Concepts in Composition

2nd Edition

Concepts in Composition: Theory and Practice in the Teaching of Writing is designed to foster
reflection on how theory impacts practice, enabling prospective teachers to develop their
own comprehensive and coherent conception of what writing is or should be and to consider
how people learn to write. This approach allows readers to assume the dual role of both
teacher and student as they enter the conversation of the discipline and become familiar
with some of the critical issues.

New to this second edition are:

• up-to-date primary source readings

• a focus on collaborative writing practices and collaborative learning
• additional assignments and classroom activities
• an emphasis on new media and information literacy and their impact on the teaching
of writing.

These new directions will inform the content of this revision, reflecting significant advance-
ments in the field. Each chapter addresses a particular theoretical concept relevant to class-
room teaching and includes activities to help readers establish the connection between
theoretical concepts and classroom lessons. The book’s companion website provides
resources for instructors, including PowerPoint presentations and lecture notes. Bringing
together scholars with expertise in particular areas of composition, this text will serve as an
effective primer for students and educators in the field of composition theory.

Irene L. Clark is Professor of English, Director of Composition, and Director of the Master’s
Option in Rhetoric and Composition at California State University, Northridge. She previ-
ously taught at the University of Southern California (USC), where she also co-directed the
university’s Writing Program and directed its Writing Center. She has won multiple awards
from the National Writing Centers Association, and has authored several textbooks for both
undergraduate and graduate students. She holds a B.A. in Music from Hunter College, an
M.A. in English from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in English Literature from USC.
 Concepts in Composition
Theory and Practice in the Teaching of Writing
2nd Edition

Irene L. Clark
with Contributors
Betty Bamberg
Darsie Bowden
John R. Edlund
Lisa Gerrard
Olga Griswold
Sharon Klein
Julie Neff-Lippman
James D. Williams
 Instructors: please visit the companion website at
www.routledge.com/9780415885164

Second edition published 2012

by Routledge
711 Th ird Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Simultaneously published in the UK

by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2012 Taylor & Francis

The right of Irene L. Clark to be identified as the author of the editorial

material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced

or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or

registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.

First edition published 2003 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Clark, Irene L.
Concepts in composition : theory and practice in the teaching of writing / Irene L. Clark ; with contribu-
tors, Betty Bamberg ... [et al.]. — 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
I1. English language—Rhetoric—Study and teaching. 2. English language—Composition and exercises—
Study and teaching. 3. English language—Study and teaching—Foreign speakers. 4. Report writing—Study
and teaching. I. Bamberg, Betty. II. Title.
PE1404.C528 2011
808’.042071—dc22
2011007099

ISBN 13: 978-0-415-88515-7 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-0-415-88516-4 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-203-80680-7 (ebk)

Typeset in Minion and Gill Sans

by EvS Commnication Networx, Inc.

Printed and bound in the United States of America on acid-free paper

by Edwards Brothers, Inc.
To my supportive and energetic husband, Bill,
my beautiful, growing family, and
my amazing students at California State University, Northridge,
whose insights enlighten me every day.
 Brief Contents

1 Processes 1

2 Invention 47

3 Revision 79

4 Audience 109

5 Assessing Writing 145

6 Genre 181

7 Voice and Style 227

8 Teaching Grammar in the Context of Writing 267

9 Non-Native Speakers of English 317

10 Language and Diversity 357

11 Writing in Multiple Media 409

 Contents

Preface xvii

1 Processes 1
Irene L. Clark
The “Process” Movement 1
The Writing Process Movement: A Brief History 2
The First-Year Course and the Use of Handbooks 3
The Birth of the Process “Movement” 5
Influences on the Concept of Process Teaching 5
The Stages of Writing 7
Renewed Interest in Rhetoric 8
Rhetoric, Exigence, and Process 9
Rhetoric, Authority, and Values 9
Rhetorical Reading 10
Genre and Process 10
Early Research on Composing 11
The Role of Cognitive Psychology 12
Expressivism and the Concept of Personal Voice 15
Social Constructionism 16
Collaborative Learning 17
Collaborative Learning in the Classroom 17
Collaborating Online 19
Criticism of the Process Movement 21
Post-Process Theory 21
Genre Theory and the Concept of Process 22
The Importance of Reflection 27
Note 28
References 28
Readings 30
Composing Behaviors of One- and Multi-Draft Writers 30
Muriel Harris
x CONTENTS

Moving Writers, Shaping Motives, Motivating Critique and

Change: A Genre Approach to Teaching Writing 43
Mary Jo Reiff

2 Invention 47
Irene L. Clark
The Heritage of Invention 48
Invention in Classical Rhetoric 49
Aristotle 51
Emphasis on Community in Classical Rhetoric 53
The Heritage of Personal Writing 53
Personal Writing in the Early Phase of the Process Movement 54
The Possibility of Teaching Invention 54
Writer’s Block 55
Invention and the Composition Classroom 57
Helping Students Understand the Assignment 57
Creating an Invention-Oriented Classroom Atmosphere 58
Invention Strategies 58
Class and Group Discussion 58
Journals 59
Freewriting and Brainstorming 59
Clustering 59
The Points to Make List 61
Exploring a Topic Through Questioning 61
Discovering Ideas by Engaging with a Text 64
They Say/I Say 65
Invention and Imitation 66
Notes 68
References 68
Reading 69
Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans, and the Stifling of Language:
A Cognitivist Analysis of Writer’s Block 69
Mike Rose

3 Revision 79
Betty Bamberg
Older Concepts of Revision 80
Contemporary Concepts of Revision in the Composing Process 81
Revision Strategies of Student Writers 82
Obstacles to Revision 84
Helping Students Revise Effectively: Intervening in the Composing Process 85
Using Whole-Class Workshops and One-to-One
Conferences to Encourage Revision 85
Using Peer Response Groups to Encourage Revision 86
Using Computers to Encourage Revision 87
Using Direct Instruction to Encourage Revision 89
CONTENTS xi

Research on the Effectiveness of Intervention Strategies 90

Adapting Intervention Strategies for a Wide Range of Contemporary Students 92
Helping Students Become Independent Revisers 96
Conclusion 97
References 98
Reading 100
Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers 100
Nancy Sommers

4 Audience 109
Irene L. Clark
The Complicated Issue of Audience 109
Perspectives on Audience 110
Rediscovering Audience 110
Cognitive Perspectives 111
The Fictionalized Audience 112
Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked: Fictionalized and Real Audiences 113
Recent Articles by Ede and Lunsford on the Topic of Audience 114
Student Perspectives on Audience 115
Connections Between the Writer and the Audience 116
The Work of James Moffett 117
Using Fictional Characters and Dialogue to Focus Student
Attention on the Concept of Audience 118
Creating Characters 119
Writing a Dialogue 120
Multiple Concepts of Audience in the Context of New Media 121
Audience and the Expanded Discourse Community 122
Distinguishing Between New and Common Knowledge: Complications 122
Fostering Audience Awareness in the Writing Class 123
Invoking Audience Cues in a Text 124
Peer Feedback 125
Audience and the Potential of New Media 125
References 127
Reading 129
Closing My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for Ignoring Audience 129
Peter Elbow

5 Assessing Writing 145

Julie Neff-Lippman
Writing Assessment: An Overview 145
Indirect Assessment: Objective Tests 145
Direct Assessment: Essay Tests 146
Portfolios 147
Electronic Portfolios (e-portfolios) 148
Scoring 148
xii CONTENTS

Internal and External Assessment 149

Programmatic Assessment 149
Outcomes Assessment 150
Summative and Formative Assessment 150
Looking Forward 151
Assessment in the Classroom 151
Designing Assignments 151
Shaping the Process 153
Providing Formative Assessment 155
Summative Responses 156
Grading Scales 159
Grading Rubrics 160
Marking Grammar and Other Sentence-level Errors 161
Conclusion 164
Teachers’ Checklist for In-class Writing Assessment 165
References 166
Readings 168
Learning to Praise 168
Donald A. Daiker
Across the Drafts 175
Nancy Sommers

6 Genre 181
Irene L. Clark
Traditional Notions of Genre 181
Reconceiving Genre in Terms of Function 182
Genre Theory and Other Rhetorical Perspectives 184
Controversies Associated with Genre in the Writing Class 185
The Debate about Explicit Teaching 185
The Sydney School Genre-Based Curriculum 186
Genre Awareness and Transferability 187
The Cognitive Perspective 188
The Ethics of Privileging Academic Writing 190
Autobiographical versus Discoursal Identity 191
Writing Genres in the Composition Class 192
Personal Narrative 192
Academic Argument 193
Genre and Creativity 195
Genre and New Media 197
The Influence of Antecedent Genres 197
Alternative Genres 198
Creative Nonfiction 198
Literary Genres 198
Other Terms Associated with Genre 199
Addressing Genre in the Writing Class 200
CONTENTS xiii

References 203
Essay 205
How Do You Raise That Money? 205
Reading 208
Sites of Invention: Genre and the Enactment of First-Year Writing 208
Annis Bawarshi

7 Voice and Style 227

Darsie Bowden
A Little History 228
Self-Expression in the Writing Classroom 229
Voice as Role Playing 230
Critique of Voice 232
Other Metaphors: Women’s Studies 234
From Another Angle: Digital Writing 235
What About Style? 235
Stylistic Choices—Where to Begin 236
The Formal Study of Stylistics 239
References 245
Readings 247
How to Get Power Through Voice 247
Peter Elbow
Style and the Renaissance of Composition Studies 253
Tom Pace

8 Teaching Grammar in the Context of Writing 267

James D. Williams
What Is Grammar? 269
Traditional Grammar 270
Problems with Traditional Grammar 271
Modern Grammars 273
Phrase Structure Grammar 273
Transformational-Generative Grammar 274
The Minimalist Program 274
Cognitive Grammar 275
Modern Grammars and Writing 276
Grammar and Writing: The Research 276
National Assessment of Educational Progress 276
Summarizing the Research Connection 277
Why Isn’t Grammar Instruction Transportable to Writing? 280
Bad Grammar or Bad Usage? 282
Reading and Writing 286
New Media: Texting, Blogging, and Instant Messaging 287
Nonstandard Dialects 288
Teaching Grammar and Usage 289
xiv CONTENTS

Sentence Combining 291

Notes 294
References 295
Reading 298
Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar 298
Patrick Hartwell

9 Non-Native Speakers of English 317

John R. Edlund and Olga Griswold
Second Language Acquisition Theory (SLA) 318
Implications for the Classroom 320
Culture and Rhetoric 321
ESL Students/International Students 322
Contrastive Rhetoric 322
An Example from Japanese Composition 323
Additional Cultural Influences 326
An Example from Mexican-Spanish Composition 326
Implications for the Classroom 327
Generation 1.5 327
Implications for the Classroom 329
Responding to Student Writing 331
Addressing Rhetorical Concerns 331
Addressing Grammatical Concerns 331
Conclusions 335
Note 337
References 337
Reading 339
Broadening the Perspective of Mainstream Composition Studies:
Some Thoughts from the Disciplinary Margins 339
Tony Silva, Ilona Leki, and Joan Carson

10 Language and Diversity 357

Sharon Klein
Introduction 357
Some Preliminaries and Terms 358
Language and Variation: Some Fundamental Notions 359
I-Language and E-Language 359
Language and Dialect 360
Grammar 362
Linguistic Variation and Diversity 363
The Blending of Language: Pidgin, Creole, and Interlanguage 364
African-American English (AAE) 366
The Oakland Decision and AAE 368
Grammatical Properties of AAE 369
Copula Sentences 369
CONTENTS xv

Tense/Aspect 370
Negation 372
Existential Sentences 373
Some Other Structures 374
Sounds and Sound Patterns in AAE 375
Discourse, Narrative Structure, and Beyond 380
Notes 388
References 389
Readings 391
Dealing with Bad Ideas: Twice is Less 391
Wayne O’Neil
The Myth of Linguistic Homogeneity in U.S. College Composition 399
Paul Kei Matsuda

11 Writing in Multiple Media 409

Lisa Gerrard
The Beginning 410
Word Processing 410
Invention 413
Grammar and Style 414
OWLs 415
Course-Management Software 415
Social Networking 416
Chat 416
Blogs 418
Twitter 418
Collaborative Writing 419
Multimedia Composition 420
Virtual Environments 423
MOOs 423
Graphical Online Environments 424
Studying Digital Rhetoric 425
Electronic Portfolios 425
Online Plagarism 426
Conclusion 426
Notes 428
References 428
Reading 431
Between Modes: Assessing Student New Media Compositions 431
Madeleine Sorapure

Appendix 1: Effective Writing Assignments 443

Appendix 2: Developing a Syllabus 449
Author Index 459
Subject Index 463
 Preface

Concepts in Composition: Theory and Practice in the Teaching of Writing focuses on schol-
arship in rhetoric and composition that has influenced classroom teaching. Its goal is to
foster reflection on how theory impacts practice, enabling prospective teachers to become
conscious of how they think about writing in the context of a first-year writing class and
develop strategies that can help students improve as writers. Each chapter addresses a par-
ticular theoretical concept that impacts classroom teaching and includes suggestions for
writing, discussion, and further exploration. Over the past several years, I have used this
book in a number of graduate seminars, and I have found that its approach enables prospec-
tive instructors to assume the dual role of both teacher and student as they enter the conver-
sations of the discipline and become familiar with some of its critical issues.
The initial impetus for the first edition of this book was provided by a course in composi-
tion theory and pedagogy that I had taught for prospective high school teachers and gradu-
ate teaching assistants. The course had been organized around concepts that I felt were the
most important for my students to understand in terms of their influence on classroom
practice and which, in many instances, had generated lively and fruitful discussion. Then,
one day, when I was flying home from a conference on college composition, I thought about
how useful it would be for me and perhaps for others, if I transformed my classroom notes
into a book. Thus was Concepts in Composition conceived, and, in accordance with the orga-
nization of my course, each chapter consists of the following:

• An overview of a significant concept in composition that informs classroom teaching.

• Writing assignments and discussion prompts to foster further exploration of the
concept.
• An article, sometimes two, to generate further discussion.
• Bibliographical references for further research.
• Suggestions for classroom activities to apply the concept in a pedagogical context.

High in the air, jotting down ideas, I initially thought that I would write every chapter
myself. However, once on the ground, breathing fresh air, I decided that the breadth of
scholarship and diversity of perspective would be significantly improved if I enlisted the
aid of scholars in the field who had expertise in particular concepts in composition. The
result is a more substantive book that is considerably richer, due to the contributions of my
xviii PREFACE

knowledgeable and gracious colleagues, who embarked on revising their chapters for this
second edition with impressive expertise and remarkable good humor.

THE SECOND EDITION

Developing from the early days of the process movement in composition, the field of rheto-
ric and composition has emerged as a vibrant and dynamic scholarly discipline, with an
impressive array of articles, books, journals, online resources, discussion groups, and con-
ferences. Thus, although all contributors have remained committed to the “Concepts in
Composition” approach that informed the first edition, the second edition reflects deepen-
ing understandings and new perspectives. Three directions, in particular, have become par-
ticularly important, both theoretically and pedagogically: the inclusion of critical reading
and literacy awareness in the composition curriculum; the increased emphasis on rheto-
ric and genre in helping students continue to develop as writers; and the profound impact
of new media and information literacy on the teaching of writing. These topics have all
informed the second edition.
Some of these new emphases are manifested in altered chapter titles. For example, Chap-
ter 1 in the first edition was titled “Process” to reflect the mantra of the process movement:
“writing is a process not a product.” Now, however, although it is recognized that writing
is indeed a process, we understand that reading, thinking, and research are processes as
well and that all of these processes interconnect when people write—hence the new title.
Chapter 7 in the first edition had the title “Voice,” whereas in the second edition it is called
“Voice and Style,” a title that reflects more complicated understandings of the term “voice,”
especially in the context of new media, which enables writers to assume other identities,
download information from multiple sources, and write in many different “voices,” even
within the same text. New media has rendered every concept in composition more compli-
cated, and its impact, both actual and potential, is discussed in every chapter. Chapter 11,
in particular, titled “Writing in Multiple Media,” focuses directly on this important con-
cept, examining the many forms and genres that are emerging in an increasingly online,
visual, and participatory world. How writing and the teaching of writing will or should be
impacted by that world are important issues to address in our classes, as students enter the
university with greater technical sophistication and different perspectives on the nature of
writing and on what constitutes meaningful communication.
Nevertheless, although this second edition reflects recent scholarly insights and new pos-
sibilities for defining and teaching “writing,” whatever that might mean or come to mean,
the book remains committed to the idea that the teaching of writing requires willingness,
enthusiasm, an interest in texts (of all kinds) as a subject of study, and a deep concern for
helping students improve as writers, both within and beyond the writing class. It includes
additional ideas—assignments, lessons, projects—for classroom use, but it also emphasizes
the necessity of understanding the “concepts of composition” on which effective classroom
pedagogy is based. Although many factors can contribute to a teacher’s success in a writing
class, the message in this book—that writing teachers need to be acquainted with the theo-
ries of composition and rhetoric that have influenced composition pedagogy for more than
40 years—has not changed. As our field has developed and gained prominence as a scholarly
discipline, fewer academics believe that teaching writing means correcting grammatical
errors and is something that anyone who reads and writes well can do. The many journals,
PREFACE xix

books, conferences and organizations that are associated with this burgeoning discipline
have brought the recognition that helping students improve as writers requires a thorough
grounding in both theory and practice.
For all contributors to this book, the most daunting challenge has been figuring out how
to address each multifaceted concept in composition within the confines of a single chap-
ter. Composition scholarship is extensive, and the question of what to include and what
to omit was the subject of many conversations among my contributors, all of whom were
concerned about simplifying, but who also recognized the paradox of teaching composi-
tion: that teachers need to know a little about each concept to plan their courses effectively,
but that it is only through classroom experience that they will really be able to understand
the interaction of theory and practice. It is a credit to my contributors that they all man-
aged to find a middle ground between too much and too little information, presenting a
balanced perspective for beginning teachers while pointing the way to further exploration
and research.
It is often the case that new teachers, worried about how to fill class time, become impa-
tient with courses that address theory at all. “Just tell me what I need to teach,” they implore.
“Give me a syllabus and I’ll follow it.” Concepts in Composition: Theory and Practice in the
Teaching of Writing aims to help teachers find answers for themselves by helping them
understand connections between a theoretical concept and a classroom lesson. It is only
when teachers understand that relationship that they will be able to teach effectively.

A companion website is available for use with this volume, with additional materials for
instructors using the book in the classroom: www.routledge.com/9780415885164.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am deeply grateful to the contributors to this second edition. Their willingness to update
their chapters, their breadth of scholarship, and their generosity of spirit have been crucial
to the development of this second edition. I would also like to thank Linda Bathgate and the
editorial staff at Taylor & Francis publishers, who provided continued support and encour-
agement, as did my wonderful graduate students at California State University, Northridge,
whose enthusiasm for the first edition sparked my own efforts. In particular, I would like
to acknowledge the contributions of Margeaux Gamboa and Michelle Mutti whose insights
into new media have been so valuable. And then, finally, and always, there is my husband
and family, who have always supported my publishing efforts and encouraged me in all my
endeavors.
 1
Processes
Irene L. Clark

• Why and how did writing classes become important in colleges and universities in the
United States?
• What is meant by the term “process”?
• What does rhetoric have to do with the teaching of writing?
• What is the role of reading in the writing class?
• What is the role of reflection in helping students improve as writers?

In the first edition of Concepts in Composition, Chapter 1 was titled “Process,” not “Pro-
cesses,” and in composition scholarship, the term “process” is still widely used. A popular
statement in early journal articles and textbooks was “writing is a process, not a product,”
and today there is general agreement that an important goal for a writing course is to help
students develop an effective writing process. However, it is now also recognized that there is
no one writing “process” that works for everyone, that writers use various processes at differ-
ent times, depending on what sort of text they wish to write, and that reading and research
are also processes. So—the term “process” really refers to many processes, an important idea
for prospective writing teachers to understand.
This chapter traces the history of the “process movement” within the emerging discipline
of rhetoric and composition, discusses several competing views or theories of composing,
explains connections between rhetoric and composition, and explores possibilities for inte-
grating reading into writing courses. It will also discuss the role of reflection and the impact
of new media on the idea of “process” in the teaching of writing.

THE “PROCESS” MOVEMENT

When I first began teaching writing, the hallway outside my office displayed a cartoon-like
picture depicting a classroom of 100 years ago or more. In the center of the scene was a
stereotypical professor, caricatured with pointed gray beard, wire spectacles, bushy gray
eyebrows, and censorious expression, who was doggedly pouring knowledge through an
oversized funnel into the head of a student, a sulky, somewhat plump young man. Obviously
intended to be humorous, the picture ironically suggested that successful teaching involves
transferring knowledge from professor to student, the professor active and determined, the
student passive and submissive, perhaps uninterested, even unwilling.
2 IRENE L. CLARK

I often recall that picture when I think about the term “process” in the context of com-
position pedagogy, because the outmoded concept of teaching it portrays constitutes the
antithesis of current ideas about the teaching of writing. Over the past 40 years, the dis-
cipline of rhetoric and composition has emphasized the importance of helping students
become active participants in learning to write, because, as the learning theorist Jerome
Bruner (1966) has maintained:

to instruct someone in [a] discipline is not a matter of getting him to commit results to mind.
Rather, it is to teach him to participate in the process that makes possible the establishment of
knowledge. … Knowledge is a process, not a product. (p. 72)

Because students do not learn to write by having knowledge poured into their heads, one
of the most important goals of a writing class is to enable students to understand that writ-
ing is a “process,” to develop a “process” that works well for them, and to be able to vary that
process as the need arises. The term “process” is of key importance for anyone entering the
field of composition, both as a teacher and as a researcher.

THE WRITING PROCESS MOVEMENT: A BRIEF HISTORY

In the long sweep of history, it is only recently that serious consideration has been given to
writing in colleges and universities. The field of written rhetoric, which came to be called
“composition,” grew during the 19th century from an older tradition of oral rhetoric, which
has been traced back to 500 b.c. However, during the 19th century, several political and
technological developments had the effect of focusing academic attention on writing in
English, instead of in Latin and Greek, as had previously been the case. The establishment of
the land grant colleges in 1867 brought a new population of students to the university, stu-
dents from less privileged backgrounds who had not studied classical languages and who,
therefore, had to write in the vernacular—that is, English. Then, a number of inventions
had the effect of making writing more important in a variety of settings. The invention of
the mechanical pencil (1822), the fountain pen (1850), the telegram (1864), and the type-
writer (1868), plus the increasing availability of cheap durable paper, paralleled and aided
the increasing importance of writing at the university.
As writing became more important, the task of teaching writing was assumed by various
educational institutions. The writing classes developed were viewed as “a device for prepar-
ing a trained and disciplined workforce” and for assimilating “huge numbers of immigrants
into cultural norms, defined in specifically Anglo-Protestant terms” (Berlin, 1996, p. 23). In
1874, Harvard University introduced an entrance exam that featured a writing requirement;
when the English faculty received the results, they were shocked by the profusion of error of
all sorts—punctuation, capitalization, spelling, and syntax. In 1879, Adams Sherman Hill,
who was in charge of the Harvard entrance examination for several years, complained that
even the work of good scholars was flawed by spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors
and urged that a required course in sophomore rhetoric that had been offered at Harvard for
several years be moved to the first year. Thus was a literacy crisis born, and when Harvard
instituted a first-year writing course, a number of institutions did likewise.
I am quite fond of this story and use it frequently both in lectures and in casual conver-
sations in which someone has bemoaned the “decline” in student writing, claiming that it
used to be so much better. The truth, though, is that each generation seems to look back on a
PROCESSES 3

golden age in which students were able to write “better” than they can at present, whatever
“better” might mean, a time when students were more serious, more committed to learn-
ing, etc. And yet, even at Harvard, a recognized elite university, students’ writing had been
deemed inadequate. Even at Harvard, as Chester Noyes Greenough wrote in an early issue
of the English Journal (February 1913), the work of undergraduate “men” was characterized
by “incoherence, lack of unity in sentences and paragraphs, ignorance of certain rules of
punctuation, repeated misspelling of certain words, and so on” (p. 113).

The First-Year Course and the Use of Handbooks

Greenough’s article noted the writing limitations of the students at Harvard, but his primary
concern was on the inadequate training provided to those assigned the task of working with
these students. Although first-year writing courses abounded at a number of institutions,
it was soon realized that such courses not only failed to provide an instant solution to the
problem but also created a great deal of work for faculty who undertook or were assigned the
task of reading and responding to student texts. However, by the turn of the century, a pre-
sumed method of addressing this situation was devised—the creation of a new sort of text-
book called the “handbook,” in which all of the rules and conventions of writing could be
written and to which teachers could refer in the margins of student papers. The idea behind
the development of the handbook was that teachers would no longer have to read and mark
student papers in detail. Instead, they could skim the papers for errors, circle those errors in
red, and cite rule numbers, which students could then look up in their handbooks. Hand-
books became very popular, and soon every publisher had developed one, followed by a
workbook of exercises that students could use to practice. Presumably, these handbooks and
workbooks would lighten the teacher’s load and solve the problem of teaching students to
write. Yet, not surprisingly, the problems continued, and student writing did not improve.
The difficulties experienced by those attempting to teach students to write at the begin-
ning of the 20th century were described in the lead article of the first issue of the English
Journal, published in 1912. The title of that article was “Can Good Composition Teaching
Be Done Under Present Conditions?” and the first word of the article was “No.” Then, after
a few sentences, the article went on as follows:

Every year teachers resign, breakdown, perhaps become permanently invalided, having sacri-
ficed ambition, health, and in not a few instances even life, in the struggle to do all the work
expected of them. (Hopkins, p. 1)

Certainly, this was not an encouraging portrait of an emerging field!

Moreover, the composition course was often a brutal experience for students as well. Lad
Tobin (1994), in his essay “How the Writing Process Was Born—and Other Conversion
Narratives,” recalled it like this:

Once upon a time, in an age of disciplinary darkness and desolation … writing students were
subjected to cruel and inhuman punishments. They were assigned topics like “Compare Henry
Fleming from The Red Badge of Courage to one of the characters in the Iliad; make sure to
consider the definition of an anti-hero” or “Write about your most humiliating moment.”
They were told, with a straight face, that no decent person ever wrote without outlining first,
that there is a clear distinction between description, narration, exposition, and argument;
4 IRENE L. CLARK

that grammatical errors were moral and mortal sins, and that teachers’ evaluations of student
essays were always objective accurate and fair …
In that dark period of our disciplinary history, teachers rarely explained anything about
the process of writing (unless you count “outline, write, proofread, hand in” as the student’s
process) … Or they would explain some of the rules governing good writing. But they would
say nothing about invention, how to get started, what to do in the middle, or what to do when
the middle turned back into the start, and so on. (pp. 2–3)

Of course, this picture constitutes a generalization, and it is likely that a number of teach-
ers, intuitively understanding what was helpful to beginning writers, did not adhere to this
model of “teaching” writing. Yet, that this model did indeed exist, I can attest to from my
own college experience, where essay topics were assigned regardless of whether students
knew or cared much about them, and where few, if any, process-oriented activities—pre-
writing strategies, multiple drafts, collaborative groups, student–teacher conferences—were
encouraged or even mentioned. When I submitted a paper as a college student, I would wait
with trepidation for the teacher to return it, which he or she would eventually do, usually
without having written anything other than a grade or perhaps a brief evaluative comment
on the front page.
In a recent review essay titled, “Of Pre- and Post-Process: Reviews and Ruminations,”
Richard Fulkerson (2001) characterized the situation of how first-year writing used to be as
similar to “riding a bicycle. If you knew how to do it, then you could demonstrate your abil-
ity on demand; hence the idea of in-class and time-limited writing” (p. 96). Fulkerson (2001)
described his own experience in a “pre-process program” as follows:

In the fall quarter, we had an anthology of readings, a handbook of grammar, and the 2nd edi-
tion of McCrimmon’s Writing with a Purpose. We wrote at least five papers. One assigned topic
was “My First Day at School.” Another was “any philosophical issue.” A third was a limited
research paper about some historic person, who we were to argue was or was not “great” based
on several readings in the anthology. Dr. Staton would assign the topic orally, and we would
have about a week to write. Then he marked the paper, put a grade on it, and a brief comment.
(p. 95)

Learning to write in those days meant being able to figure out what the teacher wanted in
order to create an acceptable “product,” and apparently, few teachers thought that helping
students acquire a workable writing “process” was part of their job. Whatever process stu-
dents used, they had to manage on their own.
This lack of attention to the process writers engage in when they write reflected a con-
cept of creativity that to some extent persists in our culture—that is, that a “good” writer
is someone who can produce an excellent text as quickly, independently, and effortlessly as
a bird learns to fly. This idea suggests that those of us who struggle, for whom writing is a
laborious, time-consuming, and often painful process (i.e., most, if not all, of us), are not,
by definition, “good” writers. One could either write, or one couldn’t. Such was the fantasy
of that time, and even now, our culture continues to value speed and ease of production,
particularly in reference to the speaking ability of our politicians, who are deemed “good
speakers” if they can think on their feet.
Unlike the product orientation of pre-process days, in ancient times, classical rheto-
ricians were aware of how much thought and preparation went into the production of a
PROCESSES 5

seemingly effortless speech. In ancient Greece and Rome, rhetoricians envisioned the com-
posing process as consisting of five stages—invention (the discovery of ideas), arrangement
(putting ideas in a persuasively effective order), style (finding the right language in which to
present the ideas), memory (memorizing the speech), and delivery (using voice and gesture
to present the speech effectively). Apparently, no one at that time was under the impression
that a “gifted” speaker did not have to engage in an elaborate process before he could deliver
an effective speech.

| |
For Writing and Discussion

Write a brief essay describing how you learned to write. To what extent was your experi-
ence similar to Fulkerson’s description? Did your teachers focus on the idea of process?
| |

The Birth of the Process “Movement”

This product-oriented view of writing continued through the 1950s and 1960s. Then, in 1963,
at the Conference of College Composition and Communication, it is reported that there was
a different feeling in the air, a feeling that the field had changed. That conference signaled
a renewal of interest in rhetoric and composition theory, a revival that generated the “pro-
cess” approach to composition and a new research area that focused on understanding how
people write and learn to write. This interest in writing as a process led to the development
of a number of process-oriented methods and techniques—staged writing, conferencing,
strategies of invention, and revision—activities that are now considered essential compo-
nents of a writing class. Suddenly, all over the country, writing teachers began to embrace a
“process” approach to writing, tossing out their handbooks and grammar exercises in order
to focus on process-oriented teaching. The sentence “Writing is a process, not a product”
became a mantra. “Process” was in; “product” became almost a dirty word.
Can this interest in writing as a process and the emergence of composition as a research
discipline be called a “movement”? Richard Fulkerson (2001) suggested that we refer to this
interest in process-oriented writing as a political party, “with members frequently willing to
vote together for the same candidates, and more or less united around certain slogans lack-
ing in nuance and short enough for bumper stickers. ‘Teach process not product.’ ‘Down
with Current-Traditional Rhetoric.’ ‘Say no to grammar’” (pp. 98–99).

