TEACHING WRITING How is writing like swimming? Give up? Answer: The psycholinguist Eric Lenneberg (1967) once noted, in a discussion of “species specific” human behavior, that human beings universally learn to walk and to talk, but that swimming and writing are cul tunally specific, learned behaviors. We learn to swim if there is a body of water avail- able and usually only if someone teaches us. We learn to write if we are members of a literate socicty, and usually only if someone teaches us. Just as there are non-swimmers, poor swimmers, and excellent swimmers, so it is for writers. Why isn't everyone an excellent writer? What is it about writing that blocks so many people, even in their own native language? Why don’t people Iearn to write “naturally,” as they Icarn to talk? How can we best teach second language learners of English how to write? What should we be trying to teach? Let's look at these and many other related questions as we tackle the last of the “four skills.” RESEARCH ON SECOND LANGUAGE WRITING ‘Trends in the teaching of writing in ESL and other forcign languages have, not sur- prisingly, coincided with those of the teaching of other skills, especially listening and speaking. You will recall from earlier chapters that as communicative language teaching gathered momentum in the 1980s, teachers learned more and more about how to teach fluency, not just accuracy, how to use authentic texts and contexts in the classroom, how to focus on the purposes of linguistic communication, and how to capitalize on learncrs' intrinsic motives to carn. Those same trends and the prin- ciples that undergirded them also applied to advances in the teaching of writing in second language contexts. Over the past few decades of research on teaching writing to second language Jearners, a number of issues have appeared, some of which remain controversial in spite of reams of data on second language writing. Here is a brief look at some of those issues.1, Composing vs. writing A simplistic view of writing would assume that written language is simply the graphic representation of spoken language, and that written performance is much like oral performance, the only difference lying in graphic instead of auditory sig- nals. Fortunately, no one holds this view today. The process of writing requires an entirely different set of competencies and is fundamentally different from speaking in ways that have already been reviewed in the last chapter. The permanence and distance of writing, coupled with its unique rhetorical conventions, indeed make writing as different from speaking as swimming is from walking. One major theme in pedagogical research on writing is the nature of the com- posing process of writing. Written products are often the result of thinking, drafting, and revising procedures that require specialized skills, skills that not every speaker develops naturally. The upshot of the compositional nature of writing has produced writing pedagogy that focuses students on how to gencrate ideas, how to organize them coherently, how to use discourse markers and rhetorical conventions to put them cohesively into a written text, how to revise text for clearer meaning, how to edit text for appropriate grammar, and how to produce a final product. 2. Process vs. product Recognition of the compositional nature of writing has changed the face of writing classes. A half a century ago, writing tcachers were mostly concerned with the final product of writing: the essay, the report, the story, and what that product should “look” like. Compositions were supposed to (a) meet certain standards of prescribed English rhetorical style, (b) reflect accurate grammar, and (c) be orga- nized in conformity with what the audience would consider to be conventional. A good deal of attention was placed on “model” compositions that students would emulate and on how well a student's final product measured up against a list of cri- teria that included content, organization, vocabulary use, grammatical use, and mechanical considerations such as spelling and punctuation. There is nothing inherently wrong with attention to any of the above criteria. They are still the concern of writing teachers. But in due course of time, we became better attuned to the advantage given to learners when they were scen as creators of language, when they were allowed to focus on content and message, and when their own individual intrinsic motives were put at the center of Icarning. We began to develop what is now termed the process approach to writing instruction. Process approaches do most of the following (adapted from Shih 1986): a. focus on the process of writing that leads to the final written product; help student writers to understand their own composing process; c. help them to build repertoires of strategies for prewriting, drafting, and rewriting; d. give students time to write and rewrite; €. place central importance on the process of revision;f, let students discover what they want to say as they write; g. give students feedback throughout the composing process (not just on the final product) as they attempt to bring their expression closer and closer to intention; h. encourage feedback from both the instructor and peers; i. include individual conferences between teacher and student during the process of composition. Perhaps you can personally appreciate what it means to be asked to write something—say, a