjects interpreted their revisions” (46).

Students refused the terms “revision” and “rewriting,” opting instead for more descriptive names for what they did. Experienced adult writers, on the other hand, did not reject “rewrite.” In fact, they seemed to accept the name and define the activity descriptively according to their intentions. Student writers focused more on word-level revision, while experienced writers concentrated on structure, argument, and conceptualization and actually revise more on sentence levels. Students’ revision practices are rule-bound; experienced writers’ practices are tied to discovery. Students approach revision as the last step in a linear process; experienced writers approach it as a continual, recursive part of the writing process.

Sommers concludes that the revision strategies of student writers are attempts to “bring their essays into congruence with a predefined meaning,” while those of experienced writers are “part of the process of discovering meaning” (51). Sommers says that this “sense of writing as discovery” is what students do not have and yet what they need most.

Musings:
I find it a little amusing that Sommers bases her study in part on Barthes’ ideas and yet calls the product of the compositional process “a work” (45). Hel-lo. “From Work to Text,” anyone?

The other thing I’d like to address is Sommers’ equivocation between discovering meaning (implying that it already exists and must be found by the writer) and creating meaning (implying that the writer embeds meaning into the text) (51). I reject both of these characterizations of meaning. Isn’t meaning a relationship with at least 3 terms—the writer, the text (or sign), and the reader (even if the reader is also the writer)? Isn’t meaning-making a process also involving re-vision (in Adrienne Rich’s sense)? Moreover, meaning is not just a function of difference; similitude is also a factor, or why do we bother talking about intertextuality? Allusion? Plagiarism?

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

Summary:
Meta-analysis of research from 1963-1982. Hillocks notes that experimental research into writing practices has been widely condemned and offers his reasons for proceeding with his meta-analysis. His primary reason is to see whether or not the criticism is warranted. He says that if it is, he will find heterogeneity. He also says that a new examination of the studies is warranted because so many of them have been done, many of those that have been done have “heeded the advice” proffered by past critics, and new techniques for “integrating results” have been developed (134).

Hillocks’ review examines all of the experimental studies published during the period in question, including “mimeographed” studies (134), but includes only those that met specific criteria. The studies considered had to involve “treatment” leading to a “posttest”; they had to measure writing quality according to a scale (although not a specific scale); they had to provide some control for “teacher bias”; and they had to somehow account for differences among student subjects (135). However, the latter criterion “could not be applied systematically” (136). Finally, to be included, studies had to provide some measure of reliability and validity (136).

Hillocks differentiates between four instructional modes: the presentational mode, the natural process mode, the environmental mode, and the individualized mode. He also outlines the characteristics of each, providing an example for clarification of the first three. According to Hillocks’ results, the environmental mode has the highest gains of the four modes.

Hillocks understands the writing process as linear, as indicated in the introductory paragraph of the section headed “Focus of Instruction,” in which he asserts that certain activities follow writing. In this section, Hillocks identifies several treatments and discusses how many of the studies used them; he notes that he only considered studies that did not use the same treatment with the control group.

The findings are not very surprising. The presentational mode doesn’t work, and the environmental approach does. A heavy emphasis on grammar inhibits students, a focus on models is useful as long as it’s not the exclusive focus, and providing rubrics (which is what I understand “scales” to mean) helps students use criteria systematically, which helps them to improve their writing. Nor does it surprise me that the process paradigm and its lack of instructional guidance don’t provide the best method of encouraging student writing and fostering the development of writing skills. Parker Palmer and Peter Elbow might make everyone feel good, but when all is said and done, I’ve never written anything as they advocate, and I don’t know anyone who has. Except, perhaps, them. Oooh. That sounds snotty. Sorry. Sort of.

Hillocks closes with some suggestions for future research and by concluding that Graves and Emig are mistaken. Contrary to their claims, he says, experimental treatments can be transferred from one classroom environment to another.

Musings:
I guess the first thing I should say is that much of the beginning of this article is gobbledygook as far as I’m concerned. Since I have no background at all in statistics, I really can’t evaluate what’s being done, and if I can’t evaluate what’s being done, I can’t comment on the results. I went to the textbook I consulted before, and I found no help.

I really don’t get removing results because they deviate more than one would like. Removing studies because they’re anomalous seems arbitrary to me. In fact, I often find that the most interesting things happen when one considers anomalies as starting points. I’ve read and reread Hillocks’ explanation, and finally, I must admit that I just don’t understand. Since I don’t understand why he removed results that create heterogeneous results, I can’t evaluate his conclusions regarding Graves and Emig.

That being said, what I find missing from this article is what is meant by “instructional effectiveness.” I assume it has something to do with the products of the modes and foci of instruction, but I remain uncertain as to what he means. Does he mean that the writing improved? If so, by what measure? I should probably reread the article (again), because I’m sure it’s in there somewhere—probably close to where my eyes glazed over.

I’m still finding it somewhat troubling that the only kind of writing being studied is academic writing in academic contexts. Most of the writing people do is not academic, nor is it written in academic contexts. I guess I’m trying to point out that the most we can learn from these studies is how people write in academic contexts, contexts that the student subjects almost certainly associate with correctness and grading. Now, I know that’s the context in which we teach writing, but I’m wary of research that purports to tell us how people write when what it’s really telling us is how students write. At least Sommers’ study has the advantage of considering how people other than students write—although the fact that they’re professional (not merely experienced) writers dampens my enthusiasm somewhat.

Peace to all.