Post by WIDboard on Sept 14, 2011 9:18:30 GMT -5
Essentials of Writing Pedagogy #1: Writing as a Process[/u]
Welcome to the first installment of Essentials of Writing Pedagogy, the WIDboard original series on writing instruction. Presented in each post in this series is one way to look at a major issue in writing pedagogy. Though we at WIDboard feel each of these posts will be a great introduction to the issue, a single post can by no means be exhaustive or representative of all concerns. You should feel free to read these posts and take from them whichever ideas seem useful to you, leaving behind those that don't. Let us know if you have any concerns. For now, enjoy EWP #1: Writing as a Process.
Process vs. Product
One of the most important parts of teaching writing is remembering that writing is a process, and not merely a product. As instructors, assistants, or graders it can be easy to forget this; after all, it is part of our job to be concerned with the final product that student present to us, regardless of how the students produced it. There is definitely some value in focusing on the product, especially when problems are addressed with the proper emphasis (see EWP #2), because students certainly need to be concerned with that product. The final product is how they will be evaluated in the professional world. Unfortunately, only correcting problems in products produced often fails to resolve any sort of large-scale or habitual challenges student writers may face.
Generally speaking, three issues that hamper product-only feedback are:
Failed Generalization: When feedback is given only regarding a specific product, students often perceive the error or suggestion to be relevant only to the particular piece of writing in question. Accordingly, they can struggle to extrapolate that concern to their writing as a whole and may not improve their future writing, despite having received specific feedback.
Delayed Application: When feedback is given only on a final product, there is often a significant delay before students turn in another writing assignment. In such cases, students may not accurately remember the concerns expressed or errors corrected by an instructor long enough to apply the feedback to their future writing. Additionally, if students are taught only to look for mistakes in the final product, then they miss out on the chance to catch their problems earlier on and prevent them from happening.
Process-based Problems: Many of the biggest issues in student writing (insufficient research, disorganization, flawed analysis) are issues that are inherently process-based problems. In essence, it is extremely difficult and time-consuming, if not impossible, to solve these issues simply by correcting a submitted product, because they may arise from problems in how students go about writing in the first place, not merely from what they have written. No amount of telling a student "Your paper is disorganized" will help without instruction as to how to organize the paper before it becomes scattered and confusing.
Therefore, we should strive for instructional focus on writing as process and throughout the process of writing.
”The Writing Process” vs. Writing as a Process
One of the hallmarks of high school writing instruction (and often college-level instruction, too) is the day when the instructor decides to teach “The Writing Process.” Usually, this day involves a step-by-step diagram of The Process that students should follow in creating their papers, with explanations of what each step must include. This day is great in that it attempts to teach writing as a process, but it fails in one crucial way: it teaches “The Writing Process” instead of writing as a process.
The critical difference between teaching “The Writing Process” and teaching writing as a process is variability. Proponents of “The Writing Process” believe that there is one “correct” way to go about writing, and that every writer should follow that exact process. Teachers of writing as a process, on the other hand, believe that there are many writing processes, and that each writer should find a process that works well for him or her. This does not mean, of course, that improvements cannot be made to writers’ processes. Nor does it mean that there are not certain stages common to most successful writers and certain stages frequently missing from the processes of unsuccessful writers. Instead, teaching writing as a process means teaching writers to think about how their own brains operate when they write. It is about teaching that each person needs to examine his or her own writing process, evaluate it, and determine how it might be improved. The writing-as-a-process model allows for multiple possibilities, thereby attempting to meet many learning needs and reduce the likelihood of student resistance.
Implications for Course, Assignment, and Lesson Designs
Choosing to teach writing as a process has several important implications for course, assignment, and lesson designs.
I. Taking Time to Teach Process: As instructors, we must set aside time early in the course to explicitly frame writing as a process, and to encourage our students to think of it as such. If we do not set aside this time, it will be difficult to teach it later on. This can take a similar form to the standard day-of-Writing-Process alluded to above, but should also include:
a. The idea that there are multiple processes, including a variety of models (see below for examples)
b. Time for students to discuss ways in which their processes might differ from “The Writing Process”;
c. Time for students to diagram their own writing processes;
d. Discussion of the importance of various stages; and
e. Discussion of conditions that might cause writing processes to change (e.g. time limits, discipline-specific formal or stylistic demands, etc.).
II. Writing at Multiple Stages: If writing is a process, we should design our courses and assignments to reflect that. We should design assignments that force students to check in before and after different stages of writing. We could ask students to:
a. Brainstorm and collaborate with one another (or the class as a whole) in pre-writing;
b. Work or consult with others on research;
c. Submit preliminary sources and ideas for how to use those sources to the instructor;
d. Develop working outlines of their writing that incorporate and/or evidence;
e. Give an oral or written account of where they are in the process of writing their papers; consider what they have done so far and what they still need to do in order to be successful; describe where they are in their processes;
f. Present working drafts to one another or submit them to the teacher for help;
g. Peer-review each others’ work at a variety of stages of completeness;
h. Along with submission of product, include a description of the process used to achieve that product and how it might be improved upon next time; alternately, this could be done after reception of instructor feedback, so as to guarantee a level of student processing of feedback received.