letter co an editor, an article for a newsletter, a paper for a course you're taking—and to allow the very process of putting ideas down on paper to transform thoughts into words, to sharpen your main ideas, to give them structure and coherent organization. As your first draft goes through perhaps several steps of revision, your thesis and developing ideas more and more resemble something that you would consider a final product. If you have done this, you have used your own. process approach to writing. You may also know firsthand what it is like to try to come up with a “perfect” final product without the above process. You may have experienced “writer's cramp" (mental blocks) that severely hampered any progress. You may have felt a certain level of anxiety building within you as you felt the pressure to write an in- class essay that would be judged by the teacher, graded, and returned with no chance for your future revision. The process approach is an attempt to take advan- tage of the nature of the written code (unlike conversation, it can be planned and given an unlimited number of revisions before its “rclease") to give students a chance to think as they write. Another way of putting it is that writing is indeed a thinking process. Peter Elbow (1973: 14-16) expressed this concept eloquently in his essay of two decades ago (he was a person well before his time!): The common sense, conventional understanding of writing is as fol- lows. Writing is a two-step process. First you figure out your meaning, then you put it into language: .. . figure out what you want to say; don’t start writing till you do; make a plan; usc an outline; begin writing only afterward. Central to this model is the idea of keeping control, keeping things in hand. Don't Jet things wander into a mess. ...T contend that virtually all of us carry this model of the writing process around in our heads and that it sabotages our efforts to write. ...This idea of writing is backwards. That’s why it causes so much trouble. Instead of a two-step transaction of meaning-into-language, think of writing as an organic, developmental process in which you start writing at the very beginning—before you know your meaning at all—and encourage your words gradually to change and cvolve. Only at the end will you know what you want to say or the words youwant to say it with, You should expect yourself to end up some- where different from where you started. Meaning is not what you ‘Start out with but what you end up with. Control, coherence, and knowing your mind are not what you start out with but what you end up with. Think of writing, then, not as a way to transmit a message but as a way to grow and cook a message. Writing isa way to end up thinking something you couldn't have started out thinking. Writing is, in fact, a transaction with words whcreby you free yourself from what you presently think, feel, and perceive. You make available to yourself something better than what you'd be stuck with if you'd actu- ally succeeded in making your meaning clear at the start. What looks inefficient—a rambling process with lots of writing and lots of throwing away—is really efficicnt since it’s the best way you can work up to what you really want to say and how to say it. The real inefficiency is to beat your head against the brick wall of trying to say what you mean or trying to say it well before you are ready. ‘The current emphasis on process writing must of course be seen in the per- spective of a balance between process and product. As in most language-teaching, ” approaches, it is quite possible for you to go to an extreme in emphasizing process to the extent that the final product diminishes in importance. Try not to let this happen! The product is, after all, the ultimate goal; it is the reason that we go through the process of prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing. Without that final product firmly in view, we could quite simply drown ourselves in a sea of revisions. Process is not the end; it is the means to the end. 3. Contrastive rhetoric In 1966 an article was published by Robert Kaplan that has been the subject of much discussion and debate ever since. Kaplan's thesis was that different languages (and their cultures) have different patterns of written discourse. English discourse, according to Kaplan (p. 14), was schematically described as proceeding in a straight line, Semitic writing in a zigzag formation, Oriental [sic] written discourse in a spi- raling line, and so forth (see Figure 19.1). Figure 19.1. Patterns of written discourse (Kaplan 1966: 14) English Semitic Oriental Romance Russian ~~ 2 Ee oe eeThe point of Kaplan's conclusions about how we write was, of course, that learners of English bring with them certain predispositions, which come from their native languages, about how to organize their writing. If English writers get “straight” to the point, and Chinese writers “spiral” around the point, then a Chinese speaker who is learning English will encounter some difficulty in learning to write English discourse. There were serious problems with Kaplan’s study. His diagrams and conclu- sions were simplistic and overgeneralized. Simplistic, because he based his conclu- sions about English discourse on style manuals rather than using data from actual writing in English. Overgeneralized, because one cannot conclude that English writers consistently use a “straight-line” attack