Influences on the Concept of Process Teaching

Whether one characterizes the concept of process teaching as a movement or a political
party, the notion that “writing is a process” became a slogan for the enlightened. How-
ever, like all movements (or political parties), one can retrospectively note antecedent influ-
ences. One particularly important influence on the development of process teaching in the
early 1960s was what has been referred to as the New Education Movement often associ-
ated with the ideas of the psychologist Jerome Bruner. Bruner viewed learning as a process
that reflected “the cognitive level of the student and its relation to the structure of the aca-
demic discipline being studied” (Berlin, 1990, p. 207), and emphasized the role of student
6 IRENE L. CLARK

participation and individual discovery in the learning process. In the context of writing
pedagogy, Bruner’s ideas translated into an emphasis on students engaging in composing
activities so as to discover their own composing process—rather than in analyzing someone
else’s text—and on teachers creating a facilitative learning environment to enable students
to do so—rather than focusing on assigning grades or correcting grammar.
Another important influence on the emerging writing process movement was the Dart-
mouth conference of 1966, a meeting of approximately 50 English teachers from the United
States and Great Britain to consider common writing problems. What emerged from the
conference was the awareness that considerable differences existed between the two coun-
tries in how instruction in English was viewed. In the United States, English was conceived
of as an academic discipline with specific content to be mastered, whereas the British
focused on the personal and linguistic growth of the child (Appleby, 1974, p. 229). Instead of
focusing on content, “process or activity … defined the English curriculum for the British
teacher” (Appleby, 1974, p. 230), its purpose being to foster the personal development of the
student. As Berlin (1990) noted,

The result of the Dartmouth Conference was to reassert for U.S. teachers the value of the
expressive model of writing. Writing is to be pursued in a free and supportive environment in
which the student is encouraged to engage in an act of self discovery. (p. 210)

This emphasis on the personal and private nature of composing was also manifested in
the recommendations of early composition scholars such as Ken Macrorie, Donald Murray,
Walker Gibson, and Peter Elbow.
What does it actually mean to view writing as a process? Broadly speaking, a process
approach to writing and the teaching of writing means devoting increased attention to
writers and the activities in which writers engage when they create and produce a text, as
opposed to analyzing and attempting to reproduce “model” texts. Reacting against a peda-
gogy oriented toward error correction and formulaic patterns of organization, the process
approach, as it evolved during the 1960s and 1970s, was concerned with discovering how
writers produce texts, developing a model of the writing process, and helping writers find a
process that would enable them to write more effectively and continue to improve as writers.
Although to many writers and teachers the concept of a writing “process” was not news, the
increased emphasis in the classroom on helping students acquire an effective process and
on finding out what successful writers did when they wrote, constituted a new pedagogical
approach and a potentially exciting research direction.

| |
For Writing and Discussion

Reflecting on Your Own Writing Process

(Adapted from “Chronotopic Lamination: Tracing the Contours of Literate Activity.” Paul
Prior and Jody Shipka, Writing Selves/Writing Societies, Bazerman & Russell, published
February 1, 2003. http://wac.colostate.edu/books/selves_societies/.)
This is an assignment that will enable you to gain conscious awareness of the process
you use to write papers that are assigned in classes (and the extent to which that process
might be different when you write for other purposes). It is an assignment that you can
also use with your students.
PROCESSES 7

Think about a paper you have written recently for a college class. Then draw two
pictures:

1. The first picture should represent how you actually engaged in writing this particu-
lar piece. It might show a place or places where you did that writing.
2. The second picture should represent the whole writing process for this particular
piece. The picture might show how this writing activity got started, interactions
with other people and other texts, experiences that have influenced the direction
or approach you used, the number and type of drafts, your evaluations of and emo-
tions about this activity at different times.

After the two drawings are completed:

1. Describe the writing assignment and class for which it was intended. How did you
feel about the assignment? Were you interested in it immediately? Did you find it
difficult or confusing?
2. List as many activities associated with that writing as you possibly can recall. Some
questions to consider:

• What was the first action you performed to complete the writing task? What actions
followed?
• Did you think about the writing when you were involved in other activities (driving
a car, for example)?
• Did you talk with anyone about the topic?
• What sort of revision did you do?
• Were these behaviors typical of what you usually do when you are given a writing
assignment?
• Do you feel your writing process is effective?
• Do you use a different process when you are working on something that you, your-
self, have decided to write? If so, how is it different?
| |

THE STAGES OF WRITING

One perspective that gained prominence during the early days of the process movement was
that the writing process consisted a series of sequenced, discrete stages sometimes called
“planning, drafting, and revising,” although today they are often referred to as “prewriting,
writing, and rewriting.” An article by Gordon Rohman (1965), “Prewriting: The Stage of
Discovery in the Writing Process,” published in College Composition and Communication,
emphasized the importance of invention and providing students with models of how writ-
ing is actually done. Articles published during this period strongly emphasized prewriting;
however, what many of them also suggested was that writing occurred in a linear sequence,
each stage following neatly upon the other, the “prewriting” phase preceding the “writing”
phase, which then precedes the “revising” phase. Such a model was based on the idea that
writing is a reflection of what already has been formulated in the mind of the writer and, by
implication, suggested that writing can occur only after the main ideas are in place. Accord-
ing to this model, discovery and creativity entered the process only in terms of the writer’s
decisions about how to say what has been discovered, not in discovering and selecting what
8 IRENE L. CLARK

to say. It also suggested that once a writer knew what he or she wanted to write, that part of
the process was complete.
We now know that this linear model of writing as a series of discrete stages does not reflect
what most writers actually do, because writers frequently discover and reconsider ideas dur-
ing, as well as before, they write, moving back and forth between the prewriting, writing,
and revision stages as the text emerges. For example, when I wrote this chapter, I began with
a set of points I planned to discuss, but I modified them many times as I wrote, often revis-
ing sentences and generating additional material as new ideas occurred to me. In addition,
with ease of access to new information, writers now can move from writing to research and
back to writing without ever leaving their desks. Moreover, because every person’s writing
habits are different, an insistence on a lock-step sequence of stages can prove inhibiting,
sometimes paralyzing, to beginning writers. Those who believe that writing cannot occur
until every thought is clarified often delay actually writing until the paper is fully outlined
and developed—or until time has run out and the due date forces the writer to begin. For
some students, the idea that a writer must know exactly what he or she is going to say before
beginning to write can create a writer’s block that actually prevents effective writing from
taking place. Although the idea that writing occurs in stages was a more helpful one than
the previous emphasis on grammatical correctness, when it was interpreted rigidly, this idea
did not provide sufficient insight into the composing processes of actual writers; nor was it
always useful in the classroom or in other venues. As Muriel Harris (1989) argued in the
article at the end of this chapter, “when students write essay exams or placement essays and
when they go on to on-the-job writing where time doesn’t permit multiple drafts, they need
to produce first drafts which are also coherent, finished final drafts.”

RENEWED INTEREST IN RHETORIC

The process movement was also characterized by a renewed interest in rhetoric and its
connection to composition, a phenomenon that is often referred to as the “new rhetoric,”
although the term “rhetoric” was absent from early publications. However, in 1971, James
Kinneavy published A Theory of Discourse, which established “the relation between compo-
sition and classical—specifically Aristotelian—rhetoric” (Williams, 1998, p. 30). This work
helped legitimize composition as a genuine research field and suggested that anyone who is
serious about teaching writing should be studying rhetoric. Providing a theoretical ground-
ing for the new rhetoric, Kinneavy’s work was also notable for its reminder that writing is
an act of communication between writer and audience.
Many of the scholars who worked in composition during the early days of the process
movement have “a story to tell about how and when they discovered rhetoric” (Lunsford,
2007, p. 1), and rhetoric has increasingly become an important element in many writing
classes. Although the term is often associated with empty or sometimes deceptive language,
such as “that’s just rhetoric,” the term in actuality refers to the complex interaction between
the writer, the reader, and the context and is therefore neither good nor bad in itself. An
ethical person will use rhetoric to explore an idea and discover truth, whereas an unethical
person will use it to deceive. Plato distrusted rhetoric because of its association with the
Sophists, who used it to “win” an argument, no matter where the truth might be. Aristotle,
however, viewed rhetoric as the ability, in each particular case, to discover the available
means of persuasion, the presumption being that persuasion should and could be used in
PROCESSES 9

the service of justice. Although not all writing is persuasive, awareness of how writer, audi-
ence, and situation interact in the creation of a text enables us to know the world and make
informed choices in the construction of a text. John Gage in “The Reasoned Thesis” pointed
out that Aristotelian rhetoric does not have to be understood strictly in terms of persuasion
or coercion, but rather in terms of inquiry, of helping people discover “mutual grounds for
assent” (Gage, 1996, p. 10). M. J. Killingsworth (2005) showed how rhetoric can enable writ-
ers and readers achieve mutual understanding of the values they share.

Rhetoric, Exigence, and Process

An understanding of rhetoric can help students develop an effective writing process in that
the elements of rhetoric can suggest directions for exploration and revision. In particular, I
have found the terms “rhetorical situation” and “exigence” to be particularly useful in writ-
ing classes at any level. Lloyd Bitzer’s notion of the “rhetorical situation,” which he defines
as a problem, situation, or need that can be impacted or addressed in some way through
writing, can enable students to find a rationale or purpose for writing. Bitzer also used the
word “exigence,” which he defined as a defect, an obstacle or some problem or situation that
is not what it ought to be or at least needs attention. When my students are in the process of
developing ideas for an essay, I will often ask them “Where’s the exigence?”
The idea of “exigence” can enable students to begin the process of writing and keep them
focused on a writing task as they develop ideas and formulate an approach. It can also moti-
vate revision, as they consider the potential impact on an audience and revisit the context,
occasion, and purpose for writing. Chapter 2 on “Invention” will discuss the role of rhetoric
and exigence in further detail.

Rhetoric, Authority, and Values

Including rhetoric in a writing class focuses students’ attention on what enables them to
accept the “truth” of an idea—that is, what makes an idea convincing and what sort of
evidence and authority contributes to making it so. For example, in a strongly Christian
community in which the Bible is viewed as a source of values, quoting from the Bible may
serve as a definitive authority and convincing evidence might be found by quoting from that
source. Academic writing, however, is usually intended for a broader, more secular com-
munity, and therefore the Bible may not serve as a convincing source of authority for that
audience. Moreover, as Killingsworth (2005) maintained:

Modern rhetoric does not so much replace one authority with another; rather it attacks the
very idea of absolute authority. People who use rhetoric don’t have to be atheists or moral rela-
tivists, but they must realize that the constraints on how we discuss issues are different as we
move from community to community, audience to audience. (p. 13)

In writing about an issue such as whether women should submit to their husband in mar-
riage, Killingsworth pointed out, a student would have to base his or her arguments “on
something more than the Bible” (p. 12). Incorporating rhetoric into a writing class will
enable students to understand how the values of an intended audience impact the direction
and credibility of a text.
10 IRENE L. CLARK

RHETORICAL READING
The process movement focused on the idea that “writing is a process.” However, it is now
recognized that reading is a process as well, and that many students, while able to read
or “decode” words on a page, are unable to understand the texts assigned in their college
classes. The term “rhetorical reading,” associated with the work of Bean, Chappell, and
Gillam (2005), can be defined as “attending to an author’s purposes for writing and the
methods the author uses to accomplish those purposes” (p. xxiii). The concept of rhetorical
reading emphasizes the importance of helping students analyze the rhetorical strategies
used in academic texts and helping students understand “academic writing as a process in
which writers engage with other texts” (p. xxiii). It also includes the concept of “critical”
reading as a means of enabling students to recognize biased perspectives in various texts,
including visual texts such as websites and advertisements.
The idea that reading is a process enables students to approach a text purposefully, not
simply to begin reading passively, sentence by sentence without considering why it was
written and the strategies the writer has used to accomplish a particular purpose. In work-
ing with students in a writing class, I urge them to develop a process of reading that I refer
to as “the three-pass approach,” which consists of the following process-oriented activities:

1. The First Pass—Reflection and Quick Overview

During the first pass, students reflect on the subject and context that are being addressed,
evaluate the qualifications and motives of the author, and examine the reading for addi-
tional clues, such as the title, publication information, and easily discernible strategies
of organization.
2. The Second Pass—Reading for Meaning and Structure
During the second pass, students read the text for meaning to determine what it is
saying. To aid understanding, they are encouraged to look for structural clues within
the text and summarize main points. Other activities associated with the second pass
might include creating a “map” of the text or noting the “moves” the writer uses.
3. The Third Pass—Interacting with the Text
During the third pass, students are encouraged to interact with the text, actively engag-
ing in a critical dialogue with it, in order to understand it more deeply and determine
how much of it to accept. Such interaction involves distinguishing between fact and
opinion, evaluating the type of evidence cited, deciding whether the writer is aware of
the complexity of the topic, and paying close attention to how language is being used to
shape the reader’s perspective.

(For additional information on this three-pass approach, see Clark, 2010.)

GENRE AND PROCESS

The topic of genre will be discussed in detail in a subsequent chapter. However, in the con-
text of “process,” it is important to mention that “genre knowledge” can have a significant
impact on the “process” a writer will use to complete a writing task. To write a shopping list,
for example, one would simply jot down items on a piece of paper, and any revision of that
PROCESSES 11

list would be unlikely to involve serious effort—perhaps the addition of other items, a check
placed next to an item already purchased, or a line through an item that was not needed
after all. More complicated genres or high-stakes genres, however, involve more serious
effort, and the “process” of writing might begin with a reflection about what such a genre
requires. In the reading included at the end of this chapter, Mary Jo Reiff (2006) noted that a
writing assignment, particularly one that requires an unfamiliar genre, generates a number
of genre-based questions. Reiff observed that when she was asked to write about the “genre
of the Pedagogical Insight essay,” she called on her “genre knowledge, her past experience
with similar texts in similar situations” (p. 157) in order to orient herself to the expectations
of the genre. Because she knew that she was not familiar with this genre, she asked herself
several questions, such as “What are the actions that this genre performs? How will I posi-
tion myself within this genre—what identity and relations will I assume?” (p. 157). These
questions then prompted her to consider a potential audience and the social and cultural
situation toward which her response would be directed. A consideration of genre, then,
enabled Reiff to begin the process of writing her essay.
A number of scholars (in particular, see Devitt, 2004) have suggested that an important
goal of a writing class is to help students become aware of the genres they are expected to
produce, an approach that is particularly useful for students whose first language is not
English. Such a genre-based class may focus on studying multiple examples of a genre in
order to discern its features, as well as more usual process-oriented activities, such as writ-
ing multiple drafts and obtaining peer feedback.

EARLY RESEARCH ON COMPOSING

The “process” movement generated a great deal of scholarship, some based on observational
studies, other focused on cognitive models of learning. In an overview of early research con-
cerned with the writing process, Sondra Perl (1994) noted 1971 as the year when the field of
composition moved from an almost exclusive focus on written products to an examination
of composing processes. 1971 was the year that Janet Emig published “The Composing Pro-
cesses of Twelft h Graders,” which Perl describes as the first study to ask a process-oriented
question, “How do 12th-graders write?” and the first to devise a method to study writing
processes as they unfolded. Emig observed eight 12th-graders who spoke aloud as they com-
posed, and from her observations, called into question the absoluteness of the stage-model
theory of composing. Noting that these students did not create outlines before they com-
posed, Emig characterized the composing process as recursive, rather than linear, noting
that writers move back and forth between various phases of the process as they compose.
Although the validity of having students speak aloud as they compose can be questioned,
Emig’s study was important because it showed the oversimplification of the writing pro-
cess inherent in the stage model, which was, and to some extent still is, reinforced in some
textbooks. Moreover, it generated a number of observational studies that shed further light
on the composing process, among them the work of Linda Flower and John Hayes (1980),
discussed later in this chapter, that linked the development of writing ability to cognitive
development and the studies by Sondra Perl (1979) and Nancy Sommers (1980) which pro-
vided valuable insight into revision.
12 IRENE L. CLARK

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For Further Exploration
Early Process-oriented Scholarship
Faigley, L., & Witte, S. (1980). Analyzing revision. CCC, 32, 400–414.
Flower, L., & Hayes, J. (1981). A cognitive process theory of writing. CCC, 32, 354–387.
Kroll, B., & Schafer, J. (1978). Error analysis and the teaching of composition. CCC, 29,
242–248.
Matsuhashi, A. (1981). Pausing and planning: The tempo of written discourse production.
Research in the Teaching of English, 15, 113–134.
Perl, S. (1979). The composing process of unskilled college writers. Research in the Teaching
of English, 13, 317–336.
Perl, S. (1981). Understanding composing. CCC, 31, 363–369.
Pianko, S. (1979). A description of the composing processes of college freshmen writers.
Research in the Teaching of English, 13, 5–22.
Sommers, N. (1980). Revision strategies of student writers and experienced adult writers.
CCC, 31, 378–388.
Rhetoric and the Composition Class
Gage, J. T. (1996). The reasoned thesis: The E-word and argumentative writing as a process
of inquiry. In Barbara Emmel, Paula Resch, & Deborah Tenney (Eds.), Argument revis-
ited; Argument redefined (pp. 3–18). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Killingsworth, M. J. (2005). Appeals in modern rhetoric: An ordinary-language approach.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Lunsford, A. A. (2007). Writing matters. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press.
Lunsford, A. A., & Glenn, C. (1990). Rhetorical theory and the teaching of writing. In Gail
Hawisher, & Anne Soter (Eds.), On literacy and its teaching (pp. 174–189). Albany: State
University of New York.
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For Writing and Discussion

Compare Nancy Sommers’ “The Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experi-
enced Adult Writers” (in Chapter 3) with Muriel Harris’ essay “Composing Behaviors of
One-and Multi-Draft Writers” at the end of this chapter. Note the similarities and dif-
ferences between their perspectives on the writing process. What are the implications
of these perspectives for working with students in a writing class?
| |

The Role of Cognitive Psychology

Early studies of the composing process were strongly influenced by ideas associated with
cognitive psychology, particularly those of Jerome Bruner, previously discussed, and those
of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. The underlying idea of cognitive psychology is that to
understand an observable behavior (such as writing), one must understand the mental
structures that determine that behavior. Conceiving of language and thought as the pri-
mary mental structures that influence writing, cognitive psychologists maintained that to
PROCESSES 13

understand how students learn to write, one must understand how these structures develop
as an individual matures and acquires knowledge of the world.
Cognitive psychology perceives linguistic and intellectual ability as developing in a natu-
ral sequence, and it is this concept that has had the most significant impact on the study of
writing acquisition and on how a writing teacher can utilize that sequence in the classroom.
Emig (1971), for example, maintained that the ability to write personal, expressive writing
precedes the ability to write on literary or academic topics. She, therefore, urged teachers
to use more of what she referred to as “reflexive”—that is, personal—writing in the class-
room, based on students’ own experiences and feelings. Beginning with personal topics
before addressing more abstract topics, Emig claimed, fosters students’ cognitive develop-
ment. Whether or not this is absolutely true has not been established. However, in order for
students to engage with a topic, it is useful for them to consider what personal involvement
they might have with it. In my own writing classes, students often write about a personal
experience that is related to the topic before they focus on issues or controversies that may
be developed in an argument essay.
Developmental Models of the Composing Process
This notion that the development of writing ability correlates with human linguistic and
intellectual development resulted in a number of publications that suggested that the Eng-
lish curriculum should parallel the sequence in which that development was presumed to
occur. Deriving from Piaget’s notion of cognitive development, James Moffett’s Teaching the
Universe of Discourse (1968) outlined a theory by which a sequential curriculum in language
arts could be based. Moffett’s system consisted of a progression that moved from the per-
sonal to the impersonal and from low to high levels of abstraction based on two horizontal
scales. The first, the audience scale, organized discourse according to the distance between
the writer and his or her audience, according to four categories (Moffett, 1968b):

Reflection (interpersonal communication within the self)

Conversation (interpersonal communication between two people within communication
distance)
Correspondence (interpersonal communication between remote individuals)
Publication (impersonal communication between unconnected individuals, unknown to one
another). (p. 33)

Moffett’s second scale, the subject scale, categorized discourse by how far away the writer
or speaker is from the subject being considered. For example, a person may be sitting at a
table in a cafeteria eating lunch, noting what is happening at the given moment. Later on,
he or she might report on what happened in the cafeteria during lunch, generalize about
what usually happens in the cafeteria at lunch, or argue that something might or should
happen in the cafeteria at lunch. These two scales, the audience scale and the subject scale,
Moffett suggested, can be used to help students recreate their experience through language,
enabling them to develop facility in writing. Moffett’s concept of a language arts curricu-
lum based on this sequence was explained in considerable detail in his textbook A Student-
Centered Language Arts Curriculum (1968a).
A British study, The Development of Writing Abilities 11–18, published in 1975 by James
Britton, Tony Burgess, Nancy Martin, Alex McLeod, and Harold Rosen, also included the
14 IRENE L. CLARK

notion of sequential development. Aimed at creating a model that would “characterize all
mature written utterances and then go on to trace the developmental steps that led to them”
(p. 6), this system of Britton and his colleagues categorized all student writing by function—
the transactional, which communicates information to an unknown audience, the expres-
sive, which communicates information to a known audience, and the poetic, which deals
only tangentially with any form of audience. Britton et al. characterized most school writing
as transactional, but argued that because students are most engaged in expressive writing,
this is the type of writing that is most likely to foster the development of writing ability.
Both Moffett’s work and the work of Britton et al., evolving from the theories of Jean
Piaget, addressed the question of how children learn to move beyond their early egocentri-
cism to reach out to an audience, a topic addressed by Linda Flower in her seminal arti-
cle “Writer-Based Prose: A Cognitive Basis for Problems in Writing” (1979). According to
Flower, novice writers often have difficulty transcending their own egocentric perspective to
consider the needs of their intended audience. As a result, their texts are often characterized
by what she refers to as “writer-based prose”—that is, texts in which information is omitted
or inadequately explained, definitions unclarified—in other words, texts that reflect what
might be in their writers’ minds at the time of writing but that have not been sufficiently
contextualized or modified for a reader. Often reflecting the order in which the writer first
generated ideas, writer-based prose may be clear to the writer, but a reader may have dif-
ficulty understanding it. Awareness of writer-based prose in the writing class can be used
to help novice writers transform “writer-based” to “reader-based” prose, enabling them to
develop a better understanding of the concept of audience.
Pursuing a similar direction, Andrea Lunsford, in an article titled “Cognitive Develop-
ment and the Basic Writer” (1979), claimed that the difficulties novice or “basic” writers
have with writing are because of their not having reached a level of cognitive development
that would enable them to form abstractions. To remedy this problem, Lunsford suggested
a variety of workshop activities focusing on analysis and active thinking. During that same
year (1979), Sharon Pianko published “A Description of the Composing Processes of College
Freshman Writers,” in which she claimed that the composing process of basic writers is less
developed than that of more skillful writers.
The Work of Flower and Hayes
Several articles by Flower and Hayes continued to explore the writing process based on the-
ories of cognitive psychology. Concerned with avoiding models that suggest that the writing
process is linear, Flower and Hayes (1981) set up a cognitive theory based on four points:

1. The process of writing is best understood as a set of distinctive think processes that writers
orchestrate or organize during the act of composing.
2. These processes have a hierarchical, highly embedded organization in which any process
can be embedded within any other.
3. The act of composing itself is a goal-directed thinking process, guided by the writer’s own
growing network of goals.
4. Writers create their own goals in two key ways: by generating both high-level goals and sup-
porting subgoals that embody the writer’s developing sense of purpose, and then, at times,
by changing major goals or even establishing new ones based on what has been learned in
the act of writing. (p. 366)
PROCESSES 15

Flower and Hayes also focused on the role of problem definition in the writing process,
noting in their article “The Cognition of Discovery: Defining a Rhetorical Problem” (1980)
that although a teacher may give “20 students the same assignment, the writers themselves
create the problem they solve” (p. 23). Using the technique of “protocols” (having students
speak aloud as they compose), Flower and Hayes constructed a model of the rhetorical prob-
lem itself, which consisted of two major units: the rhetorical situation, which consists of the
“writer’s given,” including the audience and the assignment, and the set of goals that the
writer creates for himself. The four goals they noted involved the reader, creating a persona
or voice, building a meaning, and producing a formal text, which, as they point out, “closely
parallel the four terms of the communication triangle: reader, writer, world, word” (p. 25).

EXPRESSIVISM AND THE CONCEPT OF PERSONAL VOICE

The initial phase of the process movement has often been associated with an emphasis on
the importance of students being able to “express” their thoughts and feelings through
writing, a perspective that is often referred to as “expressivism.” Teachers adhering to an
expressivist philosophy tended to assign essays concerned with personal experience and
self-reflection, the goal being to enable students to discover their own personal “voice” that
would result in “authentic” writing and self-empowerment. Ken Macrorie, in his 1970 text-
book Telling Writing, insisted on the importance of truth telling by avoiding what he refers
to as “Engfish,” which he defines as institutional language, or language that conceals rather
than reveals a personal self. In the preface to that work, Macrorie (1970) defined composi-
tion teaching in the following terms:

Enabling students to use their own powers, to make discoveries, to take alternative paths. It
does not suggest that the world can best be examined by a set of rules … The program gives
the student first, freedom to find his voice and let his subjects find him … for both teacher and
student, a constant reading for truth, in writing and commenting on that writing. This is a
hard requirement, for no one speaks truth consistently. (pp. vii–viii)

For Macrorie, good writers speak in honest voices and tell some kind of truth, a perspective
similar to that of Donald Stewart (1972), for whom the most important goal of a writing
course was for students to engage in a process of self-discovery, manifested in the student’s
text by the appearance in the text of an authentic voice; Donald Graves (1983) also referred
to voice as infusing a text with the writer’s presence. Perhaps the best-known proponent of
the concept of voice, Peter Elbow (1986), although acknowledging the difficulty of defin-
ing voice, nevertheless viewed the discovery of voice as a necessary prerequisite of growth.
“I can grow or change,” Elbow maintained, but “not unless I start out inhabiting my own
voice or style. … In short, I need to accept myself as I am before I can tap my power or
start to grow” (p. 204). Voice, for Elbow, constitutes both a motivating force and a source of
power. In its emphasis on empowering the inner self, the expressivist approach to writing is
sometimes referred to as the “romantic” school of writing, in contrast to the “classical” or
“cognitive” school, which view writing in terms of intellectual development as manifested
in problem solving.
Of course, there is no reason that the “process” approach should be so closely connected to
expressivist writing. As Ladd Tobin (1994) points out, “a teacher could assign a personal essay
16 IRENE L. CLARK

but ignore the writing process or assign a critical analysis yet nurture the process” (p. 6). Nev-
ertheless, process and personal or expressivist writing were often associated with one another
in the early days of the process movement, and today the expressionists remain “a force in
rhetoric and composition studies. Such figures as Peter Elbow, Donald Murray, Ken Macrorie
… continue to explore writing as a private and personal act. It is this group that continues to
insist on the importance of the individual against the demands of institutional conformity,
holding out for the personal as the source of all value” (Berlin, 1990, pp. 218–219).

SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM
Although cognitive and expressivist approaches to composition dominated scholarship
during the 1970s and 1980s, during the mid-1980s, publications began to appear that ques-
tioned both the validity and the utility of focusing on the individual. Patricia Bizzell’s “Cog-
nition, Convention, and Certainty: What We Need to Know About Writing” (1983) argued
that writers are not autonomous individuals, distinct and removed from culture, but, rather,
that individual consciousness is shaped by culture through language. This perspective
implied that all writers, even when they are presumably composing only for themselves
or writing notes for a subsequent piece of writing, are mentally influenced by the “inner
speech,” as Vygotsky (1978) referred to it, that develops in response to a particular culture’s
concept of language and thought. From this perspective, then, writing is socially constructed
because it both reflects and shapes thinking, a position that in composition studies is known
as social constructionism. Social constructionist approaches to composition emphasize the
role of community in shaping discourse and the importance of understanding community
expectations when working with students. Bizzell’s article (1983), for example, pointed out
that although Flower and Hayes’ cognitive-based model described how writing occurs, it
focused too strongly on the individual writer and did not help composition teachers “advise
students on difficult questions of practice” (p. 222).
Social constructionist approaches to composition derive from perspectives in philoso-
phy, as well as other fields, that emphasize the importance of community consensus in
determining knowledge. This view is based on the idea that individuals perceive the world
according to the shared beliefs and perceptions of the community or communities to which
they belong; it is one that writers in fields such as history or ethnography have supported
for some time. The philosopher, Richard Rorty, for example, in Philosophy and the Mirror of
Nature (1979), maintained that knowledge is a “socially constructed belief,” a viewpoint that
straddles a middle position between absolute relativism, in which an individual may choose
to believe anything, and the positivist notion of objective truth derived from an absolute
reality. The anthropologist, Clifford Geertz (1983), similarly argued that modern conscious-
ness is an “enormous multiplicity” of cultural values, and Charles Bazerman (1981) has
emphasized the role of the scientific community in shaping the writing of scientists.
In composition, social constructionist approaches have been associated with the work of
David Bartholomae, Kenneth Bruffee, Patricia Bizzell, and James Berlin, who all focused on
the social context of writing and the role of community in determining the appropriateness
and effectiveness of a text. Kenneth Bruffee’s “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation
of Mankind’ ” (1984) maintained that every person is born into the “conversation of man-
kind” and that it is this conversation that gives meaning and value to what we do, influenc-
ing both thinking and writing. “We can think because we can talk, and we think in ways
PROCESSES 17

we have learned to talk” (p. 87), Bruffee explained. For writing teachers, it is important to
realize (Bruffee, 1984):

that our task must involve engaging students in conversation among themselves at as many
points in both the writing and the reading process as possible and that we should contrive to
ensure that students’ conversation about what they read and write is similar in as many ways
as possible to the way we would like them eventually to read and write. The way they talk with
each other determines the way they will think and the way they will write. (p. 89)

Collaborative Learning
Social constructionism has often associated with collaborative learning, although this ped-
agogical approach has been around for some time. Bruffee’s work acknowledged the use of
collaborative learning in teaching medical students through group diagnosis, and Albert
DeCiccio (1988) has noted its association with progressive education and the educational
approach of John Dewey. Moreover, as Bruffee (1984) has noted, the uses of collaborative
learning in the composition class in the 1970s derived more from practical need than from
a particular philosophical or theoretical perspective on learning. Because open admission
policies brought a large number of students to the university who were educationally dis-
advantaged, collaborative learning developed as a means of enabling students to assist one
another. As Bruffee (1984) pointed out, “For American college teachers, the roots of collab-
orative learning lie neither in radical politics nor in research.” Rather it was based primarily
on “a pressing educational need” (p. 637).
Whatever its roots, the concept of collaborative learning has significant implications for
what occurs in the writing class. Most important, it implies a decentering of the writing
class, a balancing of authority between students and teacher, so that students can participate
in their own learning through peer editing and writing groups. This idea, as Bruffee pointed
out, is actually quite similar to the work of the early process theorists such as Peter Elbow,
who has long advocated the effectiveness of the “teacherless” classroom and the necessity of
delegating authority to writing groups. According to this perspective, students learn only
when they have assumed responsibility for their own learning. They do not develop writing
skills by listening to a teacher lecture about the writing process. Rather they must engage
fully in that process themselves, working together with peers.

Collaborative Learning in the Classroom

Although the concept of collaborative learning is easy to endorse in the abstract, successful
implementation in the classroom requires the teacher to plan carefully all activities involv-
ing group work, whether they be peer editing sessions, group discussions, or team research
projects. All of us who have blithely assumed that simply telling students to work together
or putting them into pairs or groups without providing specific instructions can attest to
the problems that often occur. Unless collaborative activities are carefully orchestrated by
the teacher, students may not take group work seriously, socializing instead of working,
allocating most of the work to one member, completing the activity superficially, and gener-
ally not engaging fully in the process. Sometimes they will offer innocuous compliments to
one another such as “I liked your paper. I could relate to it.” Or “It flowed.” Or else they will
complete the group activity quickly so that they can leave the class early.
18 IRENE L. CLARK

Wendy Bishop (1997), in “Helping Peer Writing Groups Succeed,” emphasized the
importance of carefully scripting and modeling what is expected from peer writing groups.
Below are some additional suggestions for maximizing the value of collaborative activities
in the writing class:

• Model the activity by first engaging in it yourself in front of the class. Before putting
students into groups for peer editing, ask students to volunteer a paper to be edited, or
use one from another class. Make copies for the class and demonstrate how you expect
students to proceed.
• Determine the procedures for group work, such as whether students should read papers
silently or aloud, how many copies of the paper students should bring in, how much time
should be allotted for each paper, and the sort of comments that should be encouraged.
• Assign the groups yourself through random selection. If students choose their own
groups, they may spend the time socializing instead of working. To enable the groups
to develop a productive working relationship, keep the groups constant throughout the
semester, unless there is a good reason for changing them.
• For peer editing, develop assignment-specific questions (see the following “For Writing
and Discussion” for an example).
• When possible, require students to report their discussion results to the class. This
works well when students engage in group research because it requires them to take
responsibility for their work. They should be aware that they will be standing in front of
the class and that inadequate preparation will be apparent to everyone!

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For Writing and Discussion

The following assignment is provided as an example of how peer questions should be

oriented toward a specific assignment. Work through this process by writing a response
to the assignment, bringing your response to class, and working in groups to respond
to the questions. By completing the process yourself, you will gain insight into how to
use it in your writing class.