Implications for Assessment and Grading
Choosing to teach writing as a process also means that we need to assess, give feedback, and grade with an eye toward process, not just toward product.
I. Assess Process: Check in on and collect student drafts, outlines, source lists, etc. at multiple stages of the assignment, so as to be able to make some level of assessment of the student’s process as it’s happening.
II. Give Feedback on Process: Give suggestions for process-related improvements that might improve the student’s writing. Give advice on the types techniques the writer could use to improve. For example:
a. Product-only: “Your thoughts seem disorganized. Paragraph 5 is completely out of place. Arrange your paragraphs more coherently next time.”
b. Process-oriented: “Your thoughts seem disorganized. Consider outlining your paper in advance, as well as once or twice as you go along. That way, you’ll be able to see if your organization is holding up. Try outlining your paper right now, and see if you can tell why Paragraph 5 is out of place.”
III. Give Credit for Process: It may sound obvious, but we should give credit for process work that students do. If we are asking them to do a lot of work in advance of the final product that they’ve produced, we should let their grades reflect well-done process work. Additionally, surprisingly enough, some students care a lot about their grades! Whether we give a large or small amount of credit, as long as we give some credit, students will be forced to consider their processes in order to achieve the grades they desire.
Graphical representations of different writing processes:
Below are links to a few different models of how writing processes might look. You may find them useful in modeling different approaches, and helping students to think of writing as something that can be undertaken in different ways.
A fairly standard diagram of “The Writing Process” diagram:
daniellemcgaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/essay_flowchart.gif
Another similar diagram, now indicating that one might move back and forth between stages:
innovativeteachers.wikispaces.com/file/view/Writing_Process.gif/212263958/Writing_Process.gif
Cyclical diagrams:
edweb.sdsu.edu/courses/edtec596r/students/Marushige/WritingProcess.GIF
hs.doversherborn.org/ph/ritchiep/the_writing_process.gif
A cyclical diagram with a loop at revision and feedback:
www.uen.org/utahlink/tours/loadimg.cgi?p=/tour/13270/13270Jill_orb.gif
A more free-form diagram, indicating repetition but without rigid form:
www.icsd.k12.ny.us/highschool/library/htmlstyle/Image30.gif
_____________________________________________________________________
All of the above is an attempt to encourage WID instructors and Assistants to think about how to teach writing as a process, but it is by no means the only way to do so. Remember, as with all the Essentials of Writing Pedagogy, we encourage you to take what calls out to you here, consider it, and try to envision how you might apply it to your own classroom. Thanks for reading!
Welcome to the first installment of Essentials of Writing Pedagogy, the WIDboard original series on writing instruction. Presented in each post in this series is one way to look at a major issue in writing pedagogy. Though we at WIDboard feel each of these posts will be a great introduction to the issue, a single post can by no means be exhaustive or representative of all concerns. You should feel free to read these posts and take from them whichever ideas seem useful to you, leaving behind those that don't. Let us know if you have any concerns. For now, enjoy EWP #1: Writing as a Process.
Process vs. Product
One of the most important parts of teaching writing is remembering that writing is a process, and not merely a product. As instructors, assistants, or graders it can be easy to forget this; after all, it is part of our job to be concerned with the final product that student present to us, regardless of how the students produced it. There is definitely some value in focusing on the product, especially when problems are addressed with the proper emphasis (see EWP #2), because students certainly need to be concerned with that product. The final product is how they will be evaluated in the professional world. Unfortunately, only correcting problems in products produced often fails to resolve any sort of large-scale or habitual challenges student writers may face.
Generally speaking, three issues that hamper product-only feedback are:
Failed Generalization: When feedback is given only regarding a specific product, students often perceive the error or suggestion to be relevant only to the particular piece of writing in question. Accordingly, they can struggle to extrapolate that concern to their writing as a whole and may not improve their future writing, despite having received specific feedback.
Delayed Application: When feedback is given only on a final product, there is often a significant delay before students turn in another writing assignment. In such cases, students may not accurately remember the concerns expressed or errors corrected by an instructor long enough to apply the feedback to their future writing. Additionally, if students are taught only to look for mistakes in the final product, then they miss out on the chance to catch their problems earlier on and prevent them from happening.
Process-based Problems: Many of the biggest issues in student writing (insufficient research, disorganization, flawed analysis) are issues that are inherently process-based problems. In essence, it is extremely difficult and time-consuming, if not impossible, to solve these issues simply by correcting a submitted product, because they may arise from problems in how students go about writing in the first place, not merely from what they have written. No amount of telling a student "Your paper is disorganized" will help without instruction as to how to organize the paper before it becomes scattered and confusing.
Therefore, we should strive for instructional focus on writing as process and throughout the process of writing.
”The Writing Process” vs. Writing as a Process
One of the hallmarks of high school writing instruction (and often college-level instruction, too) is the day when the instructor decides to teach “The Writing Process.” Usually, this day involves a step-by-step diagram of The Process that students should follow in creating their papers, with explanations of what each step must include. This day is great in that it attempts to teach writing as a process, but it fails in one crucial way: it teaches “The Writing Process” instead of writing as a process.