on a thesis and certainly cannot make any generalization that applies, for example, to all Oriental languages. Furthermore, without a native-speaking English control group, one cannot determine if the “diffi- culty” of his sample data is simply the difficulty any inexperienced writer might encounter in learning to write. Nevertheless, there was and still is a ring of truth to Kaplan's claims. No one can deny the effect of one’s native culture, or one's predispositions that are the product of perhaps years of schooling, reading, writing, thinking, asserting, arguing, and defending. In our current paradigm of attending carefully to schemata and scripts, native language patterns of thinking and writing simply cannot be ruled out. A balanced position on this issue, then, would uphold the importance of your care- fully attending to the rhetorical first language interference that may be at play in your students’ writing. But rather than holding a dogmatic or predictive view (that certain writers will experience difficulty because of their native language), you would be more prudent to adopt a “weak” position (sce PLLT, Chapter 8) in which you would consider a student's cultural/literary schemata as only one possible source of difficulty. In recent years new research studies have appeared that tackle the issue of con- trastive rhetoric (sce Matsuda 1997, Connor 1996, Leki 1991). According to Connor, a theory of contrastive rhetoric is influenced by more than first language patterns; factors such as linguistic relativity, theory of rhetoric, text linguistics, dis- course types and genres, literacy, and translation all contribute toward a compre- hensive theory of contrastive rhetoric. One important conclusion from this renewed wave of research is the significance of valuing students’ native-language- related rhetorical traditions, and of guiding them through a process of under- standing those schemata while mof attempting to eradicate them. That self-understanding on the part of students may then lend itself to a more effective appreciation and use of English rhetorical conventions. 4. Differences between L1 and L2 writing In the earliest days of the 1970s, research on second language writing was strongly influenced by previous research on native language writing. Assumptions were made that the composing processes in both instances were similar if not iden- tical; even in research of the last decade, 12 writing teachers “have been advisedto adopt practices from L1 writing” (Silva 1993: 657). But it is imperative for teachers to understand that there are in fact many differences between the two, as Silva (1993) so clearly demonstrated in a comprehensive survey of 12 writing. Silva found that L2 writers did less planning, and that they were fess fluent (used fewer words), less accurate (made more errors), and less effective in stating goals and orga- nizing material. Differences in using appropriate grammatical and rhetorical con- ventions and lexical variety were also found, among other features. The questions that remain to be answered by the profession are: “When does different become incorrect or inappropriate? What is good enough?” (Silva 1993: 670). Some peda- gogical implications of these questions are that (a) it is important to determine appropriate approaches to writing instruction for L2 writers in different contexts, (b) writing teachers need to be equipped to deal effectively with the sociocultural and linguistic differences of L2 students, and (c) the assessment of L2 writing may need to take into account the fundamental differences between most LI and L2 writing. 5. Authenticity Another issue in the teaching of writing surrounds the question of how much of our classroom writing is “real” writing. That is, how authentic arc the classroom writing exercises that we ask students to perform? One could address this question by asking how much writing the average college-cducated person in Western society actually does, and what kind of writing. I dare say very little, and that little amounts to filling out forms, writing telephone messages, e-mailing, and occasionally dashing off a letter or post card. In the era of electronic communication (video, phone, computer, ctc,) we are less and less called upon to compose. 1 was recently consulted by a friend who is studying to be certified as a realtor, Part of his certifi- cation examination involved a simple one- or two-page writtcn essay. The prospect frightened him! So, why do we want students to write? In school, writing is a way of life. Without some ability to express yoursclf in writing, you don’t pass the course. Across the age levels from elementary school through university graduate courses, we write in order to succeed in mastering the subject matter, In English for Academic Purposes (EAP), writing ranges from short phrases (as in fillin-the-blank tests), to brief paragraphs (as in essay question exercises and tests), to brief reports of many different kinds, to a full-length research paper. In vocational-technical English (where students are studying English in connection with a trade or occupa- n), students need to fill out forms, write simple messages, write certain conven- tional reports (for example, a bid on a contract, an inspection report), and at the most “creative” end of the continuum, write a brief business letter. In adult educa- tion and survival English classes, filling out