Writing Assignment

One important insight arising from research into the composing process is that no
approach or strategy is appropriate for all writers and that, as Muriel Harris points out,
“there is a very real danger in imposing a single ‘ideal’ composing style on students.” In
fact, the more we engage in research about the composing process, the more we realize
how much more we need to learn.
As a writer and a student of writing, you have learned a great deal about the writing
process from your own experiences, some of them useful, some less so, and it is your
writing background that will serve as the primary resource for this assignment. Think
about your own history as a writer—your classroom successes and failures, teachers
and writers who have influenced you, assignments you have completed, and strategies
you have developed as you grappled with various types of writing assignments through-
out your academic career. Then in an essay of three to five pages, respond to the fol-
lowing question:
PROCESSES 19

Based on your experience as a writer and a student, what insights into the com-
posing process do you consider to be the most important?
In discussing insights you have gained, please enliven your prose with specific exam-
ples and anecdotes.
First draft: 3 copies due in class on __. First drafts must be typed.
Final draft due on __.
Peer Editing Question Sheet
Name of Writer _____ Feedback Provided by _____
1. Does the essay respond to the prompt—that is, what insights into the composing
process does the writer consider most important?
2. Examine the introduction. What function does it serve? To attract attention? To
indicate a direction for the essay? How does the introduction prepare the reader for
other sections in the essay?
3. Examine the essay for support. What are the main ideas or themes? What specific
examples, anecdotes, or explanations are used to support these ideas or themes?
4. Examine the essay for coherence. What strategies are used to connect each para-
graph with the next?
5. Examine the essay for style and sentence structure. What specific words does the
writer use to illustrate main points? What kind of person do you sense behind the
prose? How does the writer make this person seem real? How does the writer use
sentence structure to develop the essay? Is the essay’s style sufficiently varied? Are
the sentences choppy?
6. What has the writer done to make the essay interesting? What did you learn from
this essay? What did the writer do to enhance the audience appeal of this essay?
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Collaborating Online
Recently, increased access to new media has enabled students to collaborate virtually—
sharing ideas and drafts online, working in groups on various projects without meeting
face to face. Beach, Anson, Breuch, and Swiss (2009) discuss a number of options for using
“digital discussion environments to enhance writing instruction and student engagement”
(p. 48). Defining “digital discussion environments” as those that promote conversation and
collaboration, these authors provide an overview of both synchronous (real-time) discus-
sions, used when students are on the computer at the same time, and asynchronous discus-
sions, when students write separate messages at different times. Synchronous discussions
tend to be more conversational and are sometimes used even when all students are in a
classroom; asynchronous discussions occur when students are not in the same location and
can serve as a written transcript of an ongoing discussion. Both can be useful in enabling
students to learn from one another and build upon one another’s ideas.
Online writing and collaboration can take many forms: having students respond to
a reading, discovering a purpose for writing, finding additional research, responding to
drafts, discussing ideas for a project, or enabling students to become aware of audience.
Whatever purpose it might serve, however, planning is crucial, just as it is in a face-to-face
classroom. When they engage in a digital collaboration, students should have a clear idea
of what they are expected to do or learn in the context of a particular assignment or task.
20 IRENE L. CLARK

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For Further Exploration
Social Constructionism
Bartholomae, D., & Petrosky, A. (1986). Facts, artifacts, and counterfacts. Portsmouth, NH:
Heinemann.
Bazerman, C. (1981). What written knowledge does: Three examples of academic discourse.
Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 11, 361–387.
Bruffee, K. Social construction, language and the authority of knowledge. College English,
48, 773–790.
Geertz, C. (1983). Local knowledge. New York: Basic Books.
Harris, J. (1989). The idea of community in the study of writing. CCC, 40, 11–22.
Rorty, R. (1979). Philosophy and the mirror of nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society (M. Cole, V. John Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman
Eds.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Collaborative Learning
Bizzell, P. (1983). Cognition, convention, and certainty: What we need to know about writ-
ing. PRETEXT, 3, 213–243.
Brooke, R. (1991). Writing and sense of self: Identity negotiation in writing workshops.
Urbana, IL: NCTE.
Brooke, R., Mirtz, R., & Evans, R. (1994). Small groups in writing workshops. Urbana, IL:
NCTE.
Bruffee, K. A. (1984, November). Collaborative learning and the “conversation of mankind.”
College English, 46, 635–652.
Elbow, P. (1973). Writing without teachers. New York: Oxford University Press.
Forman, J. (Ed.). (1992). New visions of collaborative writing. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/
Cook.
George, D. (1984) Working with peer groups in the composition classroom. CCC, 35,
320–326.
Gere, A. R. (1987). Writing groups: History, theory, and implications. Carbondale, IL: South-
ern Illinois University Press.
Lunsford, A., & Ede, L. (1990). Singular texts/plural authors: Perspectives on collaborative
writing. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Mason, E. (1970). Collaborative learning. London: Ward Lock.
Smith, D. (1989). Some difficulties with collaborative learning. Journal of Advanced Com-
position, 9, 45–57.
Spellmeyer, K. (1994). On conventions and collaboration: The open road and the iron cage.
In J. Clifford, & J. Schilb (Eds.), Writing theory and critical theory. New York: MLA.
Trimbur, J. (1989, October). Consensus and difference in collaborative learning. College
English, 51, 602–616.
Collaborating Online
Beach, R., Anson, C. Breuch L. B., & Swiss, T. (2009). Teaching writing using blogs, wikis,
and other digital tools. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon.
Gane, N., & Beer, D. (2008). New media. Oxford: Berg.
Wysocki, A. F., Johnson-Eilola, J., & Selfe, C. L. (2004). Writing new media: Theory and
applications for expanding the teaching of composition. Logan, UT: Utah State University
Press.
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PROCESSES 21

CRITICISM OF THE PROCESS MOVEMENT

The process movement resulted in important developments in the teaching of writing, nota-
bly a flowering of interest in composition pedagogy, the creation of an established research
discipline concerned with writing and the teaching of writing, the realization that people
learn to write by actually writing and revising, rather than by completing decontextualized
exercises, and a renewed attention to individualized instruction. However, although recog-
nizing its pedagogical importance, some critics maintain that because “the process model
focuses on writers and their psychological states … it offers little insight into the relationship
between writers and audience” (Williams, 1998, p. 45). Other critics have pointed out that
the process model does not address the issue of how gender, race, class, and culture influ-
ence writers’ goals, standards, and methods, or even the concept of literacy itself. Scholars
such as Catherine Dorsey-Gaines and Denny Taylor (1988) examined how the concept of
“process” is influenced by race, and Nancie Atwell (1988) and Julie Neff (1994) wrote about
how a process approach must be specially tailored to the needs of the learning disabled.
Mike Rose, in Lives on the Boundary: The Struggle and Achievements of America’s Under-
prepared (1989), and Shirley Brice Heath, in Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work
Communities and Classrooms (1983), discussed the impact of social class on the acquisition
of literacy.
Another critical perspective questioned the extent to which the process model was suc-
cessful in addressing the literacy crisis. Some scholars noted that it neither provided a magic
solution to student writing problems, nor influenced the writing class as drastically as has
sometimes been claimed. Lad Tobin (1994) characterized the movement as a type of “fairy
tale,” not because “it is false or childish or naïve,” but, rather, because its “disciples” tended
to oversimplify the problems inherent in composing and in the teaching of writing. Tobin
argued that although we can appreciate the usefulness of the process model, we also “need
to acknowledge and confront the extent of the difficulties we face … to stop pretending that
we have everything under control, that everything is proceeding according to plan” (pp.
144–145).
In a similar vein, Joseph Harris noted that “while it seems clear to me that the process
movement helped establish composition as a research field, I am not nearly so sure it ever
transformed the actual teaching of writing as dramatically as its advocates have claimed”
(1997, p. 55). Harris also pointed out that although “the older current-traditional approach
to teaching writing focused relentlessly on surface correctness, the advocates of process
focused just as relentlessly on “algorithms, heuristics, and guidelines for composing” (p. 56).
No system, Harris argued, should be adopted without qualification.

Post-Process Theory
Concern about the effectiveness and validity of the process movement has been manifested
in literature concerned with “post-process theory,” a term that refers to the idea that the
process movement is no longer pertinent, either theoretically or pedagogically. In Post-
Process Theory: Beyond the Writing-Process Paradigm (1999), Thomas Kent asserted that
because every communication act requires the writer to “guess” how a text will affect a
reader, it is impossible to model communication, and, therefore, there is no writing pro-
cess that can be presented in the classroom. “No single course can teach a student how to
produce or analyze discourse,” Kent maintains, “for the hermeneutic guessing required in
22 IRENE L. CLARK

all discourse production and analysis can be only refined; it cannot be codified and then
taught” (p. 39). In his essay in that collection, Gary Olson (1999) took this position further,
asserting not only that writing cannot be taught but also that it cannot even be adequately
described. To construct a model of the writing process, Olson states, is to be in conflict
with the postmodern rejection of certainty and the corresponding emphasis on assertion
as a valued academic skill. For Olson, “the vocabulary of process is no longer useful” (p. 9),
and, therefore, compositionists must move away from “a discourse of mastery and asser-
tion toward a more dialogic, dynamic, open-ended, receptive, nonassertive stance” (p. 14).
Olson, however, did not suggest how this perspective can benefit students or be applied in a
pedagogical context.
Another criticism of the process movement focused on the emphasis on formula with
which the writing process has been presented in the classroom. Joseph Petraglia and David
Russell both rejected the rigidity of a “prewrite, write, revise, edit” model, Petraglia noting
in “Is There Life after Process?” (1999) that composition scholarship seems to be increas-
ingly irrelevant to working effectively with students. Russell, embracing an activity theory
orientation, emphasized that there are many writing processes. Instead of teaching one pro-
cess, Russell (1999) maintains, compositionists study those various processes to “(re)classify
them, commodify them, and involve students with (teach) them in a curriculum” (p. 88)
that acknowledges that some writing activities can be performed mechanistically, whereas
others cannot. As yet, post-process theory has not been applied to effective classroom teach-
ing. However, for an excellent and enjoyable review of post-process scholarship, read Rich-
ard Fulkerson’s “Of Pre-and Post-Process: Reviews and Ruminations” (2001).

Genre Theory and the Concept of Process

Although the original goals of the process “movement” focused on promoting student lit-
eracy, a number of scholars associated with recent notions of genre theory have maintained
that process pedagogy in its most rigid manifestations has resulted in only limited success
for the groups that it was originally intended to help. This perspective emphasizes that the
progressive classroom, with its focus on individual expression and personal voice, has not
resulted in writing improvement in those groups who were most in need of improvement.
In fact, according to several critics associated with the genre-based curriculum in Sydney,
Australia, the process-oriented classroom, despite its original goal of validating culturally
marginalized groups, has actually served “to sustain the powerlessness of children and pre-
serve the class divisions in western culture” (Richardson, 1994, p. 55). According to Cope
and Kalantzis, 1993, those involved in implementing the Australian curriculum argue that:

Many working-class, migrant and Aboriginal children have been systematically barred from
competence with those texts, knowledges, and ‘genres’ that enable access to social and mate-
rial resources. The culprits, they argue, are not limited to traditional pedagogies that disregard
children’s cultural and linguistic resources and set out to assimilate them into the fictions
of mainstream culture. But the problem is also located in progressive ‘process’ and ‘child-
centered’ approaches that appear to ‘value differences but in so doing leave social relations of
inequity fundamentally unquestioned. (p. vii)

Contributors to Cope and Kalantzis’ book The Powers of Literacy: A Genre Approach to
Teaching Writing (1993), which is intended to explain the Australian genre approach to
PROCESSES 23

non-Australians, have maintained that the emphasis on personal voice and the correspond-
ing reluctance of teachers to intervene directly in changing students’ texts has, ironically,
promoted a situation in which only the brightest middle-class children, those whose voices
are already in tune with those in power and whose backgrounds include acquaintanceship
with the genres of privilege, will be able to learn what is needed for social, and, ultimately,
economic success. Noting that “by the 1980s it was clear that the new progressivist curricu-
lum was not producing any noticeable improvement in patterns of educational attainment”
(Cope & Kalantzis, 1993, p. 1), Cope and Kalantzis also pointed out that such a curriculum
“encourages students to produce texts in a limited range of written genres, mostly person-
alised recounts” (p. 6).
It is clear that the process movement has not solved every problem associated with help-
ing students to learn to write. Nevertheless, it was characterized by an intellectual and
moral energy that generated an exciting new discipline and an important ideological focus
that continues to influence composition pedagogy at various levels. Although in many insti-
tutions the concepts of expressive writing and personal voice have been superseded by other
academic emphases, the idea that writing is a recursive process and that teaching writing
means helping students develop a process that works effectively for them now constitutes a
basis for writing curricula across the country.

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For Further Exploration
Process
Bartholomae, D. (1980). The study of error. College Composition and Communication, 31,
253–269.
Daniell, B. (1994). Theory, theory talk, and composition. In J. Clifford, & J. Schilb (Eds.),
Writing theory and critical theory (pp. 127–140). New York: MLA.
Dyer, P. M. (1990). What composition theory offers the writing teacher. In L. A. Arena (Ed.),
Language proficiency: Defining, teaching, and testing (pp. 99–106). New York: Plenum.
Elbow, P. (1973). Writing without teachers. New York: Oxford University Press.
Elbow, P. (1981). Writing with power: Techniques for mastering the writing process. New
York: Oxford UP.
Elbow, P. (1981). Embracing contraries: Explorations in learning and teaching. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Elbow, P. (1991). Reflections on academic discourse. College English, 53, 135–155.
Faigley, L. (1986). Competing theories of process: A critique and a proposal. College English,
48, 527–542.
Hairston, M. (1982). The winds of change: Thomas Kuhn and the revolution in the teaching
of writing. College Composition and Communication, 33, 76–86.
Knoblauch, C. H., & Brannon, L. (1984). Rhetorical traditions and the teaching of writing.
Upper Montclair, NJ: Boynton Cook.
Scardamalia, M., Bereiter, C., & Goelman, H. The role of production factors in writing abil-
ity. In M. Nystrand (Ed.), What writers know: The language, process, and structures of
academic discourse (pp. 173–210). New York: Academic.
Selzer, J. (1984). Exploring options in composing. College Composition and Communication,
35, 276–284.
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24 IRENE L. CLARK

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Writing Assignment
Understanding Yourself as a Writer1
Although all writers engage in planning, drafting, and revising, they do so in a variety
of ways and no writer approaches every writing task the same way. One way to move
away from writing habits that have not worked well for you in the past is to understand
what type of writer you are. Think about the models of writers described here. In the
space provided, indicate the extent to which this description pertains to your own writ-
ing habits.

Writers Who Plan in Advance. These people tend to think about their ideas and plan
their writing in their minds or on paper before they begin to write. As a result, their first
drafts are usually better than most first drafts often are, even though these drafts will
probably still need additional revision before they can be submitted. People who plan
in advance use spare moments of their time to think—while they eat lunch, drive, and
wait in line. When they start to write, they usually have at least some idea about what
they want to say.

Writers Who Discover Ideas Through Writing. Although every writer discovers ideas
through writing, at least sometimes, these writers use writing to find out what they
want to say, planning and revising while they write. They begin by writing whatever
comes into their minds and then reconsider and rewrite again and again. Writers who
discover ideas through writing may even throw out a whole first draft and begin again.

Writers Who Spend Equal Time on Planning, Writing, and Revising. Some writers divide
the writing task into stages, a method that is probably the most effective in writing a
college essay as long as adequate time is allowed for each stage of the process. However,
it is important to keep in mind that an effective plan involves more than a few notes
scratched on a sheet of paper, that sufficient time must be allowed for drafting, and that
a revision means a great deal more than correcting a few sentences.

Writers Who Delay. This is a familiar type of writer—those who delay writing until
right before the paper is due. These writers sometimes stay up all night, trying to write
a complete draft of a paper, and, thus, when they submit their work, they are really
submitting a first draft, not usually their best work. Of course, for various reasons, all
writers probably procrastinate sometimes. But those who always write first drafts under
conditions of pressure or panic are unlikely to do as well as they could.
| |

| |
Writing Assignment
Assessing Your Own Writing Process
This self-assessment will enable you to look at your own writing process, to evaluate
the strategies you use when you write. Try to answer each question as fully as possible.
PROCESSES 25

1. Mark the scale below to indicate how easy or difficult you find the process of
writing.
Easy _________________________________________________________ Difficult
Please explain your selection, indicating the reasons for your response.
2. Describe how you usually write your papers.
3. What practices or “rules of writing” do you find to be useful? Which do you find to
be phony or not useful?
4. Which of the following problems have you experienced?
• Beginning the paper
• Knowing what you want to say
• Writing an introduction
• Getting a first sentence
• Finding a thesis
• Organizing the paper
• Deciding how to structure your ideas
• Writing an outline
• Addressing the needs of your audience
• Knowing what your reader wants
• Deciding what information to include
• Working on coherence and style
• Connecting each paragraph to your overall point
• Writing sentences that connect with one another
• Making your writing lively and interesting to read
• Finding the right words.
5. Based on your responses to the previous questions, what changes would you like to
make in your writing behavior?
| |

| |
Writing Assignment

Writing Class Observation

If you currently attend a college or university where writing classes are taught, arrange
to observe at least three classes over a two-week period. Then, based on your observa-
tions, write a two-part report of five to seven pages that addresses the following:

Part I. Describe the writing class you observed, including many specific details such as
the name of the teacher, the level of the class, how often the class meets, the number of
students, the textbook used, the assignment the students are working on, the handouts
that were used, the seating arrangement—any details that will enable a reader to under-
stand what the teacher and students were doing during various segments of the class.

Part II. Discuss how observing these classes has provided you with information that
you will use to plan your own writing class. Specific points to address in this section
include the teacher, students, classroom dynamics, methodology, and materials. What
26 IRENE L. CLARK

did you learn in this class from both the teacher and the students that will be helpful
to you?
Note that your purpose is NOT to evaluate the teacher or the methods in any way,
but rather to reflect on what you have learned and can apply to your own teaching.
Classroom Observation Guidelines
1. Select the “teacher volunteer” whose class you plan to observe.
2. Plan to observe at least three successive class meetings, or a total of four class meet-
ings over a three-week period.
3. Contact the teacher (via telephone, e-mail, or mail) and make certain that you will
be the only observer in class on the days of your visits. Request that he or she pro-
vides you with a copy of the course syllabus and any other important handouts
when you observe your first class.
4. Find out if the teacher has any preference regarding your “role” as observer in his/
her class. For example, should you get up and walk around if group work is in prog-
ress or remain in your seat and listen in on the closest group?
5. During your first observation, take as many notes as you feel are necessary to pro-
vide you with a full record of your experience.
6. During your second and subsequent observations, focus on what you consider to be
the most informative and important insights you have gained.
7. If possible, have a short “debriefing” session with the instructor when you have
finished the sequence of observations.
8. Be sure to arrive on time for the class. Do not leave until the class has ended.
Points to Note When Observing Composition Classes
Physical Arrangement of Class. How seats are arranged and placement of teacher.
Atmosphere in Classroom/Classroom Dynamics. Formal? Informal? Friendly?
The Lesson. The day’s agenda, the day’s topic, specific skills to be taught, activities
planned (group work, writing/thinking activities, revision, invention, and exercises),
sequencing of activities, materials used, quality of discussion, and applicability of les-
son to student writing/language skills.
Student Behaviors
• What kind of writing are the students doing?
• How many students are participating?
• What are students doing who are not participating?
• Are students reading their work aloud?
• Are students speaking to one another?
• Are students working in groups?
• How are students reacting to the day’s agenda and topic?
Teacher Behaviors
• What sort of voice does the teacher use?
• Has the teacher engaged the students?
• What kind of working relationship does the teacher have with the students?
PROCESSES 27

• What is the evidence that suggests that kind of working relationship?

• What does the teacher do when students participate or ask questions? Characterize
the teacher’s strategies for listening and promoting dialogue.
Teacher Activities
• Presenting the assignment/lesson.
• Modeling a particular writing strategy.
• Teacher addressing class as a whole.
• Teacher addressing a small group.
• Teacher speaking with an individual student.
• Teacher presenting the lesson.

Overall, you should be aware of how writing and reading are addressed in the class,
how students are engaged, with the instructor and with each other, how the lesson has
been planned, and how much student participation drives and supports the action of
the class.
| |

THE IMPORTANCE OF REFLECTION

Readers of this book are likely to be teaching a one- or perhaps two-semester writing class,
but the ideas associated with “process” should, of course, enable students to continue to
improve as writers, beyond the expectations of a first-year writing course. To help students
to develop a writing process that works well in various contexts and to continue to develop
as writers, it is important for them to “reflect” on what they have learned—to develop a
metacognitive awareness of what it means to write at various stages and in various contexts.
The following assignments focus on fostering student reflection.

| |
Writing Assignment
Keeping a Reflective Writing Journal
A useful strategy for gaining insight into your own writing process is to keep a reflective
writing journal. A reflective writing journal will enable you to recall writing experi-
ences in your past, from which you can develop your own “theory” of writing. Insights
fostered by this means will be useful for helping your students to develop an effective
writing process. The following are some suggestions for entries into your reflective writ-
ing journal:
1. Discuss your history as a writer, focusing on particular highlights.
2. Describe your own writing process.
3. Write about one of your best teachers.
4. Find some examples of what you feel is “good writing.” What makes this writing
good?
5. Why have you chosen to study rhetoric and composition?
28 IRENE L. CLARK

Writing a Reflective Memo (to be used to help students reflect on a draft)

REFLECTIVE MEMO1
To accompany a draft
1. My thesis is ________________________________________________________
2. This thesis needs to be argued because ___________________________________
3. My thesis needs to be read because ______________________________________
4. If I had two more days to work on this, I would _____________________________
5. My favorite section is _________________________________________________
6. My favorite sentence is ________________________________________________
7. What could we spend more time on in class that would enable me to do this assign-
ment more competently?
__________________________________________________________________
| |

NOTE
1 Th is form is based on a discussion of various types of writers in Lisa Ede. (1995). Work in Progress (3rd ed.). Bos-
ton/New York: St. Martin’s Press.

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Readings

COMPOSING BEHAVIORS OF ONE-

AND MULTI-DRAFT WRITERS

Muriel Harris

A belief shared by teachers of writing, one that we fervently try to inculcate in our students, is that
revision can improve writing. This notion, that revision generally results in better text, often pairs
up with another assumption, that revision occurs as we work through separate drafts. Thus, “hand
in your working drafts tomorrow and the final ones next Friday” is a common assignment, as is the
following bit of textbook advice: “When the draft is completed, a good critical reading should help
the writer re-envision the essay and could very well lead to substantial rewriting” (Axelrod and
Cooper 10). This textbook advice, hardly atypical, is based on the rationale that gaining distance
from a piece of discourse helps the writer to judge it more critically. As evidence for this assump-
tion. Richard Beach’s 1976 study of the self-evaluation strategies of revisers and non-revisers dem-
onstrated that extensive revisers were more capable of detaching themselves and gaining aesthetic
distance from their writing than were non-revisers. Nancy Sommers’ later theoretical work on
revision also sensitized us to students’ need to re-see their texts rather than to view revision as an
editing process at the limited level of word changes.
A logical conclusion, then, is to train student writers to re-see and then re-draft a piece of
discourse. There are other compelling reasons for helping students view first or working drafts
as fluid and not yet molded into final form. The opportunities for outside intervention, through
teacher critiques and suggestions or peer evaluation sessions, can be valuable. And it is equally
important to help students move beyond their limited approaches and limiting tendency to settle
for whatever rolls out on paper the first time around. The novice view of a first draft as written-
in-stone (or fast-drying cement) can preclude engaging more fully with the ideas being expressed.
On the other hand, we have to acknowledge that there are advantages in being able, where it is
appropriate, to master the art of one-draft writing. When students write essay exams or place-
ment essays and when they go on to on-the-job writing where time doesn’t permit multiple drafts,
they need to produce first drafts which are also coherent, finished final drafts. Yet, even acknowl-
edging that need, we still seem justified in advocating that our students master the art of redrafting
to shape a text into a more effective form.
The notion that reworking a text through multiple drafts and/or visible changes is generally
a beneficial process is also an underlying assumption in some lines of research. This had been
particularly evident in studies of computer-aided revision, where counts were taken of changes in
macrostructure and microstructure with and without word processing. If more changes were made
on a word processor than were written by hand, the conclusion was that word processors are an
aid to revision. Such research is based on the premise that revision equals visible changes in a text
and that these changes will improve the text.
Given this widely entrenched notion of redrafting as being advantageous, it would be comforting
to turn to research results for clearcut evidence that reworking of text produces better writing.
But studies of revision do not provide the conclusive picture that we need in order to assert that
we should continue coaxing our students into writing multiple drafts. Lillian Bridwell’s 1980 survey
of revision studies led her to conclude that “questions about the relationship between revision and
qualitative improvement remain largely unanswered” (199), and her own study demonstrated that
the most extensively revised papers “received a range of quality ratings from the top to the bottom
of the scale” (216). In another review of research on revision, Stephen Witte cities studies which
COMPOSING BEHAVIORS OF ONE- AND MULTI-DRAFT WRITERS 31

similarly suggest that the amount of re-drafting (which Witte calls “retranscription”) often bears
little relation to the overall quality of completed texts (“Revising” 256). Similarly, Linda Flower and
John Hayes, et al., citing studies which also dispute the notion that more re-drafting should mean
better papers, conclude that the amount of change is not a key variable in revision and that revi-
sion as an obligatory stage required by teachers doesn’t necessarily produce better writing. (For a
teacher’s affirmation of the same phenomenon, see Henley.)
Constricting revision to retranscription (i.e., to altering what has been written) also denies the
reality of pre-text, a composing phenomenon studied by Stephen Witte in “Pre-Text and Compos-
ing.” Witte defines a writer’s pre-text as “the mental construction of ‘text’ prior to transcription”
(397). Pre-text thus “refers to a writer’s linguistic representation of intended meaning, a ‘trial locu-
tion’ that is produced in the mind, stored in the writer’s memory, and sometimes manipulated men-
tally prior to being transcribed as written text” (397). Pre-texts are distinguished from abstract
plans in that pre-texts approximate written prose. As the outcome of planning, pre-text can also
be the basis for further planning. In his study Witte found great diversity in how writers construct
and use pre-text. Some writers construct little or no pre-text; others rely heavily on extensive
pre-texts; others create short pre-texts; and still others move back and forth between extensive
and short pre-texts. The point here is that Witte has shown us that revision can and does occur
in pre-texts, before visible marks are made on paper. In an earlier paper, “Revising, Composing
Theory, and Research Design,” Witte suggests that the pre-text writers construct before making
marks on paper is probably a function of the quality, kind, and extent of planning that occurs before
transcribing on paper. The danger here is that we might conclude that the development from nov-
ice to expert writer entails learning to make greater use of pre-text prior to transcribing. After
all, in Linda Flower’s memorable phrase, pre-text is “the last cheap gas before transcribing text”
(see Witte, “Pre-Text” 422). But Witte notes that his data do not support a “vote for pre-text”
(“Pre-Text” 401). For the students in Witte’s study, more extensive use of pre-text doesn’t auto-
matically lead to better written text. Thus it appears so far that the quality of revision can neither
be measured by the pound nor tracked through discreet stages.
But a discussion of whether more or fewer drafts is an indication of more mature writing is itself
not adequate. As Maxine Hairston reminds us in “Different Products, Different Processes,” we
must also consider the writing task that is involved in any particular case of generating discourse.
In her taxonomy of writing categories, categories that depict a variety of revision behaviors that
are true to the experience of many of us, Hairston divides writing into three classes; first, rou-
tine maintenance writing which is simple communication about uncomplicated matters; second,
extended, relatively complex writing that requires the writer’s attention but is self-limiting in that
the writer already knows most of what she is going to write and may be writing under time con-
straints; and third, extended reflective writing in which the form and content emerge as the writing
proceeds. Even with this oversimplified, brief summary of Hairston’s classes of writing, we recog-
nize that the matter of when and if re-drafting takes place can differ according to the demands of
different tasks and situations as well as the different skills levels of writers.
Many—or perhaps even most—of us may nod in agreement as we recognize in Hairston’s
classes of writing a description of the different types of writing we do. But given the range of indi-
vidual differences that exist among writers, we still cannot conclude that the nature of effective
revision is always tied to the writing task, because such a conclusion would not account for what
we know also exists—some expert writers who, despite the writing task, work at either end of
the spectrum as confirmed, consistent one-drafters or as perpetual multi-drafters. That writers
exhibit a diversity of revising habits has been noted by Lester Faigley and Stephen Witte in “Analyz-
ing Revision.” When testing the taxonomy of revision changes they had created, Faigley and Witte
found that expert writers exhibited “extreme diversity” in the ways they revised:

One expert writer in the present study made almost no revisions; another started with an
almost stream-of-consciousness text that she then converted to an organized essay in the
32 MURIEL HARRIS

second draft; another limited his major revisions to a single long insert; and another revised
mostly by pruning. (410)

Similarly, when summarizing interviews with well-known authors such as those in the Writers at
Work: The Paris Review Interviews series, Lillian Bridwell notes that these discussions reveal a wide
range of revision strategies among these writers, from rapid producers of text who do little revis-
ing as they proceed to writers who move along by revising every sentence (198).
More extensive insights into a variety of composing styles are offered in Tom Waldrep’s collec-
tion of essays by successful scholars working in composition, Writers on Writing. Here too as writers
describe their composing processes, we see a variety of approaches, including some writers who
plan extensively before their pens hit paper (or before the cursor blips on their screens). Their
planning is so complete that their texts generally emerge in a single draft with minor, if any, editing
as they write. Self-descriptions of some experienced writers in the field of composition give us
vivid accounts of how these one-drafters work. For example, Patricia Y. Murray notes that prior
to typing, she sees words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs taking shape in her head. Her com-
posing, she concludes, has been done before her fingers touch the typewriter, though as she also
notes, she revises and edits as she types (234). William Lutz offers a similar account:

Before I write, I write in my mind. The more difficult and complex the writing, the more
time I need to think before I write. Ideas incubate in my mind. While I talk, drive, swim, and
exercise I am thinking, planning, writing. I think about the introduction, what examples to
use, how to develop the main idea, what kind of conclusion to use. I write, revise, rewrite,
agonize, despair, give up, only to start all over again, and all of this before I ever begin to
put words on paper. … Writing is not a process of discovery for me. … The writing pro-
cess takes place in my mind. Once that process is complete the product emerges. Often I
can write pages without pause and with very little, if any, revision or even minor changes.
(186–87)

Even with such descriptions from experienced writers, we are hesitant either to discard the
notion that writing is a process of discovery for many of us or to typecast writers who make many
visible changes on the page and/or work through multiple drafts as inadequate writers. After all,
many of us, probably the majority, fall somewhere along the continuum from one- to multi-drafters.
We may find ourselves as both one- and multi-drafters with the classes of writing that Hairston
describes, or we may generally identify ourselves as doing both but also functioning more often
as a one- or multi-drafter. Just as we have seen that at one end of the spectrum there are some
confirmed one-drafters, so too must we recognize that at the other end of that spectrum there are
some confirmed multi-drafters, expert writers for whom extensive revising occurs when writing
(so that a piece of discourse may go through several or more drafts or be reworked heavily as the
original draft evolves.) David Bartholomae, a self-described multi-drafter, states that he never out-
lines but works instead with two pads of paper, one to write on and one for making plans, storing
sentences, and taking notes. He views his first drafts as disorganized and has to revise extensively,
with the result that the revisions bear little resemblance to the first drafts (22–26). Similarly, Lynn
Z. Bloom notes that she cannot predict at the outset a great deal of what she is going to say. Only
by writing does she learn how her content will develop or how she will handle the structure, orga-
nization, and style of her paragraphs, sentences, and whole essay (33).
Thus, if we wish to draw a more inclusive picture of composing behaviors for revision, we have
to put together a description that accounts for differences in levels of ability and experience (from
novice to expert), for differences in writing tasks, and also for differences in the as yet largely unex-
plored area of composing process differences among writers. My interest here is in the composing
processes of different writers, more particularly, the reality of those writers at either end of that
COMPOSING BEHAVIORS OF ONE- AND MULTI-DRAFT WRITERS 33

long spectrum, the one-drafters at one end and the multi-drafters at the other. By one-draft writ-
ers I mean those writers who construct their plans and the pre-texts that carry out those plans
as well as do all or most of the revising of those plans and pre-texts mentally, before transcribing.
They do little or no retranscribing. True one-drafters have not arrived at this developmentally or
as a result of training in writing, and they should not be confused with other writers who—driven
by deadlines, lack of motivation, insufficient experience with writing, or anxieties about “getting it
right the first time”—do little or no scratching out of what they have written. Multi-drafters, on
the other hand, need to interact with their transcriptions in order to revise. Independent of how
much planning they do or pre-text they compose, they continue to revise after they have tran-
scribed words onto paper. Again, true multi-drafters have not reached this stage developmentally
or as a result of any intervention by teachers. This is not to say that we can classify writers into two
categories, one- and multi-drafters, because all the evidence we have and, more importantly, our
own experience tells us that most writers are not one or the other but exist somewhere between
these two ends of the continuum.
However, one- and multi-drafters do exist, and we do need to learn more about them to gain
a clearer picture not only of what is involved in different revising processes but also to provide
a basis for considering the pedagogical implications of dealing with individual differences. There
is a strong argument for looking instead at the middle range of writers who do some writing in
single drafts and others in multiple drafts or with a lot of retranscribing as they proceed, for it is
very probable that the largest number of writers cluster there. But those of us who teach in the
individualized setting of conferences or writing lab tutorials know that we can never overlook or
put aside the concerns of every unique individual with whom we work. Perhaps we are overly
intrigued with individual differences, partly because we see that some students can be ill-served
in the group setting of the classrooms and partly because looking at individual differences gives
us such enlightening glimpses into the complex reality of composing processes. Clinicians in other
fields would argue that looking at the extremes offers a clearer view of what may be involved in
the behaviors of the majority. But those who do research in writing also acknowledge that we need
to understand dimensions of variation among writers, particularly those patterned differences or
“alternate paths to expert performance” that have clear implications for instruction (Freedman et
al. 19). In this case, whatever we learn about patterns of behavior among one- and multi-drafters
has direct implications for instruction as we need to know the various trade-offs involved in any
classroom instruction which would encourage more single or multiple drafting. And, as we will see
when looking at what is involved in being able to revise before drafting or in being able to return
and re-draft what has been transcribed, there are trade-offs indeed. Whatever arguments are
offered, we must also acknowledge that no picture of revision is complete until it includes all that
is known and observed about a variety of revision behaviors among writers.
But what do we know about one- and multi-drafters other than anecdotal accounts that con-
firm their existence? Much evidence is waiting to be gathered from the storehouse of various
published interviews in which well-known writers have been asked to describe their writing. And
Ann Ruggles Gere’s study of the revising behaviors of a blind student gives us a description of a
student writer who does not redraft but writes “first draft/final draft” papers, finished products
produced in one sitting for her courses as a master’s degree candidate. The student describes
periods of thinking about a topic before writing. While she doesn’t know exactly what she will say
until actually writing it, she typically knows what will be contained in the first paragraph as she
types the title. Her attention is not focused on words as she concentrates instead on images and
larger contexts. A similar description of a one-drafter is found in Joy Reid’s “The Radical Outliner
and the Radical Brainstormer.” Comparing her husband and herself, both composition teachers,
Reid notes the differences between herself, an outliner (and a one-drafter), and her husband, a
brainstormer (and a multi-drafter), differences which parallel those of the writers in Writers on
Writing that I have described.
34 MURIEL HARRIS