The critical difference between teaching “The Writing Process” and teaching writing as a process is variability. Proponents of “The Writing Process” believe that there is one “correct” way to go about writing, and that every writer should follow that exact process. Teachers of writing as a process, on the other hand, believe that there are many writing processes, and that each writer should find a process that works well for him or her. This does not mean, of course, that improvements cannot be made to writers’ processes. Nor does it mean that there are not certain stages common to most successful writers and certain stages frequently missing from the processes of unsuccessful writers. Instead, teaching writing as a process means teaching writers to think about how their own brains operate when they write. It is about teaching that each person needs to examine his or her own writing process, evaluate it, and determine how it might be improved. The writing-as-a-process model allows for multiple possibilities, thereby attempting to meet many learning needs and reduce the likelihood of student resistance.
Implications for Course, Assignment, and Lesson Designs
Choosing to teach writing as a process has several important implications for course, assignment, and lesson designs.
I. Taking Time to Teach Process: As instructors, we must set aside time early in the course to explicitly frame writing as a process, and to encourage our students to think of it as such. If we do not set aside this time, it will be difficult to teach it later on. This can take a similar form to the standard day-of-Writing-Process alluded to above, but should also include:
a. The idea that there are multiple processes, including a variety of models (see below for examples)
b. Time for students to discuss ways in which their processes might differ from “The Writing Process”;
c. Time for students to diagram their own writing processes;
d. Discussion of the importance of various stages; and
e. Discussion of conditions that might cause writing processes to change (e.g. time limits, discipline-specific formal or stylistic demands, etc.).
II. Writing at Multiple Stages: If writing is a process, we should design our courses and assignments to reflect that. We should design assignments that force students to check in before and after different stages of writing. We could ask students to:
a. Brainstorm and collaborate with one another (or the class as a whole) in pre-writing;
b. Work or consult with others on research;
c. Submit preliminary sources and ideas for how to use those sources to the instructor;
d. Develop working outlines of their writing that incorporate and/or evidence;
e. Give an oral or written account of where they are in the process of writing their papers; consider what they have done so far and what they still need to do in order to be successful; describe where they are in their processes;
f. Present working drafts to one another or submit them to the teacher for help;
g. Peer-review each others’ work at a variety of stages of completeness;
h. Along with submission of product, include a description of the process used to achieve that product and how it might be improved upon next time; alternately, this could be done after reception of instructor feedback, so as to guarantee a level of student processing of feedback received.
Implications for Assessment and Grading
Choosing to teach writing as a process also means that we need to assess, give feedback, and grade with an eye toward process, not just toward product.
I. Assess Process: Check in on and collect student drafts, outlines, source lists, etc. at multiple stages of the assignment, so as to be able to make some level of assessment of the student’s process as it’s happening.
II. Give Feedback on Process: Give suggestions for process-related improvements that might improve the student’s writing. Give advice on the types techniques the writer could use to improve. For example:
a. Product-only: “Your thoughts seem disorganized. Paragraph 5 is completely out of place. Arrange your paragraphs more coherently next time.”
b. Process-oriented: “Your thoughts seem disorganized. Consider outlining your paper in advance, as well as once or twice as you go along. That way, you’ll be able to see if your organization is holding up. Try outlining your paper right now, and see if you can tell why Paragraph 5 is out of place.”
III. Give Credit for Process: It may sound obvious, but we should give credit for process work that students do. If we are asking them to do a lot of work in advance of the final product that they’ve produced, we should let their grades reflect well-done process work. Additionally, surprisingly enough, some students care a lot about their grades! Whether we give a large or small amount of credit, as long as we give some credit, students will be forced to consider their processes in order to achieve the grades they desire.
Graphical representations of different writing processes:
Below are links to a few different models of how writing processes might look. You may find them useful in modeling different approaches, and helping students to think of writing as something that can be undertaken in different ways.
A fairly standard diagram of “The Writing Process” diagram:
daniellemcgaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/essay_flowchart.gif
Another similar diagram, now indicating that one might move back and forth between stages:
innovativeteachers.wikispaces.com/file/view/Writing_Process.gif/212263958/Writing_Process.gif
Cyclical diagrams:
edweb.sdsu.edu/courses/edtec596r/students/Marushige/WritingProcess.GIF
hs.doversherborn.org/ph/ritchiep/the_writing_process.gif
A cyclical diagram with a loop at revision and feedback:
www.uen.org/utahlink/tours/loadimg.cgi?p=/tour/13270/13270Jill_orb.gif
A more free-form diagram, indicating repetition but without rigid form:
www.icsd.k12.ny.us/highschool/library/htmlstyle/Image30.gif
_____________________________________________________________________
All of the above is an attempt to encourage WID instructors and Assistants to think about how to teach writing as a process, but it is by no means the only way to do so. Remember, as with all the Essentials of Writing Pedagogy, we encourage you to take what calls out to you here, consider it, and try to envision how you might apply it to your own classroom. Thanks for reading!