simple forms and questionnaires may be as sophisticated as students’ needs get. This leaves EAP as the major consumer of writing techniques, especially writing techniques that concern themselves with the composing process: development of ideas, argument, logic, cause and effect, ete.Another way to look at the authenticity issue in classroom writing is to distin- guish between real writing and display writing. Real writing, as explained by Ann Raimes (1991), is writing when the reader doesn’t know the answer and genuinely wants information. In many academic/schoo} contexts, however, if the instructor is the sole reader, writing is primarily for the display of a student's knowledge. Written exercises, short answer essays, and other writing in test situations are instances of display writing. Should we as teachers incorporate more real writing in our classrooms? In some ways, yes. If ESL courses strive to be more content-based, theme-based, or task-based, students are more likely to be given the opportunity to convey genuine information on topics of intrinsic interest. But display writing is not totally unjusti- fied. Writing to display one’s knowledge is a fact of life in the classroom, and by get- ting your students to perform well in display writing exercises, they can learn skills that will help them to succeed in further academic pursuits. 6. The role of the teacher The gradual recognition of writing as a process of thinking and composing was a natural byproduct of CLT. With its emphasis on learner-centered instruction, stu- dent-student negotiation, and strategics-based instruction that values-the variability of learners’ pathways to success, CLT is an appropriate locus for process writing. As students are encouraged (in reading) to bring their own schemata to bear on under- standing texts, and in writing to develop their own ideas, offer their own critical analysis, and find their own “voice; the role of teacher must be one of facilitator and coach, not an authoritative director and arbiter. This facilitative role of the writing teacher has inspired research on the role of the teacher as a responder to students’ writing. As a facilitator, the teacher offers guidance in helping students to engage in the thinking process of composing but, in a spirit of respect for student opinion, must not impose his or her own thoughts on student writing. However, as Joy Reid (1994: 273) pointed out, our penchant for laissez-faire approaches to commenting on student writing may have gone too far. “Instead of entering the conversation of composing and drafting, instead of helping students negotiate between their interests and purposes and the experiences and intentions of their academic readers, many teachers have retreated into a hands-off approach to student writing” Short of “appropriating” student text, we can offer useful feedback that respects students’ values and beliefs. Dana Ferris (1997) offered useful guidelines for making teacher commentary more effective. For example, Ferris found that when teachers (a) requested specific information and (b) made summary comments on grammar, more substantive student revisions ensued than when teachers (a) posed questions and (b) made positive comments. We are still exploring ways to offer optimal feedback to student writing. These six categories comprise just a few of the many intriguing current ques- tions in teaching writing. By acquainting yourself with the issues of composing vs. writing, process vs. product, contrastive rhetoric, Ll vs. L2 writing differences,authenticity, and the role of teacher commentary in writing, you will begin to gain an appreciation of some of the challenges of becoming an effective writing teacher. TYPES OF WRITTEN LANGUAGE In Chapter 18, on pages 302-3, were some thirty-odd types of written language “forms.” As you consider an ESL class that you might be teaching, how many of these types of writing will your students be likely to produce themselves? Those types that they will indeed need, either for further study of English or for their ulti- mate academic/vocational goals, should then become the prime focus of “real” writing in your classroom. CHARACTERISTICS OF WRITTEN LANGUAGE: A WRITER’S VIEW In Chapter 18, some characteristics of written language, from the perspective of a reader, were set forth. Let's revisit those from a writer's viewpoint. 1, Permanence Once something is written down and dclivered in its final form to its intended audience, the writer abdicates a certain power: the power to emend, to clarify, to withdraw. That prospect is the single most significant contributor to making writing a scary operation! Student writers often feel that the act of releasing a written work to an instructor is not unlike putting themselves in front of a firing squad. Therefore, whatever you can do as a teacher, guide, and facilitator to help your students to revise and refine their work before final submission will help give them confidence in their work. 2. Production time The good news is that, given appropriate stretches of time, a writer can indeed become a “good” writer by developing efficient processes for achieving the final product. The bad news is that many educational contexts demand student writing within time limits, or “writing for display” as noted in the previous section (exami- nation writing, for example). So, one of your goals, especially if you are teaching in an EAP context, would be to tain your students to make the best possible usc of such time limitations. This may mean sacrificing some process time, but with suffi- cient training in process writing, combined with practice in display writing, you can help your students deal with time limitations. 