The descriptions of all of the one- and multi-draft writers mentioned so far offer a fairly con-
sistent picture, but these descriptions do little more than reaffirm their existence. In an effort to
learn more, I sought out some one- and multi-drafters in order to observe them composing and to
explore what might be involved. Since my intent was not to determine the percentage of one- and
multi-drafters among any population of writers (though that would be an interesting topic indeed,
as I suspect there are more than we may initially guess—or at least more who hover close to either
end of the continuum). I sought out experienced writers who identify themselves as very definitely
one- or multi-drafters. The subjects I selected for observation were graduate students who teach
composition or communications courses, my rationale being that these people can more easily cat-
egorize and articulate their own writing habits. From among the group of subjects who described
themselves as very definitely either one- or multi-drafters, I selected those who showed evidence
of being experienced, competent writers. Of the eight selected subjects (four one-drafters and
four multi-drafters), all were at least several years into their graduate studies in English or com-
munications and were either near completion or had recently completed advanced degrees. All had
received high scores in standardized tests for verbal skills such as the SAT or GRE exams; all had
grade point averages ranging from B+ to A in their graduate courses; and all wrote frequently in a
variety of tasks, including academic papers for courses and journal publications, conference papers,
the usual business writing of practicing academics (e.g., letters of recommendation for students,
memos, instructional materials for classes, etc.), and personal writing such as letters to family and
friends. They clearly earned their description as experienced writers. Experienced writers were
used because I also wished to exclude those novices who may, through development of their writ-
ing skills, change their composing behaviors, and also those novices whose composing habits are
the result of other factors such as disinterest (e.g., the one-drafter who habitually begins the paper
at 3 a.m. the night before it’s due) or anxiety (e.g., the multi-drafter who fears she is never “right”
and keeps working and re-working her text).
The experienced writers whom I observed all confirmed that their composing behaviors have
not changed over time. That is, they all stated that their writing habits have not altered as they
became experienced writers and/or as they moved through writing courses. However, their
descriptions of themselves as one- or multi-drafters were not as completely accurate as might
be expected. Self-reporting, even among teachers of writing, is not a totally reliable measure. As
I observed and talked with the eight writers, I found three very definite one-drafters, Ted, Nina,
and Amy; one writer, Jackie, who tends to be a one-drafter but does some revising after writing;
two very definite multi-drafters, Bill and Pam; and two writers, Karen and Cindy, who described
themselves as multi-drafters and who tend to revise extensively but who can also produce first
draft/final draft writing under some conditions. To gather data on their composing behaviors, I
interviewed each person for an hour, asking questions about the types of writing they do, the
activities they engage in before writing, the details of what happens as they write, their revision
behaviors, the manner in which sentences are composed, and their attitudes and past history of
writing. Each person was also asked to spend an hour writing in response to an assignment. The
specific assignment was a request from an academic advisor asking for the writers’ descriptions of
the skills needed to succeed in their field of study. As they wrote, all eight writers were asked to
give thinking-aloud protocols and were videotaped for future study. Brief interviews after writing
focused on eliciting information about how accurately the writing session reflected their general
writing habits and behaviors. Each type of information collected is, at best, incomplete because
accounts of one’s own composing processes may not be entirely accurate, because thinking-aloud
protocols while writing are only partial accounts of what is being thought about, and because one-
hour writing tasks preclude observing some of the kinds of activities that writers report. But even
with these limitations I observed patterns of composing behaviors that should differentiate one-
draft writers from multi-draft writers.
COMPOSING BEHAVIORS OF ONE- AND MULTI-DRAFT WRITERS 35

Preference for Beginning with a Developed Focus vs. Preference for

Beginning at an Exploratory Stage

Among the consistent behaviors that one-drafters report is the point at which they can and will
start writing. All of the four one-drafters expressed a strong need to clarify their thinking prior to
beginning to transcribe. They are either not ready to write or cannot write until they have a focus
and organization in mind. They may, as I observed Jacky and Ted doing, make some brief planning
notes on paper or, as Amy and Nina did, sit for awhile and mentally plan, but all expressed a clearly
articulated need to know beforehand the direction the piece of writing would take. For Nina’s lon-
ger papers, she described a planning schedule in which the focus comes first, even before collecting
notes. Ted too described the first stage of a piece of writing as being a time of mentally narrowing a
topic. During incubation times before writing, two of these writers described some global recasting
of a paper in their minds while the other two expressed a need to talk it out, either to themselves
or friends. There is little resorting of written notes and little use of written outlines, except for
some short lists, described by Ted as “memory jogs” to use while he writes. Amy explained that
she sometimes felt that in high school or as an undergraduate she should have written outlines to
please her teachers, but she never did get around to it because outlines served no useful purpose
for her. Consistent throughout these accounts and in my observation of their writing was these
writers’ need to know where they are headed beforehand and a feeling that they are not ready to
write—or cannot write—until they are at that stage. When asked if they ever engaged in freewrit-
ing, two one-drafters said they could not, unless forced to, plunge in and write without a focus and
a mental plan. Ted, in particular, noted that the notion of exploration during writing would make
him so uncomfortable that he would probably block and be unable to write.
In contrast to the one-drafters’ preference for knowing their direction before writing, the two
consistent multi-drafters, Pam and Bill, explained that they resist knowing, resist any attempt at
clarification prior to writing. Their preference is for open-ended exploration as they write. They
may have been reading and thinking extensively beforehand, but the topic has not taken shape
when they decide that it is time to begin writing. Bill reported that he purposely starts with a broad
topic while Pam said that she looks for something “broad or ambiguous” or “something small that
can grow and grow.” As Bill explained, he doesn’t like writing about what he already knows as that
would be boring. Pam too expressed her resistance to knowing her topic and direction beforehand
in terms of how boring it would be. Generally, Bill will do about four or five drafts as he works
through the early parts of a paper, perhaps two to four pages, before he knows what he will write
about. He and Pam allow for—and indeed expect—that their topic will change as they write. Pam
explained: “I work by allowing the direction of the work to change if it needs to. … I have to allow
things to go where they need to go.” When I observed them writing, Pam spent considerable time
planning and creating pre-texts before short bursts of transcribing while Bill wrote several different
versions of an introduction and, with some cutting and pasting, was about ready to define his focus
at the end of the hour. He reported that he depends heavily on seeing what he has written in order
to find his focus, choose his content, and organize. Pam also noted that she needs to see chunks of
what she has transcribed to see where the piece of discourse is taking her.
The other two writers who characterized themselves as multi-drafters, Karen and Cindy, both
described a general tendency to plunge in before the topic is clear. Karen said that she can’t visual-
ize her arguments until she writes them out and generally writes and rewrites as she proceeds, but
for writing tasks that she described as “formulaic” in that they are familiar because she has written
similar pieces of discourse, she can write quickly and finish quickly—as she did with the writing
task for this study. Since she had previously written the same kind of letter assigned in this study,
she did not engage in the multi-drafting that would be more characteristic, she says, of her general
composing behaviors. Cindy, the other self-described multi-drafter, almost completed the task in
a single draft, though as she explained with short pieces, she can revert to her “journalistic mode”
36 MURIEL HARRIS

of writing, having been a working journalist for a number of years. For longer papers, such as those
required in graduate courses, her descriptions sound much like those of Bill, Pam, and Karen. All of
these writers, though, share the unifying characteristic of beginning to write before the task is well
defined in their minds, unlike the one-drafters who do not write at that stage.

Preference for Limiting Options vs. Preference for Open-ended Exploring

Another consistent and clearly related difference between one-and multi-drafters is the differ-
ence in the quantity of options they will generate, from words and sentences to whole sections
of a paper, and the way in which they will evaluate those options. As they wrote, all four of the
one-drafters limited their options by generating several choices and then making a decision fairly
quickly. There were numerous occasions in the think-aloud protocols of three of the four one-
drafters in which they would stop, try another word, question a phrase, raise the possibility of
another idea to include, and then make a quick decision. When Ted re-read one of his paragraphs,
he saw a different direction that he might have taken that would perhaps be better, but he accepted
what he had. (“That’ll do here, OK … OK” he said to himself and moved on.) Nina, another one-
drafter, generated no alternate options aloud as she wrote.
As is evident in this description of one-drafters, they exhibited none of the agonizing over pos-
sibilities that other writers experience, and they appear to be able to accept their choices quickly
and move on. While observers may question whether limiting options in this manner cuts off further
discovery and possibly better solutions or whether the internal debate goes on prior to transcrib-
ing, one-drafters are obviously efficient writers. They generate fewer choices, reach decisions more
quickly, and do most or all of the decision-making before transcribing on paper. Thus, three of the
four one-drafters finished the paper in the time allotted, and the fourth writer was almost finished.
They can pace themselves fairly accurately too, giving me their estimates of how long it takes them
to write papers of particular lengths. All four one-drafters describe themselves as incurable pro-
crastinators who begin even long papers the night before they are due, allowing themselves about
the right number of hours in which to transcribe their mental constructs onto paper. Nina explained
that she makes choices quickly because she is always writing at the last minute under pressure and
doesn’t have time to consider more options. Another one-drafter offered a vivid description of the
tension and stress that can be involved in these last minute, all-night sessions.
While they worry about whether they will finish on time, these one-drafters generally do. Con-
tributing to their efficiency are two time-saving procedures involved as they get words on paper.
Because most decisions are made before they commit words to paper, they do little or no scratch-
ing out and re-writing; and they do a minimum of re-reading both as they proceed and also when
they are finished. The few changes I observed being made were either single words or a few short
phrases, unlike the multi-drafters who rejected or scratched out whole sentences and paragraphs.
As Nina wrote, she never re-read her developing text, though she reported that she does a little
re-reading when she is finished with longer papers. The tinkering with words that she might do
then, she says, is counterproductive because she rarely feels that she is improving the text with
these changes. (Nina and the other one-drafters would probably be quite successful at the kind of
“invisible writing” that has been investigated, that is, writing done under conditions in which writ-
ers cannot see what they are writing or scan as they progress. See Blau.)
In contrast to the one-drafters’ limited options, quick decisions, few changes on paper and
little or no re-reading, the multi-drafters were frequently observed generating and exploring many
options, spending a long time in making their choices, and making frequent and large-scale changes
on paper. Bill said that he produces large quantities of text because he needs to see it in order to
see if he wants to retain it, unlike the one-drafters who exhibit little or no need to examine their
developing text. Moreover, as Bill noted, the text he generates is also on occasion a heuristic for
more text. As he writes, Bill engages in numerous revising tactics. He writes a sentence, stops
to examine it by switching it around, going back to add clauses, or combining it with other text
COMPOSING BEHAVIORS OF ONE- AND MULTI-DRAFT WRITERS 37

on the same page or a different sheet of paper. For the assigned writing task, he began with one
sheet of paper, moved to another, tore off some of it and discarded it, and added part back to a
previous sheet. At home when writing a longer paper, he will similarly engage in extensive cutting
and pasting. In a somewhat different manner. Pam did not generate as many options on paper for
this study. Instead, her protocol recorded various alternative plans and pre-texts that she would
stop to explore verbally for five or ten minutes before transcribing anything. What she did write,
though, was often heavily edited so that at the end of the hour, she, like Bill, had only progressed
somewhat through an introductory paragraph of several sentences. Thus, while Bill had produced
large amounts of text on paper that were later rejected after having been written, Pam spent more
of her time generating and rejecting plans and pre-texts than crossing out transcriptions.
Writing is a more time-consuming task for these multi-drafters because they expect to produce
many options and a large amount of text that will be discarded. Both Bill and Pam described general
writing procedures in which they begin by freewriting, and, as they proceed, distilling from earlier
drafts what will be used in later drafts. Both proceed incrementally, that is, by starting in and then
starting again before finishing a whole draft. Both writers are used to re-reading frequently, partly
to locate what Pam called “key elements” that will be retained for later drafts and partly, as Bill
explained, because the act of generating more options and exploring them causes him to lose track
of where he is.
Because both Bill and Pam seem to be comfortable when working within an as-yet only partially
focused text, it would be interesting to explore what has been termed their “tolerance for ambigu-
ity,” a trait defined as a person’s ability to function calmly in a situation in which interpretation of
all stimuli is not completely clear. (See Budner, and Frenkel-Brunswick.) People who have little or
no tolerance for ambiguity perceive ambiguous situations as sources of psychological discomfort,
and they may try to reach conclusions quickly rather than to take the time to consider all of the
essential elements of an unclear situation. People with more tolerance for ambiguity enjoy being in
ambiguous situations and tend to seek them out. The relevance here, of course, is the question of
whether one-drafters will not begin until they have structured the task and will also move quickly
to conclusions in part, at least, because of having some degree of intolerance for ambiguity. This
might be a fruitful area for further research.
For those interested in the mental processes which accompany behaviors, another dimension to
explore is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a measure of expressed preferences (i.e., not
performance tasks) in four bi-polar dimensions of personality. The work of Geroge H. Jensen and
John K. DiTiberio has indicated some relationships between the personality types identified by the
MBTI and writing processes. Of particular interest here is that Bill, who had independently taken
the MBTI for other reasons, reported that he scored highly in the dimensions of “extraversion” and
“perceiving.” Extraverts, say Jensen and DiTiberio, “often leap into tasks with little planning, then
rely on trial and error to complete the task” (288), and they “often find freewriting a good method
for developing ideas, for they think better when writing quickly, impulsively, and uncritically” (289).
Perceivers, another type described by Jensen and DiTiberio, appear to share tendencies similar to
those with a tolerance for ambiguity, for perceivers “are willing to leave the outer world unstruc-
tured. … Quickly made decisions narrow their field of vision” (295). Perceiving types tend to select
broad topics for writing, like a wide range of alternatives, and always want to read one more book
on the subject. Their revisions thus often need to be refocused (296). The similarities here to Bill’s
writing behaviors show us that while the MBTI is somewhat circular in that the scoring is a reflec-
tion of people’s self-description, it can confirm (and perhaps clarify) the relationship of writing
behaviors to more general human behaviors.

The Preference for Closure vs. Resistance to Closure

From these descriptions of one- and multi-drafters it is readily apparent that they differ in their
need for closure. The one-drafters move quickly to decisions while composing, and they report
38 MURIEL HARRIS

that once they are done with a paper, they prefer not to look back at it, either immediately to
re-read it or at some future time, to think about revising it. Ted explained that he generally is will-
ing to do one re-reading at the time of completing a paper and sometimes to make a few wording
changes, but that is all. He shrugged off the possibility of doing even a second re-reading of any of
his writing once it is done because he says he can’t stand to look at it again. All of the one-drafters
reported that they hardly, if ever, rewrite a paper. This distaste for returning to a completed text
can be the source of problems for these one-drafters. Forced by a teacher in a graduate course
who wanted first drafts one week and revisions the next week, Nina explained that she deliber-
ately resorted to “writing a bad paper” for the first submission in order to submit her “real” draft
as the “revised” paper. Writing a series of drafts is clearly harder for one-drafters such as Nina
than we have yet acknowledged.
These one-drafters are as reluctant to start as they are impatient to finish. Although they tend
to delay the drafting process, this does not apply to their preparation which often starts well in
advance and is the “interesting” or “enjoyable” part for them. With writing that produces few sur-
prises or discoveries for any of them because the generative process precedes transcription, draft-
ing on paper is more “tedious” (a word they frequently used during their interviews) than for other
writers. Said Ted, “Writing is something I have to do, not something I want to do.” Even Jackie, who
allows for some revising while drafting in order to develop the details of her plan, reported that
she has a hard time going back to revise a paper once it is completed. She, like the others, reported
a sense of feeling the paper is over and done with. “Done, dead and done, done, finished, done,”
concluded another of these one-drafters.
On the other hand, the multi-drafters observed in this study explained that they are never done
with a paper. They can easily and willingly go back to it or to keep writing indefinitely. Asked when
they know they are finished, Bill and Pam explained that they never feel they are “done” with a piece
of discourse, merely that they have to stop in order to meet a deadline. As Pam said, she never gets
to a last draft and doesn’t care about producing “neat packages.” Understandably, she has trouble
with conclusions and with “wrapping up” at the end of a piece of discourse. Asked how pervasive
her redrafting is for all of her writing, Pam commented that she writes informal letters to parents
and friends every day and is getting to the point that she doesn’t rewrite these letters as much. Bill
too noted that he fights against products and hates to finish. As a result, both Bill and Pam often
fail to meet their deadlines. Cindy, bored by her “journalistic one-draft writing,” expressed a strong
desire to return to some of her previously completed papers in order to rewrite them.

Writer-Based vs. Reader-Based Early Drafts

One way of distinguishing the early drafts produced by the multi-drafters for this study from the
drafts produced by the one-drafters is to draw upon Linda Flower’s distinction between Writer-
Based and Reader-Based prose. Writer-Based prose, explains Flower, is “verbal expression written
by a writer to himself and for himself. It is the working of his own verbal thought. In its structure,
Writer-Based prose reflects the associative, narrative path of the writer’s own confrontation with
her subject” (19–20). Reader-Based prose, on the other hand, is “a deliberate attempt to commu-
nicate something to a reader. To do that it creates a shared language and shared context between
writer and reader. It also offers the reader an issue-oriented rhetorical structure rather than a
replay of the writer’s discovery process” (20). Although Flower acknowledges that Writer-Based
prose is a “problem” that composition courses are designed to correct, she also affirms its useful-
ness as a search tool, a strategy for handling the difficulty of attending to multiple complex tasks
simultaneously. Writer-Based prose needs to be revised into Reader-Based prose, but it can be
effective as a “medium for thinking.” And for the multi-drafters observed in this study, character-
izing the initial drafts of two of the multi-drafters as Writer-Based helps to see how their early
drafts differ from those of the one-drafters.
COMPOSING BEHAVIORS OF ONE- AND MULTI-DRAFT WRITERS 39

One feature of Writer-Based prose, as offered by Flower, is that it reflects the writer’s method
of searching by means of surveying what she knows, often in a narrative manner. Information tends
to be structured as a narrative of the discovery process or as a survey of the data in the writer’s
mind. Reader-Based prose, on the other hand, restructures the information so that it is accessible
to the reader. Both the protocols and the written drafts produced by the two confirmed multi-
drafters, Bill and Pam, reveal this Writer-Based orientation as their initial way into writing. Bill very
clearly began with a memory search through his own experience, made some brief notes, and then
wrote a narrative as his first sentence in response to the request that he describe to an academic
counselor the skills needed for his field: “I went through what must have been a million different
majors before I wound up in English and it was actually my first choice.” Pam spent the hour explor-
ing the appropriateness of the term “skills.”
In distinct contrast, all four of the one-drafters began by constructing a conceptual framework
for the response they would write, most typically by defining a few categories or headings which
would be the focus or main point of the paper. With a few words in mind that indicated his major
points, Ted then moved on to ask himself who would be reading his response, what the context
would be, and what format the writing would use. He moved quickly from a search for a point
to considerations of how his audience would use his information. Similarly, Amy rather promptly
chose a few terms, decided to herself that “that’ll be the focus,” and then said, “OK, I’m trying to
get into a role here. I’m responding to someone who … This is not something they are going to
give out to people. But they’re going to read it and compile responses, put something together
for themselves.” She then began writing her draft and completed it within the hour. Asked what
constraints and concerns she is most aware of when actually writing, Amy said that she is generally
concerned with clarity for the reader. The point of contrast here is that the search process was
both different in kind and longer for the multi-drafters. Initially, their time was spent discovering
what they think about the subject, whereas the one-drafters chose a framework within a few min-
utes and moved on to orient their writing to their readers. Because the transformation or rework-
ing of text comes later for the multi-drafters, rewriting is a necessary component of their writing.
The standard bit of advice, about writing the introductory paragraph later, would be a necessary
step for them but would not be a productive or appropriate strategy for one-drafters to try. For
the one-drafters, the introductory paragraph is the appropriate starting point. In fact, given what
they said about the necessity of knowing their focus beforehand, the introductory paragraph is not
merely appropriate but necessary.
Because the early stages of a piece of writing are, for multi-drafters, so intricately bound up
with mental searching, surveying, and discovering, the writing that is produced is not oriented to
the reader. For their early drafts, Bill and Pam both acknowledged that their writing is not yet
understandable to others. When Pam commented that in her early drafts, “the reader can’t yet see
where I’m going,” she sighed over the difficulties this had caused in trying to work with her Master’s
thesis committee. If some writers’ early drafts are so personal and so unlikely to be accessible to
readers, it is worth speculating about how effective peer editing sessions could be for such multi-
drafters who appear in classrooms with “rough drafts” as instructed.

Conclusions

One way to summarize the characteristics of one- and multi-drafters is to consider what they
gain by being one-drafters and at what cost they gain these advantages. Clearly, one-drafters are
efficient writers. This efficiency is achieved by mentally revising beforehand, by generating options
verbally rather than on paper, by generating only a limited number of options before settling on one
and getting on with the task, and by doing little or no re-reading. They are able to pace themselves
and can probably perform comfortably in situations such as the workplace or in in-class writing
where it is advantageous to produce first-draft, final-draft pieces of discourse. Their drafts are
40 MURIEL HARRIS

readily accessible to readers, and they can expend effort early on in polishing the text for greater
clarity. But at what cost? One-drafters are obviously in danger of cutting themselves off from fur-
ther exploration, from a richer field of discovery than is possible during the time in which they gen-
erate options. When they exhibit a willingness to settle on one of their options, they may thereby
have eliminated the possibility of searching for a better one. In their impatience to move on, they
may even settle on options they know could be improved on. Their impulse to write dwindles as
these writers experience little or none of the excitement of discovery or exploration during writ-
ing. The interesting portion of a writing task, the struggle with text and sense of exploration, is
largely completed when they begin to commit themselves to paper (or computer screen). Because
they are less likely to enjoy writing, the task of starting is more likely to be put off to the last minute
and to become a stressful situation, thus reinforcing their inclination not to re-read and their desire
to be done and to put the paper behind them forever once they have finished. And it appears that it
is as hard for true one-drafters to suspend the need for closure as it is for multi-drafters to reach
quick decisions and push themselves rapidly toward closure.
Multi-drafters appear to be the flip side of the same coin. Their relative inefficiency causes them
to miss deadlines, to create Writer-Based first drafts, to produce large quantities of text that is dis-
carded, and to get lost in their own writing. They need to re-read and re-draft, and they probably
appear at first glance to be poorer writers than one-drafters. But they are more likely to be writers
who will plunge in eagerly, will write and re-write, and will use writing to explore widely and richly.
They also are more likely to affirm the value of writing as a heuristic, the merits of freewriting, and
the need for cutting and pasting of text. They may, if statistics are gathered, be the writers who
benefit most from collaborative discussions such as those in writing labs with tutors. Their drafts
are truly amenable to change and available for re-working.

Implications

Acknowledging the reality of one- and multi-drafting involves enlarging both our perspectives on
revision and our instructional practices with students. In terms of what the reality of one-drafting
and multi-drafting tells us about revision, it is apparent that we need to account for this diversity
of revision behaviors as we construct a more detailed picture of revision. As Stephen Witte notes,
“revising research that limits itself to examining changes in written text or drafts espouses a reduc-
tionist view of revising as a stage in a linear sequence of stages” (“Revising” 266). Revision can and
does occur when writers set goals, create plans, and compose pre-text, as well as when they tran-
scribe and re-draft after transcription. Revision can be triggered by cognitive activity alone and/or
by interaction with text; and attitudes, preferences, and cognitive make-up play a role in when and
how much a writer revises—or is willing to revise—a text.
Yet, while recognizing the many dimensions to be explored in understanding revision, we can
also use this diversity as a source for helping students with different types of problems and con-
cerns. For students who are one-drafters or have tendencies toward single drafting, we need to
provide help in several areas. They’ll have to learn to do more reviewing of written text both as
they write and afterwards, in order to evaluate and revise. They will also need to be aware that
they should have strategies that provide for more exploration and invention than they may pres-
ently allow themselves. While acknowledging their distaste for returning to a draft to open it up
again, we also need to help them see how and when this can be productive. Moreover, we can pro-
vide assistance in helping one-drafters and other writers who cluster near that end of the spectrum
recognize that sometimes they have a preference for choosing an option even after they recognize
that it may not be the best one. When Tim, one of the one-drafters I observed, noted at one point
in his protocol that he should take a different direction for one of his paragraphs but won’t, he
shows similarities to another writer, David, observed by Witte (“Pre-Text and Composing” 406),
who is reluctant to spend more than fifteen seconds reworking a sentence in pre-text, even though
COMPOSING BEHAVIORS OF ONE- AND MULTI-DRAFT WRITERS 41

he demonstrates the ability to evoke criteria that could lead to better formulations if he chose to
stop and revise mentally (David typically does little revision of written text). This impatience, this
need to keep moving along, that does not always allow for the production of good text, can obvi-
ously work against producing good text, and it is unlikely that such writers will either recognize or
conquer the problem on their own. They may have snared themselves in their own vicious circles
if their tendency to procrastinate puts them in a deadline crunch, which, in turn, does not afford
them the luxury of time to consider new options. Such behaviors can become a composing habit
so entrenched that it is no longer noticed.
As we work with one-drafters, we will also have to learn ourselves how to distinguish them
from writers who see themselves as one-drafters because they are not inclined, for one reason or
another, to expend more energy on drafting. Inertia, lack of motivation, lack of information about
what multiple drafts can do, higher priorities for other tasks, and so on are not characteristic
of true one-drafters, and we must be able to identify the writer who might take refuge behind a
label of “one-drafter” from the writer who exhibits some or many of the characteristics of one-
draft composing and who wants to become a better writer. For example, in our writing lab I have
worked with students who think they are one-drafters because of assorted fears, anxieties, and
misinformation. “But I have to get it right the first time.” “My teachers never liked to see scratch-
ing out on the paper, even when we wrote in class,” or “I hate making choices, so I go with what I
have” are not the comments of true one-drafters.
With multiple-drafters we have other work to do. To become more efficient writers, they will
need to become more proficient planners and creaters of pre-text, though given their heavy depen-
dence on seeing what they have written, they will probably still rely a great deal on reading and work-
ing with their transcribed text. They will also need to become more proficient at times at focusing
on a topic quickly, recognizing the difficulties involved in agonizing endlessly over possibilities. In the
words of a reviewer of this paper, they will have to learn when and how “to get on with it.”
Besides assisting with these strategies, we can help students become more aware of their com-
posing behaviors. We can assist multi-drafters in recognizing that they are not slow or inept writ-
ers but writers who may linger too long over making choices. For writers who have difficulty
returning to a completed text in order to revise, we can relate the problem to the larger picture, an
impatience with returning to any completed task. Granted, this is not a giant leap forward, but too
many students are willing to throw in the towel with writing skills in particular without recognizing
the link to their more general orientations to life. Similarly, the impatient writer who, like Ted, pro-
claims to have a virulent case of the “I-hate-to-write” syndrome may be a competent one-drafter
(or have a preference for fewer drafts) who needs to see that it is the transcribing stage of writing
that is the source of the impatience, procrastination, and irritation. On the other hand, writers
more inclined to be multi-drafters need to recognize that their frustration, self-criticism, and/or
low grades may be due to having readers intervene at too early a stage in the drafting. What I am
suggesting here is that some writers unknowingly get themselves caught in linguistic traps. They
think they are making generalizations about the whole act of “writing,” that blanket term for all the
processes involved, when they may well be voicing problems or attitudes about one or another of
the processes. What is needed here is some assistance in helping students define their problems
more precisely. To do this, classroom teachers can open conferences like a writing lab tutorial, by
asking questions about the student’s writing processes and difficulties.
In addition to individualizing our work with students, we can also look at our own teaching prac-
tices. When we offer classroom strategies and heuristics, we need to remind our students that it
is likely that some will be very inappropriate for different students. Being unable to freewrite is not
necessarily a sign of an inept writer. One writer’s written text may be just as effective a heuristic
for that writer as the planning sheets are for another writer. Beyond these strategies and acknowl-
edgments, we have to examine how we talk about or teach composing processes. There is a very
real danger in imposing a single, “ideal” composing style on students, as Jack Selzer found teachers
42 MURIEL HARRIS

attempting to do in his survey of the literature. Similarly, as Susan McLeod notes, teachers tend
to teach their own composing behaviors in the classroom and are thus in danger either of impos-
ing their redrafting approaches on students whose preference for revising prior to transcribing
serves them well or of touting their one- or few-draft strategies to students who fare better when
interacting with their transcribed text. Imposing personal preferences, observes McLeod, would
put us in the peculiar position of trying to fix something that isn’t broken. And there’s enough of
that going around as is.