3. Distance One of the thorniest problems writers face is anticipating their audience. That anticipation ranges from general audience characteristics to how specific words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs will be interpreted. The distance factor requireswhat might be termed “cognitive” empathy, in that good writers can “read” their own writing from the perspective of the mind of the targeted audience. Writers need to be able to predict the audience's general knowledge, cultural and literary schemata, specific subject-matter knowledge, and very important, how their choice of lan- 4, Orthography Everything from simple greetings to extremely complex ideas is captured through the manipulation of a few dozen letters and other written symbols. Sometimes we take for granted the mastering of the mechanics of English writing by our students. If students are non-literate in the native language, you must begin at the very beginning with fundamentals of reading and writing. For literate stu- dents, if their native language system is not alphabetic, new symbols have to be pro- duced by hands that may have become accustomed to another system. If the native language has a different phoneme-grapheme system (most do!), then some atten- tion is due here. 5. Complexity In the previous chapter, the complexity of written—as opposed to spoken— language was illustrated. Writers must learn how to remove redundancy (which may not jibe with their first language rhetorical tradition), how to combine sen- tences, how to make references to other elements in a text, how to create syntactic and lexical variety, and much more. 6. Vocabulary ‘As was noted in Chapter 18, written language places a heavier demand on vocabulary use than does speaking. Good writers will learn to take advantage of the richness of English vocabulary. 7. Formality Whether a student is filling out a questionnaire or writing a full-blown essay, the conventions of each form must be followed. For ESL students, the most difficult and complex conventions occur in academic writing where students have to learn how to describe, explain, compare, contrast, illustrate, defend, criticize, and argue. MICROSKILLS FOR WRITING. Following, the format from the previous three chapters, microskills for writing pro- duction are enumerated in Table 19.1.Table 19.1, Microskills for writing yee = yoy Produce graphemes and orthographic patterns of English. Produce writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose. Produce an acceptable core of words and use appropriate word order patterns. Use acceptable grammatical systems (e.g., tense, agreement, pluralization), patterns, and rules. Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms. Use cohesive devices in written discourse. Use the rhetorical forms and conventions of written discourse, Appropriately accomplish the communicative functions of written texts according to form and purpose. Convey links and connections between events and communicate such relations as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization, and exemplification. Distinguish between literal and implied meanings when writing. Correctly convey culturally specific references in the context of the written text. Develop and use a battery of writing strategies, such as accurately assessing the audience's interpretation, using prewriting devices, writing with fluency in the first drafts, using paraphrases and synonyms, soliciting peer and instructor feedback, and using feedback for revising and editing. TYPES OF CLASSROOM WRITING PERFORMANCE While various genres of written texts abound, classroom writing performance is, by comparison, limited. Consider the following five major categories of classroom writing performance: 1. Imitative, or writing down ‘At the beginning level of learning to write, students will simply “write down” English letters, words, and possibly sentences in order to learn the conventions of the orthographic code. Some forms of dictation fall into this category, although dictations can serve to teach and test higher-order processing as well. Dictations wypically involve the following steps: a. Teacher reads a short paragraph once or twice at normal speed. b. Teacher reads the paragraph in short phrase units of three or four words each, and each unit is followed by a pause. c. During the pause, students write exactly what they hear.d. Teacher then reads the whole paragraph once more at normal speed so stu- dents can check their writing. e. Scoring of students’ written work can utilize a number of rubrics for assigning points. Usually spelling and punctuation errors are not considered as severe ‘as grammatical errors. 