Works Cited

Axelrod, Rise B., and Charles R. Cooper. The St. Martin’s Guide to Writing. New York: St. Martin’s, 1985.
Bartholomae, David. “Against the Grain.” Waldrep 1:19–29.
Beach, Richard. “Self-Evaluation Strategies of Extensive Revisers and Non-revisers.” College Composition and
Communication 27 (1976): 160–64.
Blau, Sheridan. “Invisible Writing: Investigating Cognitive Processes in Composition.” College Composition and
Communication 34 (1983): 297–312.
Bloom, Lynn Z. “How I Write.” Waldrep 1:31–37.
Bridwell, Lillian S. “Revising Strategies in Twelfth Grade Students’ Transactional Writing.” Research in the
Teaching of English 14 (1980): 197–222.
Budner, S. “Intolerance of Ambiguity as a Personality Variable.” Journal of Personality 30 (1962): 29–50.
Faigley, Lester, and Stephen Witte. “Analyzing Revision.” College Composition and Communication 32 (1981):
400–14.
Flower, Linda. “Writer-Based Prose: A Cognitive Basis for Problems in Writing.” College English 41 (1979):
19–37.
Flower, Linda, John R. Hayes, Linda Carey, Karen Shriver, and James Stratman. “Detection, Diagnosis, and the
Strategies of Revision.” College Composition and Communication 37 (1986): 16–55.
Freedman, Sarah Warshauer, Anne Haas Dyson, Linda Flower, and Wallace Chafe. Research in Writing: Past,
Present, and Future. Technical Report No. 1. Center for the Study of Writing. Berkeley: University of
California, 1987.
Frenkel-Brunswick, Else. “Intolerance of Ambiguity as an Emotional and Perceptual Personality Variable.”
Journal of Personality 18 (1949): 108–43.
Gere, Ann Ruggles. “Insights from the Blind: Composing Without Revising.” Revising: New Essays for Teachers
of Writing. Ed. Ronald Sudol. Urbana, IL: ERIC/NCTE, 1982, 52–70.
Hairston, Maxine. “Different Products, Different Processes: A Theory about Writing.” College Composition
and Communication 37 (1986): 442–52.
Henley, Joan. “A Revisionist View of Revision.” Washington English Journal 8.2 (1986): 5–7.
Jensen, George, and John DiTiberio.”Personality and Individual Writing Processes.” College Composition and
Communication 35 (1984): 285–300.
Lutz, William. “How I Write.” Waldrep 1:183–88.
McLeod, Susan. “The New Orthodoxy: Rethinking the Process Approach.” Freshman English News 14.3
(1986): 16–21.
Murray, Patricia Y. “Doing Writing.” Waldrep 1:225–39.
Reid, Joy. “The Radical Outliner and the Radical Brainstormer: A Perspective on Composing Processes.”
TESOL Quarterly 18 (1985): 529–34.
Selzer, Jack. “Exploring Options in Composing.” College Composition and Communication 35 (1984): 276–84.
Sommers, Nancy. “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers.” College Composi-
tion and Communication 31 (1980): 378–88.
Waldrep, Tom, ed. Writers on Writing. Vol. 1, New York: Random House, 1985. 2 vols.
Witte, Stephen P. “Pre-Text and Composing.” College Composition and Communication 38 (1987): 397–425.
—— “Revising, Composing Theory, and Research Design.” The Acquisition of Written Language: Response and
Revision. Ed. Sarah Warshauer Freedman. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1985, 250–84.
Reprinted from Muriel Harris. “Composing Behaviors of One-And-Multi-draft Writers.” College English, Vol.
51, No. 2, February 1989, 174–190. Copyright 1989 by the National Council of Teachers of English. Reprinted
with permission.
 MOVING WRITERS, SHAPING MOTIVES, MOTIVATING
CRITIQUE AND CHANGE: A GENRE
APPROACH TO TEACHING WRITING

Mary Jo Reiff
University of Tennessee

What prompted me to write this essay for this anthology? My “assignment” was to write about the
genre of the Pedagogical Insight essay. I immediately called on my genre knowledge—my past experi-
ence with reading and writing similar texts in similar situations—to orient me to the expectations
of this genre. While I am familiar with the genre of “the essay”—and my awareness alerted me to
the fact that my piece could be less formal than an article, a piece based more in experience than in
research—I was not as familiar with the expectations of this particular genre, a Pedagogical Insight
essay. I began, then, with these questions: What are the actions that this genre performs? How will
I position myself within this genre—what identity and relations will I assume? In what ways will the
genre define and sustain the field’s discussions of pedagogy or pedagogical approaches? What are
the potential sites of resistance and transformation?
I looked for clues about how the assignment located me within a situation and provided me with
the rhetorical means for acting within that situation. From the authors’ invitation, I constructed
the rhetorical situation that helped motivate and shape my response. The audience was described
as “new teachers,” and the purpose was “to ground abstract composition theory, as presented by
the anthologized articles, in the immediacy of a real classroom context and a real teacher’s lived
experience.” There was a specified length (1,500 words), but within the constraints of audience,
purpose, and format, there was also a great deal of choice within this genre, with the authors not-
ing that they “hope for a great diversity in tone, stance, and focus.” A sample Pedagogical Insight
essay was included in the materials sent—an example of one writer’s “appropriate” response.
Writing an effective response would mean conceiving of my role as a writer not only in rela-
tion to readers and other writers and their purposes, but also in relation to the social and cultural
formations in which they interact. As a result, the larger cultural context beyond the immediate
situation of this Pedagogical Insight essay also helped to generate and organize my response. In
the materials passed along to help contextualize my response, I was given the proposal (shaped in
response to the editors at the National Council of Teachers of English as well as to a secondary
audience of contributors and reviewers) that positioned the imagined readers of this anthology,
positioned the book intertextually (among “competing texts”), and provided an overview of how
the book responds to material conditions and functions epistemologically. My response, then, is
situated very purposefully and mediated by various contextual factors, not the least of which is a
response to the multiple and related voices included in this section on relations.

Genre in the Classroom (or “How Our Students Can Relate”)

Our students are similarly positioned within and by genres. When confronted with a writing assign-
ment, students are suspended within a complex web of relations—from the institutional, disciplin-
ary, and/or course objectives that frame the assignment to the defined roles for writers, their
purposes, their subjects, and their conventions for writing. More important, a genre approach
allows students to see a writing assignment itself as a social action—a response to the whole dis-
ciplinary and institutional context for the assignment, not just a response to the teacher. Students
can access and participate effectively in academic situations by identifying the assumptions and
expectations regarding subject, their roles as writers (as critics, knowledgeable professionals in the
field), the roles of readers (teacher-readers, specialist audiences, implied audiences), and purposes
for writing (to describe, analyze, argue, evaluate, etc.) that are embedded in the assignment.
44 MARY JO REIFF

Approaching writing through a contextual genre theory consists of using genre as a lens for
accessing, understanding, and writing in various situations and contexts. A genre approach to
teaching writing is careful not to treat genres as static forms or systems of classification. Rather,
students learn how to recognize genres as rhetorical responses to and reflections of the situations
in which they are used; furthermore, students learn how to use genres to intervene in situations.
Students begin by (1) collecting samples of a wide range of responses within a particular genre;
(2) identifying and describing the larger cultural scene and rhetorical situation from which genre
emerges (setting, subject, participants, purposes); (3) identifying and describing the patterns of the
genre, including content, structure, format, sentences, and diction; and (4) analyzing genres for
what they tell us about situation and making an argumentative or critical claim about what these
patterns reveal about the attitudes, values, and actions embedded in the genre.
For example, a prelaw student in my advanced composition class explored the genre activities
of the law community by first examining the genre system—the textualized sites such as opinions,
wills, deeds, contracts, and briefs—that defines and sustains the legal community. After choosing
to focus her study on the genre of case briefs, the student began by collecting samples of constitu-
tional law briefs, discovering that the shared purposes and functions “illustrated the legal commu-
nity’s shared value of commitment to tradition, as well as the need for a standard and convenient
form of communicating important and complex legal concepts.” Through her study of the repeated
rhetorical patterns and social actions of legal briefs, the student gained access to the habits, beliefs,
and values of the law community. She not only learned about the genre features of case briefs—
such as the technical terminology, rigid format, and formal style—but she also become more aware
of how these formal patternings reflected and reinforced the goals of the community. Recogniz-
ing that all the briefs follow the same organizational strategy of presenting sections labeled “case
information,” “facts of the case,” “procedural history,” “issue,” “holding,” and “court reasoning,”
she surmised that “Even the rigid structure of the format [suggests] the community’s emphasis on
logic and order, which are two esteemed values of the profession.” The genre not only reflects the
legal community’s valuing of logic and order but, as the student discovered, also reinscribes these
values by “maintaining a system of communication that relates the scientific and the complex world
of law,” establishing a relationship, in effect, between scientific, technical precision and the less
precise interpretation of law and, as a result, reinforcing the belief that legal cases are unambiguous
and clearcut. Furthermore, reflecting on the legal jargon, such as writ of mandamus, or the formal
language of verbs like sayeth and witnesseth or words like hereunder and wherewith, the student
makes the following connections among text, contexts, and the ideological effects of genres:

Legal language is part of a lawyer’s professional training, so the habit of “talking like a lawyer” is
deeply rooted in the practices of the community. This tells us that lawyers feel compelled to use
established jargon to maintain a legitimate status in the eyes of other community members. In
addition, formal language is needed to surround legal proceedings with an air of solemnity, and to
send the message that any legal proceeding is a significant matter with important consequences.

The writer also notes how this use of legal language reinscribes a power relationship of sorts, sepa-
rating “insiders” (members of the profession) from “outsiders” (the public) by cultivating a language
“that reads like a foreign language to those outside the profession.” For students like this one, using
genre as a lens for inquiry cultivates a consciousness of the rhetorical strategies used to carry out
the social actions of a group or disciplinary community, thus making the complex, multitextured
relations of the legal community more tangible and accessible.
MOVING WRITERS, SHAPING MOTIVES 45

Relating and Resisting

Students’ critical awareness of how genres work—their understanding of how rhetorical features
are connected to social actions—enables them to more effectively critique and resist genres by
creating alternatives. For example, a student’s critique of the wedding invitation as a genre allowed
the discovery of a particular cultural view of women or gender bias in its rhetorical patterns and
language (particularly in the references to the bride’s parents who “request the honor of your pres-
ence”). Embedded in the invitation are cultural assumptions of women as objects or property to
be “handed over” from parents to spouse. The textual patternings of the genre, such as references
to the parents and the bride as “their daughter” and the omission of the bride’s name (while nam-
ing the bride’s parents and the groom), reinforce what the student describes as a cultural attitude
toward marriage that involves a loss of identity for women. Wedding invitations, then, in the stu-
dent’s final analysis, are cultural artifacts that through their repeated use in similar situations—the
repeated cultural event of formally announcing marriages—not only reflect but reinscribe gender
inequality and unequal dis t r ibutions of power in relationships (Devitt, Reiff, and Bawarshi).
Classroom genres, too, reflect and enact the social relations of classrooms, and because of the
recurring forms of language use of genres, the institutionally sanctioned academic genres might be
more easily perpetuated, thus excluding students for whom these genres are less accessible. Brad
Peters, in “Genre, Antigenre, and Reinventing the Forms of Conceptualization,” describes a college
composition course in which students read about the United States invasion of Panama in a book
that takes a Panamanian perspective. The students were then told to write an essay exam that fol-
lowed a particular format moving from a summary of the argument, to the three most compelling
points for a Latin American reader, to the three most fallacious points for a Latin American reader,
and finally to the student’s reaction compared to that of the Latin American reader. One student,
Rita, wrote the essay exam from the fictional perspective of her close friend Maria, a native Latin
American, and after completing the rhetorical analysis part of the exam, dropped the persona and
took up her own in the form of a letter to Maria. Peters identifies this as an “antigenre” but points
out that Rita’s response satisfies the social purpose of the genre while reconstituting voice and
varying the format of the genre. This demonstrates that even when the writing assignment is fairly
prescriptive and students are asked to write a fairly traditional genre, there is room for them to
maneuver within (and because of) the constraints of the genre.

Toward Changing Relations and Developing New Textual Relations

One criticism leveled against a genre approach to literacy teaching is that it focuses on analysis and
critique of genres, stopping short of having writers use genres to enact change. Genres—as they
function to define, critique, and bring about change—can provide rich pedagogical sites, sites for
intervention. Bruce McComiskey, for example, pairs academic and public genres—having students
write a critical analysis of education followed by a brochure for high school students, or following
an analysis of the cultural values of advertisements with letters to advertisers arguing the negative
effect on consumers. Genre analysis encourages students to critique sites of intervention, analyz-
ing how such genres enable participation in the process while also limiting intervention. Students
identify linguistic and rhetorical patterns and analyze their significance, while simultaneously cri-
tiquing the cultural and social values encoded in the genre (what the genre allows users to do and
what it does not allow them to do, whose needs are most/least served, how it enables or limits the
way its users do their work).
But the final step would be to ask students to produce new genres or genres that encode alter-
native values for the purpose of intervening. Students could create their own genres that respond
to those they analyzed. Or, after interrogating the sites at which change happens, students can
46 MARY JO REIFF

more directly intervene in these sites by writing their own alternative genres or “antigenres” in
response. I often have my students follow their analysis of genres by inventing and formulating their
own generic response or by writing a manual for others on how to write that genre. The idea is
that as students critique genres as sites of rhetorical action and cultural production and reproduc-
tion, they also see how genres function as motivated social actions, enabling them to enter into the
production of alternatives.

Teaching Alternatives (or Coming Full Circle)

As is typical in the genre of the essay, I am going to conclude by returning to my introduction,

where I invoked the genre of the Pedagogical Insight essay. This genre seeks to intervene in the
theoretical readings in this section on Relations by reflecting, according to the authors’ goals, “some
concrete, practical instantiations of theoretical positions.” Ideally this genre will function for new
teachers as a “conversation starter” about how teaching writing means teaching relations, and how
genre analysis can move teachers beyond teaching academic forms to teaching purposeful rhetori-
cal instruments for social action. By teaching students to interrogate how social groups organize
and define kinds of texts and how these genres, in turn, organize and define social relations and
practices, teachers can construct assignments that enable students to engage more critically in
situated action and to produce alternative ways of interacting.
More important, perhaps, is an understanding of how our own work as teachers is also situated
institutionally and organized and generated by genres ranging from textbooks to syllabi to assign-
ments to the end comments we write on papers (see, for instance, Summer Smith’s “The Genre
of the End Comment” and her research on how our comments on papers both enable and restrict
writing choices). From the conversations we have with other teachers about our classroom prac-
tices to the syllabi that we write that position us as teachers, define our roles in the classroom,
establish relationships between us and our students, and reflect and reinforce the goals of our writ-
ing courses, the genres we use are sites of action—sites in which we, as teachers, communicate,
enact, and carry out our teaching lives. Just as genres may provide a framework for facilitating both
inquiry and intervention for our students, as teachers we can use our understanding of the institu-
tional genres that situate us and our teaching—our understanding of our “teaching assignment”—
to prompt us to explore ways we might enter into the production of alternative approaches.

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‘90s. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.

Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society (M. Cole, V.

John-Steiner, S. Scrivner, & E. Souberman, Eds). Cambridge,
MA. Harvard University Press.

Williams, J. D. (1998). Preparing to teach writing:

Research, theory, and practice (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Readings COMPOSING BEHAVIORS OF ONEAND MULTI-DRAFT WRITERS

Muriel Harris

A belief shared by teachers of writing, one that we

fervently try to inculcate in our students, is that

revision can improve writing. This notion, that revision

generally results in better text, often pairs

up with another assumption, that revision occurs as we work

through separate drafts. Thus, “hand

in your working drafts tomorrow and the fi nal ones next

Friday” is a common assignment, as is the

following bit of textbook advice: “When the draft is

completed, a good critical reading should help

the writer re-envision the essay and could very well lead
to substantial rewriting” (Axelrod and

Cooper 10). This textbook advice, hardly atypical, is based

on the rationale that gaining distance

from a piece of discourse helps the writer to judge it more

critically. As evidence for this assump

tion. Richard Beach’s 1976 study of the self-evaluation

strategies of revisers and non-revisers dem

onstrated that extensive revisers were more capable of

detaching themselves and gaining aesthetic

distance from their writing than were non-revisers. Nancy

Sommers’ later theoretical work on

revision also sensitized us to students’ need to re-see

their texts rather than to view revision as an

editing process at the limited level of word changes. A

logical conclusion, then, is to train student writers to
re-see and then re-draft a piece of

discourse. There are other compelling reasons for helping

students view fi rst or working drafts

as fl uid and not yet molded into fi nal form. The

opportunities for outside intervention, through

teacher critiques and suggestions or peer evaluation

sessions, can be valuable. And it is equally

important to help students move beyond their limited

approaches and limiting tendency to settle

for whatever rolls out on paper the fi rst time around. The
novice view of a fi rst draft as written

in-stone (or fast-drying cement) can preclude engaging more

fully with the ideas being expressed.

On the other hand, we have to acknowledge that there are

advantages in being able, where it is

appropriate, to master the art of one-draft writing. When

students write essay exams or place

ment essays and when they go on to on-the-job writing where

time doesn’t permit multiple drafts,

they need to produce fi rst drafts which are also coherent,

fi nished fi nal drafts. Yet, even acknowl

edging that need, we still seem justifi ed in advocating

that our students master the art of redrafting

to shape a text into a more effective form. The notion that

reworking a text through multiple drafts and/or visible
changes is generally

a benefi cial process is also an underlying assumption in

some lines of research. This had been

particularly evident in studies of computer-aided revision,

where counts were taken of changes in

macrostructure and microstructure with and without word

processing. If more changes were made

on a word processor than were written by hand, the

conclusion was that word processors are an

aid to revision. Such research is based on the premise that

revision equals visible changes in a text

and that these changes will improve the text. Given this
widely entrenched notion of redrafting as being
advantageous, it would be comforting

to turn to research results for clearcut evidence that

reworking of text produces better writing.

But studies of revision do not provide the conclusive

picture that we need in order to assert that

we should continue coaxing our students into writing

multiple drafts. Lillian Bridwell’s 1980 survey

of revision studies led her to conclude that “questions

about the relationship between revision and

qualitative improvement remain largely unanswered” (199),

and her own study demonstrated that

the most extensively revised papers “received a range of

quality ratings from the top to the bottom

of the scale” (216). In another review of research on

revision, Stephen Witte cities studies which

similarly suggest that the amount of re-drafting (which

Witte calls “retranscription”) often bears

little relation to the overall quality of completed texts

(“Revising” 256). Similarly, Linda Flower and

John Hayes, et al., citing studies which also dispute the

notion that more re-drafting should mean

better papers, conclude that the amount of change is not a

key variable in revision and that revi
sion as an obligatory stage required by teachers doesn’t
necessarily produce better writing. (For a

teacher’s affi rmation of the same phenomenon, see Henley.)

Constricting revision to retranscription (i.e., to altering
what has been written) also denies the

reality of pre-text, a composing phenomenon studied by

Stephen Witte in “Pre-Text and Compos

ing.” Witte defi nes a writer’s pre-text as “the mental

construction of ‘text’ prior to transcription”

(397). Pre-text thus “refers to a writer’s linguistic

representation of intended meaning, a ‘trial locu

tion’ that is produced in the mind, stored in the writer’s

memory, and sometimes manipulated men

tally prior to being transcribed as written text” (397).

Pre-texts are distinguished from abstract

plans in that pre-texts approximate written prose. As the

outcome of planning, pre-text can also

be the basis for further planning. In his study Witte found

great diversity in how writers construct

and use pre-text. Some writers construct little or no

pre-text; others rely heavily on extensive

pre-texts; others create short pre-texts; and still others

move back and forth between extensive

and short pre-texts. The point here is that Witte has shown
us that revision can and does occur

in pre-texts, before visible marks are made on paper. In an

earlier paper, “Revising, Composing

Theory, and Research Design,” Witte suggests that the

pre-text writers construct before making

marks on paper is probably a function of the quality, kind,

and extent of planning that occurs before

transcribing on paper. The danger here is that we might

conclude that the development from nov
ice to expert writer entails learning to make greater use
of pre-text prior to transcribing. After

all, in Linda Flower’s memorable phrase, pre-text is “the

last cheap gas before transcribing text”

(see Witte, “Pre-Text” 422). But Witte notes that his data
do not support a “vote for pre-text”

(“Pre-Text” 401). For the students in Witte’s study, more

extensive use of pre-text doesn’t auto

matically lead to better written text. Thus it appears so

far that the quality of revision can neither

be measured by the pound nor tracked through discreet

stages. But a discussion of whether more or fewer drafts is
an indication of more mature writing is itself

not adequate. As Maxine Hairston reminds us in “Different

Products, Different Processes,” we

must also consider the writing task that is involved in any

particular case of generating discourse.

In her taxonomy of writing categories, categories that

depict a variety of revision behaviors that

are true to the experience of many of us, Hairston divides

writing into three classes; fi rst, rou

tine maintenance writing which is simple communication

about uncomplicated matters; second,

extended, relatively complex writing that requires the

writer’s attention but is self-limiting in that

the writer already knows most of what she is going to write

and may be writing under time con

straints; and third, extended refl ective writing in which

the form and content emerge as the writing

proceeds. Even with this oversimplifi ed, brief summary of

Hairston’s classes of writing, we recog

nize that the matter of when and if re-drafting takes place

can differ according to the demands of

different tasks and situations as well as the different

skills levels of writers. Many—or perhaps even most—of us
may nod in agreement as we recognize in Hairston’s

classes of writing a description of the different types of

writing we do. But given the range of indi

vidual differences that exist among writers, we still

cannot conclude that the nature of effective

revision is always tied to the writing task, because such a

conclusion would not account for what

we know also exists—some expert writers who, despite the

writing task, work at either end of

the spectrum as confi rmed, consistent one-drafters or as

perpetual multi-drafters. That writers

exhibit a diversity of revising habits has been noted by

Lester Faigley and Stephen Witte in “Analyz

ing Revision.” When testing the taxonomy of revision

changes they had created, Faigley and Witte

found that expert writers exhibited “extreme diversity” in

the ways they revised: One expert writer in the present
study made almost no revisions; another started with an
almost stream-of-consciousness text that she then converted
to an organized essay in the second draft; another limited
his major revisions to a single long insert; and another
revised mostly by pruning. (410)

Similarly, when summarizing interviews with well-known

authors such as those in the Writers at

Work: The Paris Review Interviews series, Lillian Bridwell

notes that these discussions reveal a wide

range of revision strategies among these writers, from

rapid producers of text who do little revis

ing as they proceed to writers who move along by revising

every sentence (198). More extensive insights into a
variety of composing styles are offered in Tom Waldrep’s
collec

tion of essays by successful scholars working in

composition, Writers on Writing. Here too as writers

describe their composing processes, we see a variety of

approaches, including some writers who

plan extensively before their pens hit paper (or before the
cursor blips on their screens). Their

planning is so complete that their texts generally emerge

in a single draft with minor, if any, editing

as they write. Self-descriptions of some experienced

writers in the fi eld of composition give us

vivid accounts of how these one-drafters work. For example,

Patricia Y. Murray notes that prior

to typing, she sees words, phrases, sentences, and

paragraphs taking shape in her head. Her com

posing, she concludes, has been done before her fi ngers

touch the typewriter, though as she also

notes, she revises and edits as she types (234). William

Lutz offers a similar account: Before I write, I write in
my mind. The more diffi cult and complex the writing, the
more time I need to think before I write. Ideas incubate
in my mind. While I talk, drive, swim, and exercise I am
thinking, planning, writing. I think about the
introduction, what examples to use, how to develop the
main idea, what kind of conclusion to use. I write, revise,
rewrite, agonize, despair, give up, only to start all over
again, and all of this before I ever begin to put words on
paper. … Writing is not a process of discovery for me. …
The writing process takes place in my mind. Once that
process is complete the product emerges. Often I can write
pages without pause and with very little, if any, revision
or even minor changes. (186–87) Even with such
descriptions from experienced writers, we are hesitant
either to discard the

notion that writing is a process of discovery for many of

us or to typecast writers who make many

visible changes on the page and/or work through multiple

drafts as inadequate writers. After all,

many of us, probably the majority, fall somewhere along the

continuum from one- to multi-drafters.

We may fi nd ourselves as both one- and multi-drafters with

the classes of writing that Hairston
describes, or we may generally identify ourselves as doing
both but also functioning more often

as a one- or multi-drafter. Just as we have seen that at

one end of the spectrum there are some

confi rmed one-drafters, so too must we recognize that at

the other end of that spectrum there are

some confi rmed multi-drafters, expert writers for whom

extensive revising occurs when writing

(so that a piece of discourse may go through several or

more drafts or be reworked heavily as the

original draft evolves.) David Bartholomae, a

self-described multi-drafter, states that he never out

lines but works instead with two pads of paper, one to

write on and one for making plans, storing

sentences, and taking notes. He views his fi rst drafts as

disorganized and has to revise extensively,

with the result that the revisions bear little resemblance

to the fi rst drafts (22–26). Similarly, Lynn

Z. Bloom notes that she cannot predict at the outset a

great deal of what she is going to say. Only

by writing does she learn how her content will develop or

how she will handle the structure, orga

nization, and style of her paragraphs, sentences, and whole

essay (33). Thus, if we wish to draw a more inclusive
picture of composing behaviors for revision, we have

to put together a description that accounts for differences

in levels of ability and experience (from

novice to expert), for differences in writing tasks, and

also for differences in the as yet largely unex

plored area of composing process differences among writers.

My interest here is in the composing

processes of different writers, more particularly, the

reality of those writers at either end of that

long spectrum, the one-drafters at one end and the

multi-drafters at the other. By one-draft writ

ers I mean those writers who construct their plans and the
pre-texts that carry out those plans

as well as do all or most of the revising of those plans

and pre-texts mentally, before transcribing.

They do little or no retranscribing. True one-drafters have

not arrived at this developmentally or

as a result of training in writing, and they should not be

confused with other writers who—driven

by deadlines, lack of motivation, insuffi cient experience

with writing, or anxieties about “getting it

right the fi rst time”—do little or no scratching out of

what they have written. Multi-drafters, on

the other hand, need to interact with their transcriptions

in order to revise. Independent of how

much planning they do or pre-text they compose, they

continue to revise after they have tran

scribed words onto paper. Again, true multi-drafters have

not reached this stage developmentally

or as a result of any intervention by teachers. This is not

to say that we can classify writers into two

categories, one- and multi-drafters, because all the

evidence we have and, more importantly, our

own experience tells us that most writers are not one or

the other but exist somewhere between

these two ends of the continuum. However, one- and

multi-drafters do exist, and we do need to learn more about
them to gain

a clearer picture not only of what is involved in different

revising processes but also to provide

a basis for considering the pedagogical implications of

dealing with individual differences. There

is a strong argument for looking instead at the middle

range of writers who do some writing in
single drafts and others in multiple drafts or with a lot
of retranscribing as they proceed, for it is

very probable that the largest number of writers cluster

there. But those of us who teach in the

individualized setting of conferences or writing lab

tutorials know that we can never overlook or

put aside the concerns of every unique individual with whom

we work. Perhaps we are overly

intrigued with individual differences, partly because we

see that some students can be ill-served

in the group setting of the classrooms and partly because

looking at individual differences gives

us such enlightening glimpses into the complex reality of

composing processes. Clinicians in other

fi elds would argue that looking at the extremes offers a

clearer view of what may be involved in

the behaviors of the majority. But those who do research in

writing also acknowledge that we need

to understand dimensions of variation among writers,

particularly those patterned differences or

“alternate paths to expert performance” that have clear

implications for instruction (Freedman et

al. 19). In this case, whatever we learn about patterns of

behavior among one- and multi-drafters

has direct implications for instruction as we need to know

the various trade-offs involved in any

classroom instruction which would encourage more single or

multiple drafting. And, as we will see

when looking at what is involved in being able to revise

before drafting or in being able to return

and re-draft what has been transcribed, there are

trade-offs indeed. Whatever arguments are

offered, we must also acknowledge that no picture of

revision is complete until it includes all that

is known and observed about a variety of revision behaviors

among writers. But what do we know about one- and
multi-drafters other than anecdotal accounts that con

fi rm their existence? Much evidence is waiting to be

gathered from the storehouse of various

published interviews in which well-known writers have been

asked to describe their writing. And

Ann Ruggles Gere’s study of the revising behaviors of a

blind student gives us a description of a

student writer who does not redraft but writes “fi rst
draft/fi nal draft” papers, fi nished products

produced in one sitting for her courses as a master’s

degree candidate. The student describes

periods of thinking about a topic before writing. While she

doesn’t know exactly what she will say

until actually writing it, she typically knows what will be

contained in the fi rst paragraph as she

types the title. Her attention is not focused on words as

she concentrates instead on images and

larger contexts. A similar description of a one-drafter is

found in Joy Reid’s “The Radical Outliner

and the Radical Brainstormer.” Comparing her husband and

herself, both composition teachers,

Reid notes the differences between herself, an outliner

(and a one-drafter), and her husband, a

brainstormer (and a multi-drafter), differences which

parallel those of the writers in Writers on

Writing that I have described. The descriptions of all of

the one- and multi-draft writers mentioned so far offer a
fairly con

sistent picture, but these descriptions do little more than

reaffi rm their existence. In an effort to

learn more, I sought out some one- and multi-drafters in

order to observe them composing and to

explore what might be involved. Since my intent was not to

determine the percentage of one- and

multi-drafters among any population of writers (though that

would be an interesting topic indeed,

as I suspect there are more than we may initially guess—or

at least more who hover close to either

end of the continuum). I sought out experienced writers who

identify themselves as very defi nitely

one- or multi-drafters. The subjects I selected for

observation were graduate students who teach

composition or communications courses, my rationale being

that these people can more easily cat

egorize and articulate their own writing habits. From among

the group of subjects who described

themselves as very defi nitely either one- or

multi-drafters, I selected those who showed evidence

of being experienced, competent writers. Of the eight

selected subjects (four one-drafters and

four multi-drafters), all were at least several years into

their graduate studies in English or com

munications and were either near completion or had recently

completed advanced degrees. All had

received high scores in standardized tests for verbal

skills such as the SAT or GRE exams; all had

grade point averages ranging from B+ to A in their graduate

courses; and all wrote frequently in a

variety of tasks, including academic papers for courses and

journal publications, conference papers,

the usual business writing of practicing academics (e.g.,

letters of recommendation for students,

memos, instructional materials for classes, etc.), and

personal writing such as letters to family and
friends. They clearly earned their description as
experienced writers. Experienced writers were

used because I also wished to exclude those novices who

may, through development of their writ

ing skills, change their composing behaviors, and also

those novices whose composing habits are

the result of other factors such as disinterest (e.g., the

one-drafter who habitually begins the paper

at 3 a.m. the night before it’s due) or anxiety (e.g., the

multi-drafter who fears she is never “right”

and keeps working and re-working her text). The experienced

writers whom I observed all confi rmed that their composing
behaviors have

not changed over time. That is, they all stated that their
writing habits have not altered as they

became experienced writers and/or as they moved through

writing courses. However, their

descriptions of themselves as one- or multi-drafters were

not as completely accurate as might

be expected. Self-reporting, even among teachers of

writing, is not a totally reliable measure. As

I observed and talked with the eight writers, I found three

very defi nite one-drafters, Ted, Nina,

and Amy; one writer, Jackie, who tends to be a one-drafter

but does some revising after writing;

two very defi nite multi-drafters, Bill and Pam; and two
writers, Karen and Cindy, who described

themselves as multi-drafters and who tend to revise

extensively but who can also produce fi rst

draft/fi nal draft writing under some conditions. To gather

data on their composing behaviors, I

interviewed each person for an hour, asking questions about

the types of writing they do, the

activities they engage in before writing, the details of

what happens as they write, their revision

behaviors, the manner in which sentences are composed, and

their attitudes and past history of

writing. Each person was also asked to spend an hour

writing in response to an assignment. The

specifi c assignment was a request from an academic advisor

asking for the writers’ descriptions of

the skills needed to succeed in their fi eld of study. As

they wrote, all eight writers were asked to

give thinking-aloud protocols and were videotaped for

future study. Brief interviews after writing

focused on eliciting information about how accurately the

writing session refl ected their general

writing habits and behaviors. Each type of information

collected is, at best, incomplete because

accounts of one’s own composing processes may not be

entirely accurate, because thinking-aloud

protocols while writing are only partial accounts of what

is being thought about, and because one

hour writing tasks preclude observing some of the kinds of

activities that writers report. But even

with these limitations I observed patterns of composing

behaviors that should differentiate one

draft writers from multi-draft writers.

Preference for Beginning with a Developed Focus vs.

Preference for

Beginning at an Exploratory Stage

Among the consistent behaviors that one-drafters report is

the point at which they can and will

start writing. All of the four one-drafters expressed a

strong need to clarify their thinking prior to

beginning to transcribe. They are either not ready to write

or cannot write until they have a focus
and organization in mind. They may, as I observed Jacky and
Ted doing, make some brief planning

notes on paper or, as Amy and Nina did, sit for awhile and
mentally plan, but all expressed a clearly

articulated need to know beforehand the direction the piece

of writing would take. For Nina’s lon

ger papers, she described a planning schedule in which the

focus comes fi rst, even before collecting

notes. Ted too described the fi rst stage of a piece of

writing as being a time of mentally narrowing a

topic. During incubation times before writing, two of these

writers described some global recasting

of a paper in their minds while the other two expressed a

need to talk it out, either to themselves

or friends. There is little resorting of written notes and

little use of written outlines, except for

some short lists, described by Ted as “memory jogs” to use

while he writes. Amy explained that

she sometimes felt that in high school or as an

undergraduate she should have written outlines to

please her teachers, but she never did get around to it

because outlines served no useful purpose

for her. Consistent throughout these accounts and in my

observation of their writing was these

writers’ need to know where they are headed beforehand and

a feeling that they are not ready to

write—or cannot write—until they are at that stage. When

asked if they ever engaged in freewrit

ing, two one-drafters said they could not, unless forced

to, plunge in and write without a focus and

a mental plan. Ted, in particular, noted that the notion of

exploration during writing would make

him so uncomfortable that he would probably block and be

unable to write. In contrast to the one-drafters’
preference for knowing their direction before writing, the
two

consistent multi-drafters, Pam and Bill, explained that

they resist knowing, resist any attempt at

clarifi cation prior to writing. Their preference is for

open-ended exploration as they write. They

may have been reading and thinking extensively beforehand,

but the topic has not taken shape

when they decide that it is time to begin writing. Bill

reported that he purposely starts with a broad

topic while Pam said that she looks for something “broad or
ambiguous” or “something small that

can grow and grow.” As Bill explained, he doesn’t like

writing about what he already knows as that

would be boring. Pam too expressed her resistance to

knowing her topic and direction beforehand

in terms of how boring it would be. Generally, Bill will do

about four or fi ve drafts as he works

through the early parts of a paper, perhaps two to four

pages, before he knows what he will write

about. He and Pam allow for—and indeed expect—that their

topic will change as they write. Pam

explained: “I work by allowing the direction of the work to

change if it needs to. … I have to allow

things to go where they need to go.” When I observed them

writing, Pam spent considerable time

planning and creating pre-texts before short bursts of

transcribing while Bill wrote several different

versions of an introduction and, with some cutting and

pasting, was about ready to defi ne his focus

at the end of the hour. He reported that he depends heavily

on seeing what he has written in order

to fi nd his focus, choose his content, and organize. Pam

also noted that she needs to see chunks of

what she has transcribed to see where the piece of

discourse is taking her. The other two writers who
characterized themselves as multi-drafters, Karen and
Cindy, both

described a general tendency to plunge in before the topic

is clear. Karen said that she can’t visual

ize her arguments until she writes them out and generally
writes and rewrites as she proceeds, but

for writing tasks that she described as “formulaic” in that

they are familiar because she has written

similar pieces of discourse, she can write quickly and fi

nish quickly—as she did with the writing

task for this study. Since she had previously written the
same kind of letter assigned in this study,

she did not engage in the multi-drafting that would be more

characteristic, she says, of her general

composing behaviors. Cindy, the other self-described

multi-drafter, almost completed the task in

a single draft, though as she explained with short pieces,

she can revert to her “journalistic mode”

of writing, having been a working journalist for a number

of years. For longer papers, such as those

required in graduate courses, her descriptions sound much

like those of Bill, Pam, and Karen. All of

these writers, though, share the unifying characteristic of

beginning to write before the task is well

defi ned in their minds, unlike the one-drafters who do not

write at that stage.

Preference for Limiting Options vs. Preference for

Open-ended Exploring

Another consistent and clearly related difference between

one-and multi-drafters is the differ

ence in the quantity of options they will generate, from

words and sentences to whole sections

of a paper, and the way in which they will evaluate those

options. As they wrote, all four of the

one-drafters limited their options by generating several

choices and then making a decision fairly

quickly. There were numerous occasions in the think-aloud

protocols of three of the four one

drafters in which they would stop, try another word,

question a phrase, raise the possibility of

another idea to include, and then make a quick decision.

When Ted re-read one of his paragraphs,

he saw a different direction that he might have taken that

would perhaps be better, but he accepted

what he had. (“That’ll do here, OK … OK” he said to himself

and moved on.) Nina, another one

drafter, generated no alternate options aloud as she wrote.

As is evident in this description of one-drafters, they
exhibited none of the agonizing over pos

sibilities that other writers experience, and they appear

to be able to accept their choices quickly

and move on. While observers may question whether limiting

options in this manner cuts off further

discovery and possibly better solutions or whether the

internal debate goes on prior to transcrib

ing, one-drafters are obviously effi cient writers. They

generate fewer choices, reach decisions more

quickly, and do most or all of the decision-making before

transcribing on paper. Thus, three of the

four one-drafters fi nished the paper in the time allotted,

and the fourth writer was almost fi nished.

They can pace themselves fairly accurately too, giving me

their estimates of how long it takes them

to write papers of particular lengths. All four

one-drafters describe themselves as incurable pro
crastinators who begin even long papers the night before
they are due, allowing themselves about

the right number of hours in which to transcribe their

mental constructs onto paper. Nina explained

that she makes choices quickly because she is always

writing at the last minute under pressure and

doesn’t have time to consider more options. Another

one-drafter offered a vivid description of the

tension and stress that can be involved in these last

minute, all-night sessions. While they worry about whether
they will fi nish on time, these one-drafters generally do.
Con

tributing to their effi ciency are two time-saving

procedures involved as they get words on paper.

Because most decisions are made before they commit words to

paper, they do little or no scratch

ing out and re-writing; and they do a minimum of re-reading

both as they proceed and also when

they are fi nished. The few changes I observed being made

were either single words or a few short

phrases, unlike the multi-drafters who rejected or

scratched out whole sentences and paragraphs.

As Nina wrote, she never re-read her developing text,

though she reported that she does a little

re-reading when she is fi nished with longer papers. The

tinkering with words that she might do

then, she says, is counterproductive because she rarely

feels that she is improving the text with

these changes. (Nina and the other one-drafters would

probably be quite successful at the kind of

“invisible writing” that has been investigated, that is,

writing done under conditions in which writ

ers cannot see what they are writing or scan as they

progress. See Blau.) In contrast to the one-drafters’
limited options, quick decisions, few changes on paper and

little or no re-reading, the multi-drafters were frequently

observed generating and exploring many

options, spending a long time in making their choices, and

making frequent and large-scale changes

on paper. Bill said that he produces large quantities of

text because he needs to see it in order to

see if he wants to retain it, unlike the one-drafters who

exhibit little or no need to examine their

developing text. Moreover, as Bill noted, the text he

generates is also on occasion a heuristic for

more text. As he writes, Bill engages in numerous revising

tactics. He writes a sentence, stops

to examine it by switching it around, going back to add

clauses, or combining it with other text

on the same page or a different sheet of paper. For the

assigned writing task, he began with one

sheet of paper, moved to another, tore off some of it and

discarded it, and added part back to a

previous sheet. At home when writing a longer paper, he

will similarly engage in extensive cutting

and pasting. In a somewhat different manner. Pam did not

generate as many options on paper for

this study. Instead, her protocol recorded various

alternative plans and pre-texts that she would

stop to explore verbally for fi ve or ten minutes before

transcribing anything. What she did write,

though, was often heavily edited so that at the end of the

hour, she, like Bill, had only progressed

somewhat through an introductory paragraph of several

sentences. Thus, while Bill had produced

large amounts of text on paper that were later rejected

after having been written, Pam spent more
of her time generating and rejecting plans and pre-texts
than crossing out transcriptions. Writing is a more
time-consuming task for these multi-drafters because they
expect to produce

many options and a large amount of text that will be

discarded. Both Bill and Pam described general

writing procedures in which they begin by freewriting, and,

as they proceed, distilling from earlier

drafts what will be used in later drafts. Both proceed

incrementally, that is, by starting in and then

starting again before fi nishing a whole draft. Both

writers are used to re-reading frequently, partly

to locate what Pam called “key elements” that will be

retained for later drafts and partly, as Bill

explained, because the act of generating more options and

exploring them causes him to lose track

of where he is. Because both Bill and Pam seem to be

comfortable when working within an as-yet only partially

focused text, it would be interesting to explore what has

been termed their “tolerance for ambigu

ity,” a trait defi ned as a person’s ability to function

calmly in a situation in which interpretation of

all stimuli is not completely clear. (See Budner, and

Frenkel-Brunswick.) People who have little or

no tolerance for ambiguity perceive ambiguous situations as

sources of psychological discomfort,

and they may try to reach conclusions quickly rather than

to take the time to consider all of the

essential elements of an unclear situation. People with

more tolerance for ambiguity enjoy being in

ambiguous situations and tend to seek them out. The

relevance here, of course, is the question of

whether one-drafters will not begin until they have

structured the task and will also move quickly
to conclusions in part, at least, because of having some
degree of intolerance for ambiguity. This

might be a fruitful area for further research. For those

interested in the mental processes which accompany
behaviors, another dimension to

performance tasks) in four bi-polar dimensions of

personality. The work of Geroge H. Jensen and

John K. DiTiberio has indicated some relationships between

the personality types identifi ed by the

MBTI and writing processes. Of particular interest here is

that Bill, who had independently taken

the MBTI for other reasons, reported that he scored highly

in the dimensions of “extraversion” and

“perceiving.” Extraverts, say Jensen and DiTiberio, “often

leap into tasks with little planning, then

rely on trial and error to complete the task” (288), and

they “often fi nd freewriting a good method

for developing ideas, for they think better when writing

quickly, impulsively, and uncritically” (289).

Perceivers, another type described by Jensen and DiTiberio,

appear to share tendencies similar to

those with a tolerance for ambiguity, for perceivers “are

willing to leave the outer world unstruc

tured. … Quickly made decisions narrow their fi eld of

vision” (295). Perceiving types tend to select

broad topics for writing, like a wide range of

alternatives, and always want to read one more book

on the subject. Their revisions thus often need to be

refocused (296). The similarities here to Bill’s

writing behaviors show us that while the MBTI is somewhat

circular in that the scoring is a refl ec

tion of people’s self-description, it can confi rm (and

perhaps clarify) the relationship of writing

behaviors to more general human behaviors.

The Preference for Closure vs. Resistance to Closure

From these descriptions of one- and multi-drafters it is

readily apparent that they differ in their

need for closure. The one-drafters move quickly to

decisions while composing, and they report

that once they are done with a paper, they prefer not to
look back at it, either immediately to

re-read it or at some future time, to think about revising

it. Ted explained that he generally is will

ing to do one re-reading at the time of completing a paper

and sometimes to make a few wording

changes, but that is all. He shrugged off the possibility

of doing even a second re-reading of any of

his writing once it is done because he says he can’t stand

to look at it again. All of the one-drafters

reported that they hardly, if ever, rewrite a paper. This

distaste for returning to a completed text

can be the source of problems for these one-drafters.

Forced by a teacher in a graduate course

who wanted fi rst drafts one week and revisions the next
week, Nina explained that she deliber

ately resorted to “writing a bad paper” for the fi rst

submission in order to submit her “real” draft

as the “revised” paper. Writing a series of drafts is

clearly harder for one-drafters such as Nina

than we have yet acknowledged. These one-drafters are as

reluctant to start as they are impatient to fi nish.
Although they tend

to delay the drafting process, this does not apply to their

preparation which often starts well in

advance and is the “interesting” or “enjoyable” part for

them. With writing that produces few sur

prises or discoveries for any of them because the

generative process precedes transcription, draft

ing on paper is more “tedious” (a word they frequently used

during their interviews) than for other

writers. Said Ted, “Writing is something I have to do, not

something I want to do.” Even Jackie, who

allows for some revising while drafting in order to develop

the details of her plan, reported that

she has a hard time going back to revise a paper once it is

completed. She, like the others, reported

a sense of feeling the paper is over and done with. “Done,

dead and done, done, fi nished, done,”

concluded another of these one-drafters. On the other hand,

the multi-drafters observed in this study explained that
they are never done

with a paper. They can easily and willingly go back to it

or to keep writing indefi nitely. Asked when

they know they are fi nished, Bill and Pam explained that
they never feel they are “done” with a piece

of discourse, merely that they have to stop in order to

meet a deadline. As Pam said, she never gets

to a last draft and doesn’t care about producing “neat

packages.” Understandably, she has trouble

with conclusions and with “wrapping up” at the end of a

piece of discourse. Asked how pervasive

her redrafting is for all of her writing, Pam commented

that she writes informal letters to parents

and friends every day and is getting to the point that she
doesn’t rewrite these letters as much. Bill

too noted that he fi ghts against products and hates to fi

nish. As a result, both Bill and Pam often

fail to meet their deadlines. Cindy, bored by her

“journalistic one-draft writing,” expressed a strong

desire to return to some of her previously completed papers

in order to rewrite them.
Writer-Based vs. Reader-Based Early Drafts

One way of distinguishing the early drafts produced by the

multi-drafters for this study from the

drafts produced by the one-drafters is to draw upon Linda

Flower’s distinction between Writer

Based and Reader-Based prose. Writer-Based prose, explains

Flower, is “verbal expression written

by a writer to himself and for himself. It is the working

of his own verbal thought. In its structure,

Writer-Based prose refl ects the associative, narrative

path of the writer’s own confrontation with

her subject” (19–20). Reader-Based prose, on the other

hand, is “a deliberate attempt to commu

nicate something to a reader. To do that it creates a

shared language and shared context between

writer and reader. It also offers the reader an

issue-oriented rhetorical structure rather than a

replay of the writer’s discovery process” (20). Although

Flower acknowledges that Writer-Based

prose is a “problem” that composition courses are designed

to correct, she also affi rms its useful

ness as a search tool, a strategy for handling the diffi

culty of attending to multiple complex tasks

simultaneously. Writer-Based prose needs to be revised into

Reader-Based prose, but it can be

effective as a “medium for thinking.” And for the

multi-drafters observed in this study, character

izing the initial drafts of two of the multi-drafters as

Writer-Based helps to see how their early

drafts differ from those of the one-drafters. One feature

of Writer-Based prose, as offered by Flower, is that it
refl ects the writer’s method

of searching by means of surveying what she knows, often in

a narrative manner. Information tends

to be structured as a narrative of the discovery process or

as a survey of the data in the writer’s

mind. Reader-Based prose, on the other hand, restructures

the information so that it is accessible

to the reader. Both the protocols and the written drafts

produced by the two confi rmed multi

drafters, Bill and Pam, reveal this Writer-Based

orientation as their initial way into writing. Bill very

clearly began with a memory search through his own

experience, made some brief notes, and then

wrote a narrative as his fi rst sentence in response to the

request that he describe to an academic

counselor the skills needed for his fi eld: “I went through

what must have been a million different

majors before I wound up in English and it was actually my

fi rst choice.” Pam spent the hour explor

ing the appropriateness of the term “skills.” In distinct

contrast, all four of the one-drafters began by
constructing a conceptual framework

for the response they would write, most typically by defi

ning a few categories or headings which

would be the focus or main point of the paper. With a few

words in mind that indicated his major

points, Ted then moved on to ask himself who would be

reading his response, what the context

would be, and what format the writing would use. He moved
quickly from a search for a point

to considerations of how his audience would use his

information. Similarly, Amy rather promptly

chose a few terms, decided to herself that “that’ll be the

focus,” and then said, “OK, I’m trying to

get into a role here. I’m responding to someone who … This

is not something they are going to
give out to people. But they’re going to read it and
compile responses, put something together

for themselves.” She then began writing her draft and

completed it within the hour. Asked what

constraints and concerns she is most aware of when actually

writing, Amy said that she is generally

concerned with clarity for the reader. The point of

contrast here is that the search process was

both different in kind and longer for the multi-drafters.

Initially, their time was spent discovering

what they think about the subject, whereas the one-drafters

chose a framework within a few min

utes and moved on to orient their writing to their readers.

Because the transformation or rework

ing of text comes later for the multi-drafters, rewriting

is a necessary component of their writing.

The standard bit of advice, about writing the introductory

paragraph later, would be a necessary

step for them but would not be a productive or appropriate

strategy for one-drafters to try. For

the one-drafters, the introductory paragraph is the

appropriate starting point. In fact, given what

they said about the necessity of knowing their focus

beforehand, the introductory paragraph is not

merely appropriate but necessary. Because the early stages

of a piece of writing are, for multi-drafters, so
intricately bound up

with mental searching, surveying, and discovering, the

writing that is produced is not oriented to

the reader. For their early drafts, Bill and Pam both
acknowledged that their writing is not yet

understandable to others. When Pam commented that in her

early drafts, “the reader can’t yet see
where I’m going,” she sighed over the diffi culties this
had caused in trying to work with her Master’s

thesis committee. If some writers’ early drafts are so

personal and so unlikely to be accessible to

readers, it is worth speculating about how effective peer

editing sessions could be for such multi

drafters who appear in classrooms with “rough drafts” as

instructed.

Conclusions

One way to summarize the characteristics of one- and

multi-drafters is to consider what they

gain by being one-drafters and at what cost they gain these

advantages. Clearly, one-drafters are

effi cient writers. This effi ciency is achieved by

mentally revising beforehand, by generating options

verbally rather than on paper, by generating only a limited

number of options before settling on one

and getting on with the task, and by doing little or no

re-reading. They are able to pace themselves

and can probably perform comfortably in situations such as

the workplace or in in-class writing

where it is advantageous to produce fi rst-draft, fi

nal-draft pieces of discourse. Their drafts are

readily accessible to readers, and they can expend effort

early on in polishing the text for greater

clarity. But at what cost? One-drafters are obviously in

danger of cutting themselves off from fur

ther exploration, from a richer fi eld of discovery than is

possible during the time in which they gen

erate options. When they exhibit a willingness to settle on

one of their options, they may thereby

have eliminated the possibility of searching for a better

one. In their impatience to move on, they
may even settle on options they know could be improved on.
Their impulse to write dwindles as

these writers experience little or none of the excitement

of discovery or exploration during writ

ing. The interesting portion of a writing task, the

struggle with text and sense of exploration, is

largely completed when they begin to commit themselves to

paper (or computer screen). Because

they are less likely to enjoy writing, the task of starting

is more likely to be put off to the last minute

and to become a stressful situation, thus reinforcing their

inclination not to re-read and their desire

to be done and to put the paper behind them forever once

they have fi nished. And it appears that it

is as hard for true one-drafters to suspend the need for

closure as it is for multi-drafters to reach

quick decisions and push themselves rapidly toward closure.

Multi-drafters appear to be the fl ip side of the same
coin. Their relative ineffi ciency causes them

to miss deadlines, to create Writer-Based fi rst drafts, to

produce large quantities of text that is dis

carded, and to get lost in their own writing. They need to

re-read and re-draft, and they probably

appear at fi rst glance to be poorer writers than

one-drafters. But they are more likely to be writers

who will plunge in eagerly, will write and re-write, and

will use writing to explore widely and richly.

They also are more likely to affi rm the value of writing

as a heuristic, the merits of freewriting, and

the need for cutting and pasting of text. They may, if

statistics are gathered, be the writers who

benefi t most from collaborative discussions such as those

in writing labs with tutors. Their drafts

are truly amenable to change and available for re-working.

Implications

Acknowledging the reality of one- and multi-drafting

involves enlarging both our perspectives on

revision and our instructional practices with students. In

terms of what the reality of one-drafting

and multi-drafting tells us about revision, it is apparent

that we need to account for this diversity

of revision behaviors as we construct a more detailed

picture of revision. As Stephen Witte notes,

“revising research that limits itself to examining changes

in written text or drafts espouses a reduc

tionist view of revising as a stage in a linear sequence of

stages” (“Revising” 266). Revision can and

does occur when writers set goals, create plans, and

compose pre-text, as well as when they tran

scribe and re-draft after transcription. Revision can be

triggered by cognitive activity alone and/or

how much a writer revises—or is willing to revise—a text.

Yet, while recognizing the many dimensions to be explored
in understanding revision, we can

also use this diversity as a source for helping students

with different types of problems and con

cerns. For students who are one-drafters or have tendencies

toward single drafting, we need to

provide help in several areas. They’ll have to learn to do

more reviewing of written text both as

they write and afterwards, in order to evaluate and revise.

They will also need to be aware that

they should have strategies that provide for more

exploration and invention than they may pres

ently allow themselves. While acknowledging their distaste

for returning to a draft to open it up

again, we also need to help them see how and when this can
be productive. Moreover, we can pro

vide assistance in helping one-drafters and other writers

who cluster near that end of the spectrum

recognize that sometimes they have a preference for

choosing an option even after they recognize

that it may not be the best one. When Tim, one of the
one-drafters I observed, noted at one point

in his protocol that he should take a different direction

for one of his paragraphs but won’t, he

shows similarities to another writer, David, observed by

Witte (“Pre-Text and Composing” 406),

who is reluctant to spend more than fi fteen seconds

reworking a sentence in pre-text, even though

he demonstrates the ability to evoke criteria that could

lead to better formulations if he chose to

stop and revise mentally (David typically does little

revision of written text). This impatience, this

need to keep moving along, that does not always allow for
the production of good text, can obvi

ously work against producing good text, and it is unlikely

that such writers will either recognize or

conquer the problem on their own. They may have snared

themselves in their own vicious circles

if their tendency to procrastinate puts them in a deadline

crunch, which, in turn, does not afford

them the luxury of time to consider new options. Such

behaviors can become a composing habit

so entrenched that it is no longer noticed. As we work with

one-drafters, we will also have to learn ourselves how to
distinguish them

from writers who see themselves as one-drafters because

they are not inclined, for one reason or

another, to expend more energy on drafting. Inertia, lack

of motivation, lack of information about
what multiple drafts can do, higher priorities for other
tasks, and so on are not characteristic

of true one-drafters, and we must be able to identify the

writer who might take refuge behind a

label of “one-drafter” from the writer who exhibits some or

many of the characteristics of one

draft composing and who wants to become a better writer.

For example, in our writing lab I have

worked with students who think they are one-drafters

because of assorted fears, anxieties, and

misinformation. “But I have to get it right the fi rst

time.” “My teachers never liked to see scratch

ing out on the paper, even when we wrote in class,” or “I

hate making choices, so I go with what I

have” are not the comments of true one-drafters. With

multiple-drafters we have other work to do. To become more
effi cient writers, they will

need to become more profi cient planners and creaters of

pre-text, though given their heavy depen

dence on seeing what they have written, they will probably

still rely a great deal on reading and work

ing with their transcribed text. They will also need to

become more profi cient at times at focusing

on a topic quickly, recognizing the diffi culties involved

in agonizing endlessly over possibilities. In the

words of a reviewer of this paper, they will have to learn

when and how “to get on with it.” Besides assisting with
these strategies, we can help students become more aware of
their com

posing behaviors. We can assist multi-drafters in

recognizing that they are not slow or inept writ

ers but writers who may linger too long over making
choices. For writers who have diffi culty

returning to a completed text in order to revise, we can

relate the problem to the larger picture, an

impatience with returning to any completed task. Granted,

this is not a giant leap forward, but too

many students are willing to throw in the towel with

writing skills in particular without recognizing

the link to their more general orientations to life.

Similarly, the impatient writer who, like Ted, pro

claims to have a virulent case of the “I-hate-to-write”

syndrome may be a competent one-drafter

(or have a preference for fewer drafts) who needs to see

that it is the transcribing stage of writing

that is the source of the impatience, procrastination, and

irritation. On the other hand, writers

more inclined to be multi-drafters need to recognize that

their frustration, self-criticism, and/or

low grades may be due to having readers intervene at too

early a stage in the drafting. What I am

suggesting here is that some writers unknowingly get

themselves caught in linguistic traps. They

think they are making generalizations about the whole act

of “writing,” that blanket term for all the

processes involved, when they may well be voicing problems

or attitudes about one or another of

the processes. What is needed here is some assistance in

helping students defi ne their problems

more precisely. To do this, classroom teachers can open

conferences like a writing lab tutorial, by

asking questions about the student’s writing processes and

diffi culties. In addition to individualizing our work with
students, we can also look at our own teaching prac

tices. When we offer classroom strategies and heuristics,

we need to remind our students that it

is likely that some will be very inappropriate for

different students. Being unable to freewrite is not
necessarily a sign of an inept writer. One writer’s written
text may be just as effective a heuristic

for that writer as the planning sheets are for another

writer. Beyond these strategies and acknowl

edgments, we have to examine how we talk about or teach

composing processes. There is a very

real danger in imposing a single, “ideal” composing style

on students, as Jack Selzer found teachers

attempting to do in his survey of the literature.

Similarly, as Susan McLeod notes, teachers tend

to teach their own composing behaviors in the classroom and

are thus in danger either of impos

ing their redrafting approaches on students whose

preference for revising prior to transcribing

serves them well or of touting their one- or few-draft

strategies to students who fare better when

put us in the peculiar position of trying to fi x something

that isn’t broken. And there’s enough of

that going around as is.

Works Cited

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Beach, Richard. “Self-Evaluation Strategies of Extensive

Revisers and Non-revisers.” College Composition and
Communication 27 (1976): 160–64.

Blau, Sheridan. “Invisible Writing: Investigating Cognitive

Processes in Composition.” College Composition and
Communication 34 (1983): 297–312.

Bloom, Lynn Z. “How I Write.” Waldrep 1:31–37.

Bridwell, Lillian S. “Revising Strategies in Twelfth Grade

Students’ Transactional Writing.” Research in the Teaching
of English 14 (1980): 197–222.
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Variable.” Journal of Personality 30 (1962): 29–50.

Faigley, Lester, and Stephen Witte. “Analyzing Revision.”

College Composition and Communication 32 (1981): 400–14.

Flower, Linda. “Writer-Based Prose: A Cognitive Basis for

Problems in Writing.” College English 41 (1979): 19–37.

Flower, Linda, John R. Hayes, Linda Carey, Karen Shriver,

and James Stratman. “Detection, Diagnosis, and the
Strategies of Revision.” College Composition and
Communication 37 (1986): 16–55.

Freedman, Sarah Warshauer, Anne Haas Dyson, Linda Flower,

and Wallace Chafe. Research in Writing: Past, Present, and
Future. Technical Report No. 1. Center for the Study of
Writing. Berkeley: University of California, 1987.

Frenkel-Brunswick, Else. “Intolerance of Ambiguity as an

Emotional and Perceptual Personality Variable.” Journal of
Personality 18 (1949): 108–43.

Gere, Ann Ruggles. “Insights from the Blind: Composing

Without Revising.” Revising: New Essays for Teachers of
Writing. Ed. Ronald Sudol. Urbana, IL: ERIC/NCTE, 1982,
52–70.

Hairston, Maxine. “Different Products, Different Processes:

A Theory about Writing.” College Composition and
Communication 37 (1986): 442–52.

Henley, Joan. “A Revisionist View of Revision.” Washington

English Journal 8.2 (1986): 5–7.

Jensen, George, and John DiTiberio.”Personality and

Individual Writing Processes.” College Composition and
Communication 35 (1984): 285–300.

Lutz, William. “How I Write.” Waldrep 1:183–88.

McLeod, Susan. “The New Orthodoxy: Rethinking the Process

Approach.” Freshman English News 14.3 (1986): 16–21.

Murray, Patricia Y. “Doing Writing.” Waldrep 1:225–39.

Reid, Joy. “The Radical Outliner and the Radical

Brainstormer: A Perspective on Composing Processes.” TESOL
Quarterly 18 (1985): 529–34.
Selzer, Jack. “Exploring Options in Composing.” College
Composition and Communication 35 (1984): 276–84.

Sommers, Nancy. “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and

Experienced Adult Writers.” College Composition and
Communication 31 (1980): 378–88.

Waldrep, Tom, ed. Writers on Writing. Vol. 1, New York:

Random House, 1985. 2 vols.

Witte, Stephen P. “Pre-Text and Composing.” College

Composition and Communication 38 (1987): 397–425.

—— “Revising, Composing Theory, and Research Design.” The

Acquisition of Written Language: Response and Revision.
Ed. Sarah Warshauer Freedman. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1985,
250–84.

Reprinted from Muriel Harris. “Composing Behaviors of

One-And-Multi-draft Writers.” College English, Vol.

51, No. 2, February 1989, 174–190. Copyright 1989 by the

National Council of Teachers of English. Reprinted

with permission. MOVING WRITERS, SHAPING MOTIVES,

MOTIVATING CRITIQUE AND CHANGE: A GENRE APPROACH TO
TEACHING WRITING Mary Jo Reiff University of Tennessee

What prompted me to write this essay for this anthology? My

“assignment” was to write about the

genre of the Pedagogical Insight essay. I immediately

called on my genre knowledge—my past experi

ence with reading and writing similar texts in similar

situations—to orient me to the expectations

of this genre. While I am familiar with the genre of “the

essay”—and my awareness alerted me to

the fact that my piece could be less formal than an

article, a piece based more in experience than in

research—I was not as familiar with the expectations of

this particular genre, a Pedagogical Insight

essay. I began, then, with these questions: What are the

actions that this genre performs? How will
I position myself within this genre—what identity and
relations will I assume? In what ways will the

genre defi ne and sustain the fi eld’s discussions of

pedagogy or pedagogical approaches? What are

the potential sites of resistance and transformation? I

looked for clues about how the assignment located me within
a situation and provided me with

the rhetorical means for acting within that situation. From

the authors’ invitation, I constructed

the rhetorical situation that helped motivate and shape my

response. The audience was described

as “new teachers,” and the purpose was “to ground abstract

composition theory, as presented by

the anthologized articles, in the immediacy of a real

classroom context and a real teacher’s lived

experience.” There was a specifi ed length (1,500 words),

but within the constraints of audience,

purpose, and format, there was also a great deal of choice

within this genre, with the authors not

ing that they “hope for a great diversity in tone, stance,

and focus.” A sample Pedagogical Insight

essay was included in the materials sent—an example of one

writer’s “appropriate” response. Writing an effective
response would mean conceiving of my role as a writer not
only in rela

tion to readers and other writers and their purposes, but

also in relation to the social and cultural

formations in which they interact. As a result, the larger

cultural context beyond the immediate

situation of this Pedagogical Insight essay also helped to

generate and organize my response. In

the materials passed along to help contextualize my

response, I was given the proposal (shaped in

response to the editors at the National Council of Teachers

of English as well as to a secondary
audience of contributors and reviewers) that positioned the
imagined readers of this anthology,

positioned the book intertextually (among “competing

texts”), and provided an overview of how

the book responds to material conditions and functions

epistemologically. My response, then, is

situated very purposefully and mediated by various

contextual factors, not the least of which is a

response to the multiple and related voices included in

this section on relations.

Genre in the Classroom (or “How Our Students Can Relate”)

Our students are similarly positioned within and by genres.

When confronted with a writing assign

ment, students are suspended within a complex web of

relations—from the institutional, disciplin

ary, and/or course objectives that frame the assignment to

the defi ned roles for writers, their

purposes, their subjects, and their conventions for

writing. More important, a genre approach

allows students to see a writing assignment itself as a

social action—a response to the whole dis

ciplinary and institutional context for the assignment, not

just a response to the teacher. Students

can access and participate effectively in academic

situations by identifying the assumptions and

expectations regarding subject, their roles as writers (as

critics, knowledgeable professionals in the

fi eld), the roles of readers (teacher-readers, specialist

audiences, implied audiences), and purposes

for writing (to describe, analyze, argue, evaluate, etc.)

that are embedded in the assignment. Approaching writing
through a contextual genre theory consists of using genre
as a lens for
accessing, understanding, and writing in various situations
and contexts. A genre approach to

teaching writing is careful not to treat genres as static

forms or systems of classifi cation. Rather,

students learn how to recognize genres as rhetorical

responses to and refl ections of the situations

in which they are used; furthermore, students learn how to

use genres to intervene in situations.

Students begin by (1) collecting samples of a wide range of

responses within a particular genre;

(2) identifying and describing the larger cultural scene

and rhetorical situation from which genre

emerges (setting, subject, participants, purposes); (3)

identifying and describing the patterns of the

genre, including content, structure, format, sentences, and

diction; and (4) analyzing genres for

what they tell us about situation and making an

argumentative or critical claim about what these

patterns reveal about the attitudes, values, and actions

embedded in the genre. For example, a prelaw student in my
advanced composition class explored the genre activities

of the law community by fi rst examining the genre

system—the textualized sites such as opinions,

wills, deeds, contracts, and briefs—that defi nes and

sustains the legal community. After choosing

to focus her study on the genre of case briefs, the student

began by collecting samples of constitu

tional law briefs, discovering that the shared purposes and

functions “illustrated the legal commu

nity’s shared value of commitment to tradition, as well as

the need for a standard and convenient

form of communicating important and complex legal

concepts.” Through her study of the repeated

rhetorical patterns and social actions of legal briefs, the

student gained access to the habits, beliefs,

and values of the law community. She not only learned about
the genre features of case briefs—

such as the technical terminology, rigid format, and formal

style—but she also become more aware

of how these formal patternings refl ected and reinforced

the goals of the community. Recogniz

ing that all the briefs follow the same organizational

strategy of presenting sections labeled “case

information,” “facts of the case,” “procedural history,”

“issue,” “holding,” and “court reasoning,”

she surmised that “Even the rigid structure of the format

[suggests] the community’s emphasis on

logic and order, which are two esteemed values of the

profession.” The genre not only refl ects the

legal community’s valuing of logic and order but, as the

student discovered, also reinscribes these

values by “maintaining a system of communication that

relates the scientifi c and the complex world

of law,” establishing a relationship, in effect, between

scientifi c, technical precision and the less

precise interpretation of law and, as a result, reinforcing

the belief that legal cases are unambiguous

and clearcut. Furthermore, refl ecting on the legal jargon,

such as writ of mandamus, or the formal

language of verbs like sayeth and witnesseth or words like

hereunder and wherewith, the student

makes the following connections among text, contexts, and

the ideological effects of genres: Legal language is part
of a lawyer’s professional training, so the habit of
“talking like a lawyer” is deeply rooted in the practices
of the community. This tells us that lawyers feel compelled
to use established jargon to maintain a legitimate status
in the eyes of other community members. In addition,
formal language is needed to surround legal proceedings
with an air of solemnity, and to send the message that any
legal proceeding is a signifi cant matter with important
consequences.