2. Intensive, or controlled Writing is sometimes used as a production mode for learning, reinforcing, or testing grammatical concepts. This intensive writing typically appears in con- trolled, written grammar exercises. ‘This type of writing does not allow much, if any, creativity on the part of the writer. A common form of controlled writing is to present a paragraph to students in which they have to alter a given structure throughout. So, for example, they may be asked to change all present tense verbs to past tense; in such a case, students may need to alter other time references in the paragraph. Guided writing loosens the teacher's contro] but still offers a series of stimu- lators. For example, the teacher might get students to tell a story just viewed on a videotape by asking them a series of questions: Where does the story take place? Describe the principal character. What does he say to the woman in the car? Yet another form of controlled writing is a dicto-comp. Here,a paragraph is read at normal speed, usually two or three times; then the teacher asks students to rewrite the paragraph to the best of their recollection of the reading. In one of several varia- tions of the dicto-comp technique, the teacher, after reading the passage, puts key words from the paragraph, in sequence, on the chalkboard as cues for the students. 3. Self-writing A Significant proportion of classroom writing may be devoted to self-writing, or writing with only the self in mind as an audience. ‘The most salient instance of this category in classrooms is note-taking, where students take notes ducing a lecture for the purpose of later recall. Other note-taking may be done in the margins of books and on odd scraps of paper. Diary or journal writing also falls into this category. However, in many cumstances a dialogue journal, in which a student records thoughts, feelings, and reactions and which an instructor reads and responds to, while ostensibly written for onesclf, has two audiences. Figure 19.2 is an entry from a journal written by an advanced ESL student from China, followed by the teacher’s response. 4. Display writing It was noted earlier that writing within the school curricular context is a way of life. For all language students, short answer exercises, essay examinations, and even research reports will involve an element of display. For academically bound ESL students, one of the academic skills that they necd to master is a whole array of display writing techniques.Figure 19.2. Journal entry (from Vanett & Jurich) Journal Entry: Yesterday at about eight o’clock I was sitting in front of my table holding a fork and eating tasteless noodles which I usually really like to eat but I lost my taste yesterday because I didn’t feel well. I had a headache and a fever. My head seemed to be broken. I sometimes felt cold, sometimes hot. I didn’t feel comfortable standing up and I didn’t feel comfortable sitting down. I hated eveything around me. It seemed to me that I got a great pressure from the atmosphere and I could not breath. I was so sleepy since I had taken some medicine which functioned as an antibiotic. } The room was so quiet. I was there by myself and felt | very solitary. This dinner reminded me of my mother. Whenever I | was sick in China, my mother always took care of me and cooked | rice gruel, which has to cook more than three hours and is | very delicious, I think. I would be better very soon under the | care of my mother. But yesterday, I had to cook by myself even though I was sick, The more I thought, the less I wanted to eat, Half an hour passed. The noodles were cold, but I was still sitting there and thinking about my mother, Finally I threw out the noodles and went to bed. Ming Ling, PRC Teacher's Response: This is a powerful piece of writing because you really communicate what you were feeling. You used vivid details, like “...eating tasteless noodles...”, “my head seemed to be broken...” and “...rice gruel, which has to cook more than three hours and is very delicious.” These make it easy for the reader to picture exactly what you were going through. The other strong point about this piece is that you bring the reader full circle by beginning and ending with “the noodles.” Being alone when you are sick is difficult. Now, I know ny you were so quiet in class. If you want to do another entry related to this one, you could have a dialogue with your “sick” self. What would your nealthy" self say to the “sick” self? Is there some advice nat could be exchanged about how to prevent illness or how to @ care of yourself better when you do get sick? Start the alogue with your “sick” self speaking first.5. Real writing While virtually every classroom writing task will have an element of display writing in it, some classroom writing aims at the geniuine communication of mes- sages to an audience in need of those messages. The two categories of real and dis- play writing are actually two ends of a continuum, and in between the two extremes lies some combination of display and real writing. Three subcategories illustrate how reality can be injected: a, Academic. The Language Experience Approach gives groups of students Opportunities to convey genuine information to each other. Content-based instruction encourages the exchange of useful information, and some of this learning uses the written word. Group problem-solving tasks, especially those that relate to current issues and other personally relevant topics, may have a ‘writing component in which information is genuinely sought and conveyed. Peer-editing work adds to what would otherwise be an audience of one (the instructor) and provides real writing opportunity, In certain ESP and EAP courses, students may exchange new information with each other and with the instructor. b. Vocational/technical. Quite a variety of real writing can take place in classes of students studying