The writer also notes how this use of legal language

reinscribes a power relationship of sorts, sepa

rating “insiders” (members of the profession) from

“outsiders” (the public) by cultivating a language

“that reads like a foreign language to those outside the

profession.” For students like this one, using

genre as a lens for inquiry cultivates a consciousness of

the rhetorical strategies used to carry out

the social actions of a group or disciplinary community,

thus making the complex, multitextured

relations of the legal community more tangible and

accessible.

Relating and Resisting

Students’ critical awareness of how genres work—their

understanding of how rhetorical features

are connected to social actions—enables them to more

effectively critique and resist genres by

creating alternatives. For example, a student’s critique of

the wedding invitation as a genre allowed

the discovery of a particular cultural view of women or

gender bias in its rhetorical patterns and

ence”). Embedded in the invitation are cultural assumptions

of women as objects or property to

to the parents and the bride as “their daughter” and the

omission of the bride’s name (while nam

ing the bride’s parents and the groom), reinforce what the
student describes as a cultural attitude

toward marriage that involves a loss of identity for women.

Wedding invitations, then, in the stu

dent’s fi nal analysis, are cultural artifacts that through

their repeated use in similar situations—the
repeated cultural event of formally announcing
marriages—not only refl ect but reinscribe gender

inequality and unequal d istr ibutions of power in

relationships (Devitt, Reiff, and Bawarshi). Classroom
genres, too, refl ect and enact the social relations of
classrooms, and because of the

recurring forms of language use of genres, the

institutionally sanctioned academic genres might be

more easily perpetuated, thus excluding students for whom

these genres are less accessible. Brad

Peters, in “Genre, Antigenre, and Reinventing the Forms of

Conceptualization,” describes a college

composition course in which students read about the United

States invasion of Panama in a book

that takes a Panamanian perspective. The students were then

told to write an essay exam that fol

lowed a particular format moving from a summary of the

argument, to the three most compelling

points for a Latin American reader, to the three most

fallacious points for a Latin American reader,

and fi nally to the student’s reaction compared to that of

the Latin American reader. One student,

Rita, wrote the essay exam from the fi ctional perspective

of her close friend Maria, a native Latin

American, and after completing the rhetorical analysis part

of the exam, dropped the persona and

took up her own in the form of a letter to Maria. Peters

identifi es this as an “antigenre” but points

out that Rita’s response satisfi es the social purpose of

the genre while reconstituting voice and

varying the format of the genre. This demonstrates that

even when the writing assignment is fairly

prescriptive and students are asked to write a fairly

traditional genre, there is room for them to
maneuver within (and because of) the constraints of the
genre.

Toward Changing Relations and Developing New Textual

Relations

One criticism leveled against a genre approach to literacy

teaching is that it focuses on analysis and

critique of genres, stopping short of having writers use

genres to enact change. Genres—as they

function to defi ne, critique, and bring about change—can

provide rich pedagogical sites, sites for

intervention. Bruce McComiskey, for example, pairs academic

and public genres—having students

write a critical analysis of education followed by a

brochure for high school students, or following

an analysis of the cultural values of advertisements with

letters to advertisers arguing the negative

effect on consumers. Genre analysis encourages students to

critique sites of intervention, analyz

ing how such genres enable participation in the process

while also limiting intervention. Students

identify linguistic and rhetorical patterns and analyze

their signifi cance, while simultaneously cri

tiquing the cultural and social values encoded in the genre

(what the genre allows users to do and

what it does not allow them to do, whose needs are

most/least served, how it enables or limits the

way its users do their work). But the fi nal step would be
to ask students to produce new genres or genres that encode
alter

native values for the purpose of intervening. Students

could create their own genres that respond

to those they analyzed. Or, after interrogating the sites

at which change happens, students can

more directly intervene in these sites by writing their own

alternative genres or “antigenres” in

response. I often have my students follow their analysis of

genres by inventing and formulating their

own generic response or by writing a manual for others on

how to write that genre. The idea is

that as students critique genres as sites of rhetorical

action and cultural production and reproduc

tion, they also see how genres function as motivated social

actions, enabling them to enter into the

production of alternatives.

Teaching Alternatives (or Coming Full Circle)

As is typical in the genre of the essay, I am going to

conclude by returning to my introduction,

where I invoked the genre of the Pedagogical Insight essay.

This genre seeks to intervene in the

theoretical readings in this section on Relations by refl

ecting, according to the authors’ goals, “some

concrete, practical instantiations of theoretical

positions.” Ideally this genre will function for new

teachers as a “conversation starter” about how teaching

writing means teaching relations, and how

genre analysis can move teachers beyond teaching academic

forms to teaching purposeful rhetori

cal instruments for social action. By teaching students to

interrogate how social groups organize

and defi ne kinds of texts and how these genres, in turn,

organize and defi ne social relations and

practices, teachers can construct assignments that enable

students to engage more critically in

situated action and to produce alternative ways of

interacting. More important, perhaps, is an understanding
of how our own work as teachers is also situated

institutionally and organized and generated by genres

ranging from textbooks to syllabi to assign

ments to the end comments we write on papers (see, for

instance, Summer Smith’s “The Genre

of the End Comment” and her research on how our comments on

papers both enable and restrict

writing choices). From the conversations we have with other

teachers about our classroom prac

tices to the syllabi that we write that position us as

teachers, defi ne our roles in the classroom,

establish relationships between us and our students, and

refl ect and reinforce the goals of our writ

ing courses, the genres we use are sites of action—sites in

which we, as teachers, communicate,

enact, and carry out our teaching lives. Just as genres may
provide a framework for facilitating both

inquiry and intervention for our students, as teachers we

can use our understanding of the institu

tional genres that situate us and our teaching—our

understanding of our “teaching assignment”—

to prompt us to explore ways we might enter into the

production of alternative approaches.

Works Cited

Devitt, Amy, Mary Jo Reiff, and Anis Bawarshi. Scenes of

Writing: Strategies for Composing with Genres. New York:
Longman, 2004.

McComiskey, Bruce. Teaching Composition as a Social

Process. Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2000.

Peters, Brad. “Genre, Antigenre, and Reinventing the Forms

of Conceptualization.” Genre and Writing: Issues,
Arguments, Alternatives. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 1997.

Smith, Summer. “The Genre of the End Comment: Conventions

in Teacher Responses to Student Writing.” College
Composition and Communication 48.2 (1997): 249–68.

Reprinted from Mary Jo Reiff. “Moving Writers, Shaping

Motives, Motivating Critique and Change: A Genre

Approach to Teaching Writing.” In Relations, Locations,

Positions: Composition Theory for Writing Teachers. Eds.

Peter Vandenberg, Sue Hum, Jennifer Clary-Lemon. NCTE:

Urbana, IL, 2006, 157–206. Copyright 2006 by

the National Council of Teachers of English. Reprinted with

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Burke, K. (1953). Counterstatement. Los Altos, CA: Hermes.

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Connors, R. (1987, May). Personal writing assignments.

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Corbett, E. P. (1981). Th e little rhetoric and handbook.

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Crowley, S. (1990). Th e methodical memory: Invention in

current-traditional rhetoric. Carbondale IL: Southern
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Crowley, S. (1994). Ancient rhetorics for contemporary

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Reading RIGID RULES, INFLEXIBLE PLANS, AND THE STIFLING OF

LANGUAGE: A COGNITIVIST ANALYSIS OF WRITER’S BLOCK Mike
Rose

Ruth will labor over the fi rst paragraph of an essay for

hours. She’ll write a sentence, then erase

it. Try another, then scratch part of it out. Finally, as

the evening winds on toward ten o’clock and

Ruth, anxious about tomorrow’s deadline, begins to wind

into herself, she’ll compose that fi rst

paragraph only to sit back and level her favorite

exasperated interdiction at herself and her page:

“No. You can’t say that. You’ll bore them to death.” Ruth
is one of ten UCLA undergraduates with whom I discussed
writer’s block, that frustrating,

self-defeating inability to generate the next line, the

right phrase, the sentence that will release the

fl ow of words once again. These ten people represented a

fair cross-section of the UCLA student

community: lower-middle-class to upper-middle-class

backgrounds and high schools, third-world

and Caucasian origins, biology to fi ne arts majors, C+ to

A- grade point averages, enthusiastic to

blasé attitudes toward school. They were set off from the
community by the twin facts that all

ten could write competently, and all were currently

enrolled in at least one course that required
a signifi cant amount of writing. They were set off among
themselves by the fact that fi ve of them

wrote with relative to enviable ease while the other fi ve

experienced moderate to nearly immobi

lizing writer’s block. This blocking usually resulted in

rushed, often late papers and resultant grades

that did not truly refl ect these students’ writing

ability. And then, of course, there were other less

measurable but probably more serious results: a growing

distrust of their abilities and an aversion

toward the composing process itself. What separated the fi

ve students who blocked from those who didn’t? It wasn’t
skill; that was

held fairly constant. The answer could have rested in the

emotional realm—anxiety, fear of evalu

ation, insecurity, etc. Or perhaps blocking in some way

resulted from variation in cognitive style.

Perhaps, too, blocking originated in and typifi ed a

melding of emotion and cognition not unlike the

relationship posited by Shapiro between neurotic feeling

and neurotic thinking. 1 Each of these was

possible. Extended clinical interviews and testing could

have teased out the answer. But there was

one answer that surfaced readily in brief explorations of

these students’ writing processes. It was

not profoundly emotional, nor was it embedded in that still

unclear construct of cognitive style.

It was constant, surprising, almost amusing if its results

weren’t so troublesome, and, in the fi nal

analysis, obvious: the fi ve students who experienced

blocking were all operating either with writ

ing rules or with planning strategies that impeded rather

than enhanced the composing process.

The fi ve students who were not hampered by writer’s block

also utilized rules, but they were less

rigid ones, and thus more appropriate to a complex process

like writing. Also, the plans these

non-blockers brought to the writing process were more

functional, more fl exible, more open to

information from the outside. These observations are the

result of one to three interviews with each student. I used
recent

notes, drafts, and fi nished compositions to direct and

hone my questions. This procedure is admit

tedly non-experimental, certainly more clinical than

scientifi c; still, it did lead to several inferences

that lay the foundation for future, more rigorous

investigation: (a) composing is a highly com

plex problem-solving process 2 and (b) certain disruptions

of that process can be explained with

cognitive psychology’s problem-solving framework. Such

investigation might include a study using

“stimulated recall” techniques to validate or disconfi rm

these hunches. In such a study, blockers

and non-blockers would write essays. Their activity would

be videotaped and, immediately after

writing, they would be shown their respective tapes and

questioned about the rules, plans, and

beliefs operating in their writing behavior. This procedure

would bring us close to the composing

process (the writers’ recall is stimulated by their viewing

the tape), yet would not interfere with

actual composing. In the next section I will introduce

several key concepts in the problem-solving literature. In

section three I will let the students speak for themselves.

Fourth, I will offer a cognitivist analysis of

blockers’ and non-blockers’ grace or torpor. I will close

with a brief note on treatment.
Selected Concepts in Problem Solving: Rules and Plans

As diverse as theories of problem solving are, they share

certain basic assumptions and character

istics. Each posits an introductory period during which a

problem is presented, and all theorists, from

Behaviorist to Gestalt to Information Processing, admit

that certain aspects, stimuli, or “functions”

of the problem must become or be made salient and attended

to in certain ways if successful prob

lem-solving processes are to be engaged. Theorists also

believe that some confl ict, some stress,

some gap in information in these perceived “aspects” seems

to trigger problem-solving behavior.

Next comes a processing period, and for all the variance of

opinion about this critical stage, theo

rists recognize the necessity of its existence—recognize

that man, at the least, somehow “weighs”

possible solutions as they are stumbled upon and, at the

most, goes through an elaborate and

sophisticated information-processing routine to achieve

problem solution. Furthermore, theorists

believe—to varying degrees—that past learning and the

particular “set,” direction, or orientation

that the problem solver takes in dealing with past

experience and present stimuli have critical bear

ing on the effi cacy of solution. Finally, all theorists

admit to a solution period, an end-state of the

process where “stress” and “search” terminate, an answer is

attained, and a sense of completion

or “closure” is experienced. These are the gross

similarities, and the framework they offer will be useful
in understanding the

problem-solving behavior of the students discussed in this

paper. But since this paper is primarily

concerned with the second stage of problem-solving

operations, it would be most useful to focus

this introduction on two critical constructs in the

processing period: rules and plans.

Rules

Robert M. Gagné defi nes “rule” as “an inferred capability

that enables the individual to respond to

a class of stimulus situations with a class of

performances.” 3 Rules can be learned directly 4 or by

inference through experience. 5 But, in either case, most

problem-solving theorists would affi rm

Gagné’s dictum that “rules are probably the major

organizing factor, and quite possibly the primary

one, in intellectual functioning.” 6 As Gagné implies, we

wouldn’t be able to function without rules;

they guide response to the myriad stimuli that confront us

daily, and might even be the central ele

ment in complex problem-solving behavior. Dunker, Polya,

and Miller, Galanter, and Pribram offer a very useful
distinction between two

general kinds of rules: algorithms and heuristics. 7

Algorithms are precise rules that will always

result in a specifi c answer if applied to an appropriate

problem. Most mathematical rules, for exam

ple, are algorithms. Functions are constant (e.g., pi),

procedures are routine (squaring the radius),

and outcomes are completely predictable. However, few

day-to-day situations are mathematically

circumscribed enough to warrant the application of

algorithms. Most often we function with the

aid of fairly general heuristics or “rules of thumb,”

guidelines that allow varying degrees of fl exibility
when approaching problems. Rather than operating with
algorithmic precision and certainty, we

search, critically, through alternatives, using our

heuristic as a divining rod—”if a math problem

stumps you, try working backwards to solution”; “if the car

won’t start, check x, y, or z,” and so

forth. Heuristics won’t allow the precision or the

certitude afforded by algorithmic operations;

heuristics can even be so “loose” as to be vague. But in a

world where tasks and problems are

rarely mathematically precise, heuristic rules become the

most appropriate, the most functional

rules available to us: “a heuristic does not guarantee the

optimal solution or, indeed, any solution

at all; rather, heuristics offer solutions that are good

enough most of the time.” 8

Plans

People don’t proceed through problem situations, in or out

of a laboratory, without some set

of internalized instructions to the self, some program,

some course of action that, even roughly,

takes goals and possible paths to that goal into

consideration. Miller, Galanter, and Pribram have

referred to this course of action as a plan: “A plan is any

hierarchical process in the organism that

can control the order in which a sequence of operations is

to be performed” (p. 16). They name

the fundamental plan in human problem-solving behavior the

TOTE, with the initial T representing

a test that matches a possible solution against the

perceived end-goal of problem completion. O

represents the clearance to operate if the comparison

between solution and goal indicates that the
solution is a sensible one. The second T represents a
further, post-operation, test or comparison

of solution with goal, and if the two mesh and problem

solution is at hand the person exits (E) from

problem-solving behavior. If the second test presents

further discordance between solution and

goal, a further solution is attempted in TOTE-fashion. Such

plans can be both long-term and global

and, as problem solving is underway, short-term and

immediate. 9 Though the mechanicality of this

information-processing model renders it simplistic and,

possibly, unreal, the central notion of a plan

and an operating procedure is an important one in

problem-solving theory; it at least attempts to

metaphorically explain what earlier cognitive psychologists

could not—the mental procedures (see

pp. 390–391) underlying problem-solving behavior. Before

concluding this section, a distinction between heuristic
rules and plans should be

attempted; it is a distinction often blurred in the

literature, blurred because, after all, we are

very much in the area of gestating theory and preliminary

models. Heuristic rules seem to func

tion with the fl exibility of plans. Is, for example, “If

the car won’t start, try x, y, or z” a heuristic

or a plan? It could be either, though two qualifi cations

will mark it as heuristic rather than plan.

(A) Plans subsume and sequence heuristic and algorithmic

rules. Rules are usually “smaller,” more

discrete cognitive capabilities; plans can become quite

large and complex, composed of a series of

ordered algorithms, heuristics, and further planning

“sub-routines.” (B) Plans, as was mentioned

earlier, include criteria to determine successful

goal-attainment and, as well, include “feedback”

processes—ways to incorporate and use information gained

from “tests” of potential solutions

against desired goals. One other distinction should be

made: that is, between “set” and plan. Set, also called
“deter

mining tendency” or “readiness,” 10 refers to the fact

that people often approach problems with

habitual ways of reacting, a prepriate to a specifi c

problem, 11 but much of the literature on set has

shown its rigidifying, dysfunctional effects. 12 Set

differs from plan in that set represents a limiting

and narrowing of response alternatives with no inherent

process to shift alternatives. It is a kind

of cognitive habit that can limit perception, not a course

of action with multiple paths that directs

and sequences response possibilities. The constructs of

rules and plans advance the understanding of problem
solving beyond that

possible with earlier, less developed formulations. Still,

critical problems remain. Though math

ematical and computer models move one toward more complex

(and thus more real) problems

than the earlier research, they are still too neat, too
rigidly sequenced to approximate the stun

ning complexity of day-to-day (not to mention highly

creative) problem-solving behavior. Also,

information-processing models of problem-solving are built

on logic theorems, chess strategies,

and simple planning tasks. Even Gagné seems to feel more

comfortable with illustrations from

mathematics and science rather than with social science and

humanities problems. So although

these complex models and constructs tell us a good deal

about problem-solving behavior, they

are still laboratory simulations, still invoked from the

outside rather than self-generated, and still

founded on the mathematico-logical. Two Carnegie-Mellon

researchers, however, have recently extended the above into
a truly

real, amorphous, unmathematical problem-solving

process—writing. Relying on protocol analysis

(thinking aloud while solving problems), Linda Flower and

John Hayes have attempted to tease out

the role of heuristic rules and plans in writing behavior.

13 Their research pushes problem-solving

investigations to the real and complex and pushes, from the

other end, the often mysterious pro

cess of writing toward the explainable. The latter is

important, for at least since Plotinus many

have viewed the composing process as unexplainable,

inspired, infused with the transcendent. But

Flower and Hayes are beginning, anyway, to show how writing

generates from a problem-solving

process with rich heuristic rules and plans of its own.

They show, as well, how many writing prob

lems arise from a paucity of heuristics and suggest an

intervention that provides such rules. This paper, too,
treats writing as a problem-solving process, focusing,
however, on what hap

pens when the process dead-ends in writer’s block. It will

further suggest that, as opposed to

Flower and Hayes’ students who need more rules and plans,
blockers may well be stymied by

possessing rigid or inappropriate rules, or infl exible or

confused plans. Ironically enough, these are

occasionally instilled by the composition teacher or

gleaned from the writing textbook.
“Always Grab Your Audience”—The Blockers

In high school, Ruth was told and told again that a good
essay always grabs a reader’s atten

tion immediately. Until you can make your essay do that,

her teachers and textbooks putatively

declaimed, there is no need to go on. For Ruth, this means

that beginning bland and seeing what

emerges as one generates prose is unacceptable. The

beginning is everything. And what exactly is

the audience seeking that reads this beginning? The rule,

or Ruth’s use of it, doesn’t provide for

such investigation. She has an edict with no determiners.

Ruth operates with another rule that

restricts her productions as well: if sentences aren’t

grammatically “correct,” they aren’t useful.

This keeps Ruth from toying with ideas on paper, from the
kind of linguistic play that often frees

up the fl ow of prose. These two rules converge in a way

that pretty effectively restricts Ruth’s

composing process. The fi rst two papers I received from

Laurel were weeks overdue. Sections of them were well

written; there were even moments of stylistic fl air. But

the papers were late and, overall, the prose

seemed rushed. Furthermore, one paper included a paragraph

on an issue that was never men

tioned in the topic paragraph. This was the kind of mistake

that someone with Laurel’s apparent

ability doesn’t make. I asked her about this irrelevant

passage. She knew very well that it didn’t fi t,

but believed she had to include it to round out the paper.

“You must always make three or more

points in an essay. If the essay has less, then it’s not

strong.” Laurel had been taught this rule both
in high school and in her fi rst college English class; no
wonder, then, that she accepted its validity. As opposed to
Laurel, Martha possesses a whole arsenal of plans and rules
with which to

approach a humanities writing assignment, and, considering

her background in biology, I wonder

how many of them were formed out of the assumptions and

procedures endemic to the physical

sciences. 14 Martha will not put pen to fi rst draft until

she has spent up to two days generating an

outline of remarkable complexity. I saw one of these

outlines and it looked more like a diagram of

protein synthesis or DNA structure than the time-worn

pattern offered in composition textbooks.

I must admit I was intrigued by the aura of process (vs.

the static appearance of essay outlines) such

diagrams offer, but for Martha these “outlines” only led to

self-defeat: the outline would become so

complex that all of its elements could never be included in

a short essay. In other words, her plan

locked her into the fi rst stage of the composing process.

Martha would struggle with the conver

sion of her outline into prose only to scrap the whole

venture when deadlines passed and a paper

had to be rushed together. Martha’s “rage for order”

extends beyond the outlining process. She also believes
that elements

of a story or poem must evince a fairly linear structure

and thematic clarity, or—perhaps bringing

us closer to the issue—that analysis of a story or poem

must provide the linearity or clarity that

seems to be absent in the text. Martha, therefore, will

bend the logic of her analysis to reason

ambiguity out of existence. When I asked her about a

strained paragraph in her paper on Camus’
“The Guest,” she said, “I didn’t want to admit that it [the
story’s conclusion] was just hanging. I

tried to force it into meaning.” Martha uses another rule,

one that is not only problematical in itself, but one that
often clashes

directly with the elaborate plan and obsessive rule above.

She believes that humanities papers must

scintillate with insight, must present an array of images,

ideas, ironies gleaned from the literature

under examination. A problem arises, of course, when Martha

tries to incorporate her myriad “neat

little things,” often inherently unrelated, into a tightly

structured, carefully sequenced essay. Plans

and rules that govern the construction of impressionistic,

associational prose would be appropriate

to Martha’s desire, but her composing process is heavily

constrained by the non-impressionistic

and non-associational. Put another way, the plans and rules

that govern her exploration of text are

not at all synchronous with the plans and rules she uses to
discuss her exploration. It is interesting

to note here, however, that as recently as three years ago

Martha was absorbed in creative writ

ing and was publishing poetry in high school magazines.

Given what we know about the complex

associational, often non-neatly-sequential nature of the

poet’s creative process, we can infer that

Martha was either free of the plans and rules discussed

earlier or they were not as intense. One

wonders, as well, if the exposure to three years of

university physical science either established or

intensifi ed Martha’s concern with structure. Whatever the

case, she now is hamstrung by confl ict
ing rules when composing papers for the humanities. Mike’s
diffi culties, too, are rooted in a distortion of the
problem-solving process. When the time

of the week for the assignment of writing topics draws

near, Mike begins to prepare material, strat

egies, and plans that he believes will be appropriate. If

the assignment matches his expectations,

he has done a good job of analyzing the professor’s

intentions. If the assignment doesn’t match his

expectations, however, he cannot easily shift approaches.

He feels trapped inside his original plans,

cannot generate alternatives, and blocks. As the deadline

draws near, he will write something, forc

ing the assignment to fi t his conceptual procrustian bed.

Since Mike is a smart man, he will offer

a good deal of information, but only some of it ends up

being appropriate to the assignment. This

entire situation is made all the worse when the time

between assignment of topic and generation

of product is attenuated further, as in an essay

examination. Mike believes (correctly) that one must

have a plan, a strategy of some sort in order to solve a

problem. He further believes, however,

that such a plan, once formulated, becomes an exact

structural and substantive blueprint that can

not be violated. The plan offers no alternatives, no

“sub-routines.” So, whereas Ruth’s, Laurel’s,

and some of Martha’s diffi culties seem to be rule-specifi

c (“always catch your audience,” “write

grammatically”), Mike’s troubles are more global. He may

have strategies that are appropriate for

various writing situations (e.g., “for this kind of

political science assignment write a compare/con

trast essay”), but his entire approach to formulating plans

and carrying them through to problem

solution is too mechanical. It is probable that Mike’s

behavior is governed by an explicitly learned or

inferred rule: “Always try to ‘psych out’ a professor.” But

in this case this rule initiates a problem

solving procedure that is clearly dysfunctional. While Ruth

and Laurel use rules that impede their writing process and
Mike utilizes a problem

solving procedure that hamstrings him, Sylvia has trouble

deciding which of the many rules she

possesses to use. Her problem can be characterized as

cognitive perplexity: some of her rules are

inappropriate, others are functional; some mesh nicely with

her own defi nitions of good writing,

others don’t. She has multiple rules to invoke, multiple

paths to follow, and that very complexity

of choice virtually paralyzes her. More so than with the

previous four students, there is probably a

strong emotional dimension to Sylvia’s blocking, but the

cognitive diffi culties are clear and perhaps

modifi able. Sylvia, somewhat like Ruth and Laurel, puts

tremendous weight on the crafting of her fi rst para

graph. If it is good, she believes the rest of the essay

will be good. Therefore, she will spend up to

fi ve hours on the initial paragraph: “I won’t go on until

I get that fi rst paragraph down.” Clearly,

this rule—or the strength of it—blocks Sylvia’s production.

This is one problem. Another is that

Sylvia has other equally potent rules that she sees as

separate, uncomplementary injunctions: one

achieves “fl ow” in one’s writing through the use of

adquate transitions; one achieves substance

to one’s writing through the use of evidence. Sylvia

perceives both rules to be “true,” but several
times followed one to the exclusion of the other.
Furthermore, as I talked to Sylvia, many other

rules, guidelines, defi nitions were offered, but none with

conviction. While she is committed to

one rule about initial paragraphs, and that rule is

dysfunctional, she seems very uncertain about the

weight and hierarchy of the remaining rules in her

cognitive repertoire.

“If It Won’t Fit My Work, I’ll Change It”—The Non-blockers

Dale, Ellen, Debbie, Susan, and Miles all write with the
aid of rules. But their rules differ from block

ers’ rules in signifi cant ways. If similar in content,

they are expressed less absolutely—e.g., “Try to

keep audience in mind.” If dissimilar, they are still

expressed less absolutely, more heuristically—

e.g., “I can use as many ideas in my thesis paragraph as I

need and then develop paragraphs for each

idea.” Our non-blockers do express some rules with fi rm

assurance, but these tend to be simple

injunctions that free up rather than restrict the composing

process, e.g., “When stuck, write!” or

“I’ll write what I can.” And fi nally, at least three of

the students openly shun the very textbook rules

that some blockers adhere to: e.g., “Rules like ‘write only
what you know about’ just aren’t true. I

ignore those.” These three, in effect, have formulated a

further rule that expresses something like:

“If a rule confl icts with what is sensible or with

experience, reject it.” On the broader level of plans and
strategies, these fi ve students also differ from at least
three

of the fi ve blockers in that they all possess

problem-solving plans that are quite functional. Inter
estingly, on fi rst exploration these plans seem to be too
broad or fl uid to be useful and, in some

cases, can barely be expressed with any precision. Ellen,

for example, admits that she has a general

“outline in [her] head about how a topic paragraph should

look” but could not describe much

about its structure. Susan also has a general plan to

follow, but, if stymied, will quickly attempt

to conceptualize the assignment in different ways: “If my

original idea won’t work, then I need to

proceed differently.” Whether or not these plans operate in

TOTE-fashion, I can’t say. But they do

operate with the operate-test fl uidity of TOTEs. True, our

non-blockers have their religiously adhered-to rules: e.g.,
“When stuck, write,” and

plans, “I couldn’t imagine writing without this pattern,”

but as noted above, these are few and

functional. Otherwise, these non-blockers operate with fl

uid, easily modifi ed, even easily discarded

rules and plans (Ellen: “I can throw things out”) that are
sometimes expressed with a vagueness

that could almost be interpreted as ignorance. There lies

the irony. Students that offer the least

precise rules and plans have the least trouble composing.

Perhaps this very lack of precision char

acterizes the functional composing plan. But perhaps this

lack of precision simply masks habitually

enacted alternatives and sub-routines. This is clearly an

area that needs the illumination of further

research. And then there is feedback. At least three of the

fi ve non-blockers are an Information-Proces

sor’s dream. They get to know their audience, ask

professors and T.A.s specifi c questions about

assignments, bring half-fi nished products in for

evaluation, etc. Like Ruth, they realize the impor

tance of audience, but unlike her, they have specifi c

strategies for obtaining and utilizing feedback.

And this penchant for testing writing plans against the

needs of the audience can lead to modifi ca

tion of rules and plans. Listen to Debbie: In high school I

was given a formula that stated that you must write a
thesis paragraph with only three points in it, and then
develop each of those points. When I hit college I was
given longer assignments. That stuck me for a bit, but
then I realized that I could use as many ideas in my
thesis paragraph as I needed and then develop paragraphs
for each one. I asked someone about this and then tried it.
I didn’t get any negative feedback, so I fi gured it was
o.k. Debbie’s statement brings one last difference between
our blockers and non-blockers into

focus; it has been implied above, but needs specifi c

formulation: the goals these people have, and

the plans they generate to attain these goals, are quite

mutable. Part of the mutability comes from

the fl uid way the goals and plans are conceived, and part
of it arises from the effective impact of

feedback on these goals and plans.

Analyzing Writer’s Block

Algorithms Rather Than Heuristics

In most cases, the rules our blockers use are not “wrong”
or “incorrect”—it is good practice, for

example, to “grab your audience with a catchy opening” or

“craft a solid fi rst paragraph before

going on.” The problem is that these rules seem to be

followed as though they were algorithms,

absolute dicta, rather than the loose heuristics that they

were intended to be. Either through

instruction, or the power of the textbook, or the

predilections of some of our blockers for abso
lutes, or all three, these useful rules of thumb have been
transformed into near-algorithmic urgen

cies. The result, to paraphrase Karl Dunker, is that these

rules do not allow a fl exible penetration

into the nature of the problem. It is this transformation

of heuristic into algorithm that contributes

to the writer’s block of Ruth and Laurel.

Questionable Heuristics Made Algorithmic

Whereas “grab your audience” could be a useful heuristic,

“always make three or more points in

an essay” is a pretty questionable one. Any such rule,

though probably taught to aid the writer who

needs structure, ultimately transforms a highly fl uid

process like writing into a mechanical lockstep.

As heuristics, such rules can be troublesome. As

algorithms, they are simply incorrect.

Set

As with any problem-solving task, students approach writing

assignments with a variety of orienta

tions or sets. Some are functional, others are not. Martha

and Jane (see footnote 14), coming out

of the life sciences and social sciences respectively,

bring certain methodological orientations with

them—certain sets or “directions” that make composing for

the humanities a diffi cult, sometimes

confusing, task. In fact, this orientation may cause them

to misperceive the task. Martha has formu

lated a planning strategy from her predisposition to see

processes in terms of linear, interrelated

steps in a system. Jane doesn’t realize that she can revise

the statement that “committed” her to

the direction her essay has taken. Both of these students

are stymied because of formative experi
ences associated with their majors—experiences, perhaps,
that nicely reinforce our very strong

tendency to organize experiences temporally.

The Plan that Is Not a Plan

If fl uidity and multi-directionality are central to the

nature of plans, then the plans that Mike formu

lates are not true plans at all but, rather, infl exible
and static cognitive blueprints. 15 Put another way,

Mike’s “plans” represent a restricted “closed system” (vs.

“open system”) kind of thinking, where

closed system thinking is defi ned as focusing on “a

limited number of units or items, or members,

and those properties of the members which are to be used

are known to begin with and do not

change as the thinking proceeds,” and open system thinking

is characterized by an “adventurous

exploration of multiple alternatives with strategies that

allow redirection once ‘dead ends’ are

encountered.” 16 Composing calls for open, even

adventurous thinking, not for constrained, no-exit

cognition.

Feedback

The above diffi culties are made all the more problematic
by the fact that they seem resistant to or

isolated from corrective feedback. One of the most striking

things about Dale, Debbie, and Miles is

the ease with which they seek out, interpret, and apply
feedback on their rules, plans, and produc

tions. They “operate” and then they “test,” and the testing
is not only against some internalized

goal, but against the requirements of external audience as

well.
Too Many Rules–“Conceptual Conf lict”

According to D. E. Berlyne, one of the primary forces that

motivate problem-solving behavior is a

curiosity that arises from conceptual confl ict—the

convergence of incompatible beliefs or ideas.