English for advancement in their occupation. Real letters can be written; genuine directions for some operation or assembly might be given; and actual forms can be filled out. These possibilities are even greater in what has come to be called “English in the Workplace,’ where ESL is offered within companies and corporations. c. Personal. In virtually any ESL class, diaries, letters, post cards, notes, personal messages, and other informal writing can take place, especially within the context of an interactive classroom. While certain tasks may be somewhat contrived, nevertheless the genuine exchange of information can happen. PRINCIPLES FOR DESIGNING WRITING TECHNIQUES Out of all of these characteristics of the written word, along with microskills and research issucs, a number of specific principles for designing writing techniques emerge 1. Incorporate practices of “good” writers. ‘This first guideline is sweeping. But as you contemplate devising a technique that has a writing goal in it, consider the various things that efficient writers do, and see if your technique includes some of these practices. For example, good writers * focus on a goal or main idea in writing, * perceptively gauge their audience, * spend some time (but not too much!) planning to write,+ casily let their first ideas flow onto the paper, . + follow a gencral organizational plan as they write, + solicit and utilize feedback on their writing, + are not wedded to certain surface structures, + revise their work willingly and efficiently, + patiently make as many revisions as needed. 2. Balance process and product. Because writing is a composing process and usually requires multiple drafts before an effective product is created, make sure that students are carefully led through appropriate stages in the process of composing. This includes careful attention to your own role as a guide and as a responder (see #8). At the same time, don’t get so caught up in the stages leading up to the final product that you lose sight of the ultimate attainment: a clear, articulate, well-organized, effective piece of writing. Make sure students see that everything leading up to this final creation was worth the effort. 3. Account for cultural/literary backgrounds. Make sure that your techniques do not assume that your students know English rhetorical conventions. If there are some apparent contrasts between students’ native traditions and those that you are trying to teach, try to help students to under- stand what it is, exactly, that they are accustomed to and then, by degrees, bring them to the use of acceptable English rhetoric. 4. Connect reading and writing. Clearly, students learn to write in part by carcfully observing what is already written, That is, they learn by observing, or reading, the written word. By reading and studying a variety of relevant types of text, students can gain important insights both about how they should write and about subject matter that may become the topic of their writing. 5. Provide as much authentic writing as possible. Whether writing is real writing or for display, it can still be authentic in that the purposes for writing are clear to the students, the audience is specified overtly, and there is at least some intent to convey meaning. Sharing writing with other stu- dents in the class is one way to add authenticity. Publishing a class newsletter, writing letters to pcoplic outside of class, writing a script for a skit or dramatic pre- sentation, writing a resume, writing advertisements—all these can be seen as authentic writing.6. Frame your techniques in terms of prewriting, drafting, and revising stages. Process writing approaches tend to be framed in three stages of writing. The prewriting stage encourages the generation of ideas, which can happen in numerous ways: reading (extensively) a passage skimming and/or scanning a passage conducting some outside research brainstorming (sce below) listing Gin writing—individually) clustering (begin with a key word, then add other words, using free association) discussing a topic or question instructor-initiated questions and probes freewriting (see below) Examples of brainstorming and freewriting are shown in Figure 19.3. The drafting and revising stages are the core of process writing. In tradi- tional approaches to writing instruction, students cither are given timed in-class compositions to write from start to finish within a class hour, or they are given a homework writing assignment. ‘The first option gives no opportunity for systematic drafting, and the second assumes that if students did any drafting at all, they would simply have to learn the tricks of the trade on their own. In a process approach, drafting is viewed as an important and complex set of strategies, the mastery of which takes time, patience, and trained instruction. Several strategies and skills apply to the drafting/revising process in writing: getting started (adapting the freewriting technique) “optimal” monitoring of one’s writing (without premature editing and diverted attention to wording, grammar, etc.) peer-reviewing for content (accepting/using classmates’ comments) using the instructor's feedback + editing for grammatical errors “read aloud” technique (in small groups or pairs, students read their almost- final drafts to each other for a final check on errors, flow of ideas, etc.) proofreadingFigure 19.3. Brainstorming and freewriting (from Brown, Cohen, & O'Day, 1991) Generating Ideas | © Brainstorming Let's think about the future for a moment. Let's focus our attention on how it | might affect your present or future job. Have you thought about the changes that might occur in your field? To help you think about this question, you are going to make two | lists of ideas concerning changes in your field or in the field you plan to enter. | DiRECTIONS: Use your knowledge and imagination to follow these steps. | 1. Prepare two sheets of paper with the following: | a. What changes have occurred in my field in the last twenty years? | Your field—today’s date b. What changes do I expect to occur in my field in the next twenty years? Your ficld—the date twenty years from now 2. As quickly as possible, think of as many ideas as you can to answer the question on sheet a. a. Take between five and ten minutes to list every idea that comes to your mind. b. Do not evaluate your ideas. That will come later. | 3. When you have written down everything you can think of, go over the list to | evaluate what you have written. Cross out the ideas that don’t fit. | 4. Repeat this process (steps 2 and 3) for sheet b. This process, called brainstorming, is a useful technique in writing because it | permits you to approach a topic with an open mind. Because you do not judge your ideas as they emerge, you free yourself to come up with ideas that you might not even know you had. Brainstorming is one of several different ways to begin writing. In the following pages, we will introduce some other methods that will help you to explore ideas that you might want to write about. * Working in a Group In the preceding exercise you worked individually, using brainstorming to establish your own ideas, to follow your own train of thought. Another effective | way to generate ideas is to work in a small group where you share your brain- stormed ideas with the rest of the group members. By doing this, each of you will | have an opportunity to further expand your own ideas. | | DIRECTIONS: Form a small group (three to five people). Use the following guide- lines for your group discussion. 1. Take turns reading your lists of changes in your field to each other. | 2. Compare your classmates’ lists to yours, looking for similarities and differences. a. Mark the changes on your list that are similar. b. Add to your list new ideas of changes that apply to your field. 3. As agroup, select three changes that applied to the fields of cach group member, If you have time, you can discuss these three ideas. rane4, Choose a reporter from your group to share your three changes with the rest of the class. Here is an example of what the compared lists of a group of three students might look like. (Notice that each list has some ideas that have been crossed out. These ideas had already been eliminated by the student in the last step of the brainstorming exercise because they did not fit.) The changes that were similar in each list have been labeled. Teaching—Today Sales—Today Health Care—Today attitudes toward teachers @ computerized inventory © malpractice suits information explosion © customers’ bad attitudes @) less respect @) union activity distance from owners rome more job securit pressure pay better benefits ineeting-peopte—— educational demands use of teatbooke—— incentive pay pressure larger class size consumer action information increase ® computers as teaching tools need to know more about products @ | consulting with thers computers for record keeping® | more responsibility ‘compelition for clients competition for jabs more advancement changes advertising srealer student maturity fewer personnel computerized business ©) fiigher diplomas time clocks computerized diagnosis students’ inceased knowledge less pay, greater benefits ©} bettor benefits © Freewriting You have just begun to explore the question of changes in your field. Some of your ideas will interest you more than others. Now you will have an opportunity to develop your thinking about one of these ideas. Directions: Follow these steps to generate further ideas on this topic. 1, From your lists of changes, choose one idea that interested you. 2. Write that idea at the top of a clean sheet of papi 3. For ten minutes, write about this topic without stopping. This means that you should be writing something constantly. a. Write down everything that comes to your mind. b. Do not judge your ideas. c. Do not worry about your spelling and grammar. d. If you run out of things to say, continue writing whatever comes to your mind, This process is called freewriting. It is designed to help you free ideas that you might not realize that you have. An important aspect of freewriting is that you write without being concerned about spelling, punctuation, or grammar. Of course, these elements of writing are important, but students’ concern about them can sometimes inhibit the free flow of their ideas. Freewriting is a technique to generate ideas; it should be used as a beginning, as an initial exploration of the ideas that you have about a topic. You can use your freewriting to help you get started with related tasks. In fact, you might want to refer to this freewriting when you are doing other writing tasks later in this unit. Therefore, you should put this and all other freewriting that you do into a notebook that you can refer to when you are generating ideas for future assignments.