In Structure and Direction in Thinking, 17 Berlyne

presents six major types of conceptual confl ict, the

second of which he terms “perplexity”: This kind of confl

ict occurs when there are factors inclining the subject
toward each of a set of mutually exclusive beliefs. (p.
257)

If one substitutes “rules” for “beliefs” in the above defi

nition, perplexity becomes a useful notion

here. Because perplexity is unpleasant, people are

motivated to reduce it by problem-solving

behavior that can result in “disequalization”: Degree of

confl ict will be reduced if either the number of competing
… [rules] or their nearness to equality of strength is
reduced. (p. 259)

But “disequalization” is not automatic. As I have

suggested, Martha and Sylvia hold to rules that

confl ict, but their perplexity does not lead to curiosity

and resultant problem-solving behavior.

Their perplexity, contra Berlyne, leads to immobilization.

Thus “disequalization” will have to be

effected from without. The importance of each of,

particularly, Sylvia’s rules needs an evaluation

that will aid her in rejecting some rules and balancing and
sequencing others.

A Note on Treatment

Rather than get embroiled in a blocker’s misery, the

teacher or tutor might interview the student

in order to build a writing history and profi le: How much

and what kind of writing was done in
high school? What is the student’s major? What kind of
writing does it require? How does the

student compose? Are there rough drafts or outlines

available? By what rules does the student

operate? How would he or she defi ne “good” writing? etc.

This sort of interview reveals an incred

ible amount of information about individual composing

processes. Furthermore, it ofen reveals the

rigid rule or the infl exible plan that may lie at the base
of the student’s writing problem. That was

precisely what happened with the fi ve blockers. And with

Ruth, Laurel, and Martha (and Jane) what

was revealed made virtually immediate remedy possible.

Dysfunctional rules are easily replaced

with or counter-balanced by functional ones if there is no

emotional reason to hold onto that

which simply doesn’t work. Furthermore, students can be

trained to select, to “know which rules

are appropriate for which problems.” 18 Mike’s diffi

culties, perhaps because plans are more complex

and pervasive than rules, took longer to correct. But infl

exible plans, too, can be remedied by

pointing out their dysfunctional qualities and by assisting

the student in developing appropriate and

fl exible alternatives. Operating this way, I was

successful with Mike. Sylvia’s story, however, did not

end as smoothly. Though I had three forty-fi ve minute

contacts with her, I was not able to appre

ciably alter her behavior. Berlyne’s theory bore results

with Martha but not with Sylvia. Her rules

were in confl ict, and perhaps that confl ict was not
exclusively cognitive. Her case keeps analyses

like these honest; it reminds us that the cognitive often

melds with, and can be overpowered by,

the affective. So while Ruth, Laurel, Martha, and Mike

could profi t from tutorials that explore the

rules and plans in their writing behavior, students like

Sylvia may need more extended, more affec

tively oriented counseling sessions that blend the

instructional with the psychodynamic.

Notes

1 David Shapiro, Neurotic Styles (New York: Basic Books,

1965).

2 Barbara Hayes-Ruth, a Rand cognitive psychologist, and I

are currently developing an information-processing model of
the composing process. A good deal of work has already been
done by Linda Flower and John Hayes (see p. 393 of this
article). I have just received—and recommend—their “Writing
as Problem Solving” (paper presented at American
Educational Research Association, April, 1979).

3 The Conditions of Learning (New York: Holt, Rinehart and

Winston, 1970), p. 193.

4 E. James Archer, “The Psychological Nature of Concepts,”

in H. J. Klausmeier and C. W. Harris, eds., Analysis of
Concept Learning (New York: Academic Press, 1966), pp.
37–44; David P. Ausubel, The Psychology of Meaningful
Verbal Behavior (New York: Grune and Stratton, 1963);
Robert M. Gagné, “Problem Solving,” in Arthur W. Melton,
ed., Categories of Human Learning (New York: Academic
Press, 1964), pp. 293–317; George A. Miller, Language and
Communication (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1951).

5 George Katona, Organizing and Memorizing (New York:

Columbia Univ. Press, 1940); Roger N. Shepard, Carl I.
Hovland, and Herbert M. Jenkins, “Learning and Memorization
of Classifi cations,” Psychological Monographs, 75, No. 13
(1961) (entire No. 517); Robert S. Wood-worth, Dynamics of
Behavior (New York: Henry Holt, 1958), chs. 10–12.

6 The Conditions of Learning, pp. 190–91.

7 Karl Dunker, “On Problem Solving,” Psychological

Monographs, 58, No. 5 (1945) (entire No. 270); George A.
Polya, How to Solve It (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1945); George A. Miller, Eugene Galanter, and Karl
H. Pribram, Plans and the Structure of Behavior (New York:
Henry Holt, 1960).

8 Lyle E. Bourne, Jr., Bruce R. Ekstrand, and Roger L.

Dominowski, The Psychology of Thinking (Englewood Cliffs,
N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971).

9 John R. Hayes, “Problem Topology and the Solution

Process,” in Carl P. Duncan, ed., Thinking: Current
Experimental Studies (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1967), pp.
167–81.

10 Hulda J. Rees and Harold E. Israel, “An Investigation of

the Establishment and Operation of Mental Sets.”
Psychological Monographs, 46 (1925) (entire No. 210).

11 Ibid.; Melvin H. Marx, Wilton W. Murphy, and Aaron J.

Brownstein, “Recognition of Complex Visual Stimuli as a
Function of Training with Abstracted Patterns,” Journal of
Experimental Psychology, 62 (1961), 456–60.

12 James L. Adams, Conceptual Blockbusting (San Francisco:

W. H. Freeman, 1974); Edward DeBono, New Think (New York:
Basic Books, 1958); Ronald H. Forgus, Perception (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1966), ch. 13; Abraham Luchins and Edith
Hirsch Luchins, Rigidity of Behavior (Eugene: Univ. of
Oregon Books, 1959); N. R. F. Maier, “Reasoning in Humans.
I. On Direction,” Journal of Comparative Psychology, 10
(1920), 115–43.

13 “Plans and the Cognitive Process of Writing,” paper

presented at the National Institute of Education Writing
Conference, June 1977; “Problem Solving Strategies and the
Writing Process,” College English, 39 (1977), 449–61. See
also footnote 2.

14 Jane, a student not discussed in this paper, was

surprised to fi nd out that a topic paragraph can be
rewritten after a paper’s conclusion to make that paragraph
refl ect what the essay truly contains. She had gotten so
indoctrinated with Psychology’s (her major) insistence that
a hypothesis be formulated and then left untouched before
an experiment begins that she thought revision of one’s
“major premise” was somehow illegal. She had formed a rule
out of her exposure to social science methodology, and the
rule was totally inappropriate for most writing situations.

15 Cf. “A plan is fl exible if the order of execution of

its parts can be easily interchanged without affecting the
feasibility of the plan … the fl exible planner might tend
to think of lists of things he had to do; the infl exible
planner would have his time planned like a sequence of
cause-effect relations. The former could rearrange his
lists to suit his opportunities, but the latter would be
unable to strike while the iron was hot and would
generally require considerable ‘lead-time’ before he could
incorporate any alternative sub-plans” (Miller, Galanter,
and Pribram, p. 120).

16 Frederic Bartlett, Thinking (New York: Basic Books,

1958), pp. 74–76.

17 Structure and Direction in Thinking (New York: John

Wiley, 1965), p. 255.

18 Flower and Hayes, “Plans and the Cognitive Process of

Writing,” p. 26.

Reprinted from Mike Rose. “Rigid Rules, Infl exible Plans,

and the Stifl ing of Language, A Cognitivist Analysis

of Writer’s Block.” College Composition and Communication,

Vol. 31, No. 4, December 1980: 389–401. Copy

right 1980 by the National Council of Teachers of English.

Reprinted with permission.
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Reading REVISION STRATEGIES OF STUDENT WRITERS AND

EXPERIENCED ADULT WRITERS Nancy Sommers

Although various aspects of the writing process have been

studied extensively of late, research

on revision has been notably absent. The reason for this, I

suspect, is that current models of the

writing process have directed attention away from revision.

With few exceptions, these models are

linear; they separate the writing process into discrete

stages. Two representative models are Gor

don Rohman’s suggestion that the composing process moves

from prewriting to writing to rewrit

ing and James Britton’s model of the writing process as a

series of stages described in metaphors

of linear growth, conception—incubation—production. 1 What

is striking about these theories of

writing is that they model themselves on speech: Rohman

defi nes the writer in a way that cannot

distinguish him from a speaker (“A writer is a man who …

puts [his] experience into words in his

own mind”—p. 15); and Britton bases his theory of writing

on what he calls (following Jakobson)

the “expressiveness” of speech. 2 Moreover, Britton’s

study itself follows the “linear model” of the

relation of thought and language in speech proposed by

Vygotsky, a relationship embodied in the

linear movement “from the motive which engenders a thought

to the shaping of the thought, fi rst

in inner speech, then in meanings of words, and fi nally in

words” (quoted in Britton, p. 40). What

this movement fails to take into account in its linear

structure—“fi rst … then … fi nally”—is the

recursive shaping of thought by language; what it fails to

take into account is revision. In these linear

conceptions of the writing process revision is understood

as a separate stage at the end of the
process—a stage that comes after the completion of a fi rst
or second draft and one that is tempo

rally distinct from the prewriting and writing stages of

the process. 3 The linear model bases itself on speech in
two specifi c ways. First of all, it is based on
traditional

rhetorical models, models that were created to serve the

spoken art of oratory. In whatever ways

the parts of classical rhetoric are described, they offer

“stages” of composition that are repeated

in contemporary models of the writing process. Edward

Corbett, for instance, describes the “fi ve

parts of a discourse”—inventio, dispositio, elocutio,

memoria, pronuntiatio—and, disregarding the last

two parts since “after rhetoric came to be concerned mainly

with written discourse, there was no

further need to deal with them,” 4 he produces a model

very close to Britton’s conception [inventio],

incubation [dispositio], production [elocutio]. Other

rhetorics also follow this procedure, and they

do so not simply because of historical accident. Rather,

the process represented in the linear model

is based on the irreversibility of speech. Speech, Roland

Barthes says, “is irreversible”: A word cannot be
retracted, except precisely by saying that one retracts it.
To cross out here is to add: if I want to erase what I
have just said, I cannot do it without showing the eraser
itself (I must say: “or rather …” “I expressed myself badly
…”); paradoxically, it is ephemeral speech which is
indelible, not monumental writing. All that one can do in
the case of a spoken utterance is to tack on another
utterance. 5

What is impossible in speech is revision: like the example

Barthes gives, revision in speech is an

afterthought. In the same way, each stage of the linear

model must be exclusive (distinct from

the other stages) or else it becomes trivial and

counterproductive to refer to these junctures as

“stages.” By staging revision after enunciation, the linear

models reduce revision in writing, as in speech,

to no more than an afterthought. In this way such models

make the study of revision impossible.

Revision, in Rohman’s model, is simply the repetition of

writing; or to pursue Britton’s organic met

aphor, revision is simply the further growth of what is

already there, the “pre-conceived” product.

The absence of research on revision, then, is a function of

a theory of writing which makes revision

both superfl uous and redundant, a theory which does not

distinguish between writing and speech. What the linear
models do produce is a parody of writing. Isolating
revision and then disre

garding it plays havoc with the experiences composition

teachers have of the actual writing and

rewriting of experienced writers. Why should the linear

model be preferred? Why should revi

sion be forgotten, superfl uous? Why do teachers offer the

linear model and students accept it?

One reason, Barthes suggests, is that “there is a

fundamental tie between teaching and speech,”

while “writing begins at the point where speech becomes

impossible.” 6 The spoken word cannot be

revised. The possibility of revision distinguishes the

written text from speech. In fact, according to

Barthes, this is the essential difference between writing

and speaking. When we must revise, when

the very idea is subject to recursive shaping by language,

then speech becomes inadequate. This is

a matter to which I will return, but fi rst we should

examine, theoretically, a detailed exploration

of what student writers as distinguished from experienced

adult writers do when they write and

rewrite their work. Dissatisfi ed with both the linear

model of writing and the lack of attention

to the process of revision, I conducted a series of studies

over the past three years which exam

ined the revision processes of student writers and

experienced writers to see what role revision

played in their writing processes. In the course of my work

the revision process was redefi ned

as a sequence of changes in a composition—changes which are

initiated by cues and occur continually

throughout the writing of a work.

Methodology

I used a case study approach. The student writers were

twenty freshmen at Boston University and

the University of Oklahoma with SAT verbal scores ranging

from 450–600 in their fi rst semester

of composition. The twenty experienced adult writers from

Boston and Oklahoma City included

journalists, editors, and academics. To refer to the two

groups, I use the terms student writers and

experienced writers because the principal difference

between these two groups is the amount of

experience they have had in writing. Each writer wrote

three essays, expressive, explanatory, and persuasive, and
rewrote each

essay twice, producing nine written products in draft and

fi nal form. Each writer was interviewed

three times after the fi nal revision of each essay. And

each writer suggested revisions for a com

position written by an anonymous author. Thus extensive

written and spoken documents were

obtained from each writer. The essays were analyzed by

counting and categorizing the changes made. Four revision
opera

tions were identifi ed: deletion, substitution, addition,

and reordering. And four levels of changes

were identifi ed: word, phrase, sentence, theme (the

extended statement of one idea). A coding

system was developed for identifying the frequency of

revision by level and operation. In addition,

transcripts of the interviews in which the writers

interpreted their revisions were used to develop

what was called a scale of concerns for each writer. This

scale enabled me to codify what were the

writer’s primary concerns, secondary concerns, tertiary

concerns, and whether the writers used

the same scale of concerns when revising the second or

third drafts as they used in revising the

fi rst draft.

Revision Strategies of Student Writers

Most of the students I studied did not use the terms

revision or rewriting. In fact, they did not seem

comfortable using the word revision and explained that

revision was not a word they used, but the

word their teachers used. Instead, most of the students had

developed various functional terms to

describe the type of changes they made. The following are

samples of these defi nitions: Scratch Out and Do Over
Again: “I say scratch out and do over, and that means what
it says. Scratching out and cutting out. I read what I
have written and I cross out a word and put another word
in; a more decent word or a better word. Then if there is
somewhere to use a sentence that I have crossed out, I
will put it there.” Reviewing: “Reviewing means just using
better words and eliminating words that are not needed. I
go over and change words around.” Reviewing: “I just review
every word and make sure that everything is worded right. I
see if I am rambling; I see if I can put a better word in
or leave one out. Usually when I read what I have written,
I say to myself, ‘that word is so bland or so trite,’ and
then I go and get my thesaurus.” Redoing: “Redoing means
cleaning up the paper and crossing out. It is looking at
something and saying, no that has to go, or no, that is
not right.” Marking Out: “I don’t use the word rewriting
because I only write one draft and the changes that I make
are made on top of the draft. The changes that I make are
usually just marking out words and putting different ones
in.” Slashing and Throwing Out: “I throw things out and say
they are not good. I like to write like Fitzgerald did by
inspiration, and if I feel inspired then I don’t need to
slash and throw much out.”

The predominant concern in these defi nitions is

vocabulary. The students understand the revision

process as a rewording activity. They do so because they

perceive words as the unit of written

discourse. That is, they concentrate on particular words

apart from their role in the text. Thus one

student quoted above thinks in terms of dictionaries, and,

following the eighteenth century theory

of words parodied in Gulliver’s Travels, he imagines a load

of things carried about to be exchanged.

Lexical changes are the major revision activities of the

students because economy is their goal.

They are governed, like the linear model itself, by the Law
of Occam’s razor that prohibits logi

cally needless repetition: redundancy and superfl uity.

Nothing governs speech more than such

superfl uities; speech constantly repeats itself precisely

because spoken words, as Barthes writes,

are expendable in the cause of communication. The aim of

revision according to the students’ own

description is therefore to clean up speech; the redundancy

of speech is unnecessary in writing,

their logic suggests, because writing, unlike speech, can

be reread. Thus one student said, “Redoing

means cleaning up the paper and crossing out.” The

remarkable contradiction of cleaning by mark

ing might, indeed, stand for student revision as I have

encountered it. The students place a symbolic importance on
their selection and rejection of words as the

determiners of success or failure for their compositions.

When revising, they primarily ask them

selves: can I fi nd a better word or phrase? A more

impressive, not so cliched, or less hum-drum

word? Am I repeating the same word or phrase too often?

They approach the revision process with

what could be labeled as a “thesaurus philosophy of

writing”; the students consider the thesaurus

a harvest of lexical substitutions and believe that most

problems in their essays can be solved by

rewording. What is revealed in the students’ use of the

thesaurus is a governing attitude toward

their writing: that the meaning to be communicated is

already there, already fi nished, already pro

duced, ready to be communicated, and all that is necessary

is a better word “rightly worded.” One

student defi ned revision as “redoing”; “redoing” meant

“just using better words and eliminating

words that are not needed.” For the students, writing is

translating: the thought to the page, the

language of speech to the more formal language of prose,

the word to its synonym. Whatever is

translated, an original text already exists for students,

one which need not be discovered or acted

upon, but simply communicated. 7 The students list

repetition as one of the elements they most worry about.
This cue signals to

them that they need to eliminate the repetition either by

substituting or deleting words or phrases.

Repetition occurs, in large part, because student writing

imitates—transcribes—speech: attention

to repetitious words is a manner of cleaning speech.

Without a sense of the developmental pos

sibilities of revision (and writing in general) students

seek, on the authority of many textbooks,

simply to clean up their language and prepare to type. What

is curious, however, is that students

are aware of lexical repetition, but not conceptual

repetition. They only notice the repetition if

they can “hear” it: they do not diagnose lexical repetition

as symptomatic of problems on a deeper

level. By rewording their sentences to avoid the lexical

repetition, the students solve the immedi

ate problem, but blind themselves to problems on a textual

level; although they are using different

words, they are sometimes merely restating the same idea

with different words. Such blindness,

as I discovered with student writers, is the inability to

“see” revision as a process: the inability to

“re-view” their work again, as it were, with different

eyes, and to start over. The revision strategies described
above are consistent with the students’ understanding of
the

revision process as requiring lexical changes but not

semantic changes. For the students, the extent

to which they revise is a function of their level of

inspiration. In fact, they use the word inspiration to

describe the ease or diffi culty with which their essay is

written, and the extent to which the essay

needs to be revised. If students feel inspired, if the

writing comes easily, and if they don’t get stuck

on individual words or phrases, then they say that they

cannot see any reason to revise. Because

students do not see revision as an activity in which they

modify and develop perspectives and ideas,

they feel that if they know what they want to say, then
there is little reason for making revisions. The only
modifi cation of ideas in the students’ essays occurred
when they tried out two or

three introductory paragraphs. This results, in part,

because the students have been taught in

another version of the linear model of composing to use a

thesis statement as a controlling device

in their introductory paragraphs. Since they write their

introductions and their thesis statements

even before they have really discovered what they want to

say, their early close attention to the

thesis statement, and more generally the linear model,

function to restrict and circumscribe not

only the development of their ideas, but also their ability

to change the direction of these ideas. Too often as
composition teachers we conclude that students do not
willingly revise. The evi

dence from my research suggests that it is not that

students are unwilling to revise, but rather that

they do what they have been taught to do in a consistently

narrow and predictable way. On every

occasion when I asked students why they hadn’t made any

more changes, they essentially replied,

“I knew something larger was wrong, but I didn’t think it

would help to move words around.” The

students have strategies for handling words and phrases and

their strategies helped them on a

word or sentence level. What they lack, however, is a set

of strategies to help them identify the

“something larger” that they sensed was wrong and work from
there. The students do not have

strategies for handling the whole essay. They lack

procedures or heuristics to help them reorder
lines of reasoning or ask questions about their purposes
and readers. The students view their

compositions in a linear way as a series of parts. Even

such potentially useful concepts as “unity” or

“form” are reduced to the rule that a composition, if it is

to have form, must have an introduction,

a body, and a conclusion, or the sum total of the necessary

parts. The students decide to stop revising when they
decide that they have not violated any of the

rules for revising. These rules, such as “Never begin a

sentence with a conjunction” or “Never end

a sentence with a preposition,” are lexically cued and

rigidly applied. In general, students will sub

ordinate the demands of the specifi c problems of their

text to the demands of the rules. Changes

are made in compliance with abstract rules about the

product, rules that quite often do not apply

to the specifi c problems in the text. These revision

strategies are teacher-based, directed towards

a teacher-reader who expects compliance with rules—with

pre-existing “conceptions”—and who

will only examine parts of the composition (writing

comments about those parts in the margins of

their essays) and will cite any violations of rules in

those parts. At best the students see their writ

ing altogether passively through the eyes of former

teachers or their surrogates, the textbooks,

and are bound to the rules which they have been taught.

Revision Strategies of Experienced Writers

One aim of my research has been to contrast how student

writers defi ne revision with how a group

of experienced writers defi ne their revision processes.

Here is a sampling of the defi nitions from
the experienced writers: Rewriting: “It is a matter of
looking at the kernel of what I have written, the content,
and the thinking about it, responding to it, making
decisions, and actually restructuring it.” Rewriting: “I
rewrite as I write. It is hard to tell what is a fi rst
draft because it is not determined by time. In one draft, I
might cross out three pages, write two, cross out a fourth,
rewrite it, and call it a draft. I am constantly writing
and rewriting. I can only conceptualize so much in my fi
rst draft—only so much information can be held in my head
at one time; my rewriting efforts are a refl ection of how
much information I can encompass at one time. There are
levels and agenda which I have to attend to in each draft.”
Rewriting: “Rewriting means on one level, fi nding the
argument, and on another level, language changes to make
the argument more effective. Most of the time I feel as if
I can go on rewriting forever. There is always one part of
a piece that I could keep working on. It is always diffi
cult to know at what point to abandon a piece of writing. I
like this idea that a piece of writing is never fi nished,
just abandoned.” Rewriting: “My fi rst draft is usually
very scattered. In rewriting, I fi nd the line of argument.
After the argument is resolved, I am much more interested
in word choice and phrasing.” Revising: “My cardinal rule
in revising is never to fall in love with what I have
written in a fi rst or second draft. An idea, sentence, or
even a phrase that looks catchy, I don’t trust. Part of
this idea is to wait a while. I am much more in love with
something after I have written it than I am a day or two
later. It is much easier to change anything with time.”
Revising: “It means taking apart what I have written and
putting it back together again. I ask major theoretical
questions of my ideas, respond to those questions, and
think of proportion and structure, and try to fi nd a
controlling metaphor. I fi nd out which ideas can be
developed and which should be dropped. I am constantly
chiseling and changing as I revise.” The experienced
writers describe their primary objective when revising as
fi nding the form or

shape of their argument. Although the metaphors vary, the

experienced writers often use struc

tural expressions such as “fi nding a frame-work,” “a

pattern,” or “a design” for their argument.

When questioned about this emphasis, the experienced

writers responded that since their fi rst
drafts are usually scattered attempts to defi ne their
territory, their objective in the second draft is

to begin observing general patterns of development and

deciding what should be included and what

excluded. One writer explained, “I have learned from

experience that I need to keep writing a fi rst

draft until I fi gure out what I want to say. Then in a

second draft, I begin to see the structure of an

argument and how all the various sub-arguments which are

buried beneath the surface of all those

sentences are related.” What is described here is a process

in which the writer is both agent and

vehicle. “Writing,” says Barthes, unlike speech, “develops

like a seed, not a line,” 8 and like a seed it

confuses beginning and end, conception and production.

Thus, the experienced writers say their

drafts are “not determined by time,” that rewriting is a

“constant process,” that they feel as if (they)

“can go on forever.” Revising confuses the beginning and

end, the agent and vehicle; it confuses, in

order to fi nd, the line of argument. After a concern for

form, the experienced writers have a second objective: a
concern for their

readership. In this way, “production” precedes

“conception.” The experienced writers imagine a

reader (reading their product) whose existence and whose

expectations infl uence their revision

process. They have abstracted the standards of a reader and

this reader seems to be partially a

refl ection of themselves and functions as a critical and

productive collaborator—a collaborator

who has yet to love their work. The anticipation of a

reader’s judgment causes a feeling of dis

sonance when the writer recognizes incongruities between

intention and execution, and requires

these writers to make revisions on all levels. Such a

reader gives them just what the students

lacked: new eyes to “re-view” their work. The experienced

writers believe that they have learned

the causes and conditions, the product, which will infl

uence their reader, and their revision strate

gies are geared towards creating these causes and

conditions. They demonstrate a complex under

standing of which examples, sentences, or phrases should be

included or excluded. For example,

one experienced writer decided to delete public examples

and add private examples when writing

about the energy crisis because “private examples would be

less controversial and thus more per

suasive.” Another writer revised his transitional sentences

because “some kinds of transitions are

more easily recognized as transitions than others.” These

examples represent the type of strategic

attempts these experienced writers use to manipulate the

conventions of discourse in order to

communicate to their reader. But these revision strategies

are a process of more than communication; they are part of
the

process of discovering meaning altogether. Here we can see

the importance of dissonance; at the

heart of revision is the process by which writers recognize

and resolve the dissonance they sense

in their writing. Ferdinand de Saussure has argued that

meaning is differential or “diacritical,” based

on differences between terms rather than “essential” or

inherent qualities of terms. “Phonemes,”

he said, “are characterized not, as one might think, by

their own positive quality but simply by the
fact that they are distinct.” 9 In fact, Saussure bases
his entire Course in General Linguistics on these

differences, and such differences are dissonant; like

musical dissonances which gain their signifi

cance from their relationship to the “key” of the

composition which itself is determined by the

whole language, specifi c language (parole) gains its

meaning from the system of language (langue) of

which it is a manifestation and part. The musical

composition—a “composition” of parts—creates

its “key” as in an over-all structure which determines the

value (meaning) of its parts. The analogy

with music is readily seen in the compositions of

experienced writers: both sorts of composition

are based precisely on those structures experienced writers

seek in their writing. It is this com

plicated relationship between the parts and the whole in

the work of experienced writers which

destroys the linear model; writing cannot develop “like a

line” because each addition or deletion is

a reordering of the whole. Explicating Saussure, Jonathan

Culler asserts that “meaning depends on

difference of meaning.” 10 But student writers constantly

struggle to bring their essays into congru

ence with a predefi ned meaning. The experienced writers do

the opposite: they seek to discover

(to create) meaning in the engagement with their writing,

in revision. They seek to emphasize and

exploit the lack of clarity, the differences of meaning,

the dissonance, that writing as opposed to

speech allows in the possibility of revision. Writing has

spatial and temporal features not apparent

in speech—words are recorded in space and fi xed in

time—which is why writing is susceptible to

reordering and later addition. Such features make possible

the dissonance that both provokes revi

sion and promises, from itself, new meaning. For the

experienced writers the heaviest concentration of changes
is on the sentence level,

and the changes are predominantly by addition and deletion.

But, unlike the students, experienced

writers make changes on all levels and use all revision

operations. Moreover, the operations the

students fail to use—reordering and addition—seem to

require a theory of the revision process as

a totality—a theory which, in fact, encompasses the whole

of the composition. Unlike the students,

the experienced writers possess a non-linear theory in

which a sense of the whole writing both

precedes and grows out of an examination of the parts. As

we saw, one writer said he needed “a

fi rst draft to fi gure out what to say,” and “a second

draft to see the structure of an argument buried

beneath the surface.” Such a “theory” is both theoretical

and strategical; once again, strategy and

theory are confl ated in ways that are literally impossible

for the linear model. Writing appears to

be more like a seed than a line. Two elements of the

experienced writers’ theory of the revision process are the
adoption of a

holistic perspective and the perception that revision is a

recursive process. The writers ask: what

does my essay as a whole need for form, balance, rhythm, or

communication. Details are added,

dropped, substituted, or reordered according to their sense

of what the essay needs for emphasis

and proportion. This sense, however, is constantly in fl ux

as ideas are developed and modifi ed; it is

constantly “re-viewed” in relation to the parts. As their

ideas change, revision becomes an attempt

to make their writing consonant with that changing vision.

The experienced writers see their revision process as a
recursive process—a process with sig

nifi cant recurring activities—with different levels of

attention and different agenda for each cycle.

During the fi rst revision cycle their attention is

primarily directed towards narrowing the topic and

delimiting their ideas. At this point, they are not as

concerned as they are later about vocabulary

and style. The experienced writers explained that they get

closer to their meaning by not limit

ing themselves too early to lexical concerns. As one writer

commented to explain her revision

process, a comment inspired by the summer 1977 New York

power failure: “I feel like Con Edison

cutting off certain states to keep the generators going. In

fi rst and second drafts, I try to cut off

as much as I can of my editing generator, and in a third

draft, I try to cut off some of my idea gen

erators, so I can make sure that I will actually fi nish

the essay.” Although the experienced writers

describe their revision process as a series of different

levels or cycles, it is inaccurate to assume

that they have only one objective for each cycle and that
each cycle can be defi ned by a different

objective. The same objectives and sub-processes are

present in each cycle, but in different pro

portions. Even though these experienced writers place the

predominant weight upon fi nding the

form of their argument during the fi rst cycle, other

concerns exist as well. Conversely, during the
later cycles, when the experienced writers’ primary
attention is focused upon stylistic concerns,

they are still attuned, although in a reduced way, to the

form of the argument. Since writers are

limited in what they can attend to during each cycle

(understandings are temporal), revision strate

gies help balance competing demands on attention. Thus,

writers can concentrate on more than

one objective at a time by developing strategies to sort

out and organize their different concerns

in successive cycles of revision. It is a sense of writing

as discovery—a repeated process of beginning over again,
starting out

new—that the students failed to have. I have used the

notion of dissonance because such dis

sonance, the incongruities between intention and execution,

governs both writing and meaning.

Students do not see the incongruities. They need to rely on

their own internalized sense of good

writing and to see their writing with their “own” eyes.

Seeing in revision—seeing beyond hearing—

is at the root of the word revision and the process itself;

current dicta on revising blind our students

to what is actually involved in revision. In fact, they

blind them to what constitutes good writing

altogether. Good writing disturbs: it creates dissonance.

Students need to seek the dissonance of

discovery, utilizing in their writing, as the experienced

writers do, the very difference between

writing and speech—the possibility of revision.

Notes

1 D. Gordon Rohman and Albert O. Wlecke, “Pre-writing: The

Construction and Application of Models for Concept
Formation in Writing,” Cooperative Research Project No.
2174, U.S. Offi ce of Education, Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare; James Britton, Anthony Burgess,
Nancy Martin, Alex McLeod, Harold Rosen, The Development
of Writing Abilities (11–18) (London: Macmillan Education,
1975).

2 Britton is following Roman Jakobson, “Linguistics and

Poetics,” in T. A. Sebeok, Style in Language (Cambridge,
Mass: MIT Press, 1960).

3 For an extended discussion of this issue see Nancy

Sommers, “The Need for Theory in Composition Research,”
College Composition and Communication. 30 (February, 1979),
46–69.

4 Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 27.

5 Roland Barthes, “Writers, Intellectuals, Teachers,” in

Image-Music-Text. trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and
Wang, 1977), pp. 190–191.

6 “Writers, Intellectuals, Teachers,” p. 190.

7 Nancy Sommers and Ronald Schleifer, “Means and Ends: Some

Assumptions of Student Writers,” Composition and Teaching,
II (in press).

8 Writing Degree Zero in Writing Degree Zero and Elements

of Semiology, trans. Annette Lavers and Colin Smith (New
York: Hill and Wang, 1968), p. 20.

9 Course in General Linguistics, trans. Wade Baskin (New

York, 1966), p. 119.

10 Jonathan Culler, Saussure (Penguin Modern Masters

Series; London: Penguin Books, 1976), p. 70.

Acknowledgment

The author wishes to express her gratitude to Professor

William Smith, University of Pittsburgh, for his vital

assistance with the research reported in this article and

to Patrick Hays, her husband, for extensive discus

sions and critical editorial help.

Reprinted from Nancy Sommers. “Revision Strategies of

Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers.”

College Composition and Communication, Vol. 31, 1980:

378–387. Copyright 1980 by the National Council of

Teachers of English. Reprinted with permission.

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Reading CLOSING MY EYES AS I SPEAK: AN ARGUMENT FOR

IGNORING AUDIENCE Peter Elbow

Very often people don’t listen to you when you speak to

them. It’s only when you talk to

yourself that they prick up their ears. John Ashberry

When I am talking to a person or a group and struggling to

fi nd words or thoughts, I often fi nd

myself involuntarily closing my eyes as I speak. I realize

now that this behavior is an instinctive

attempt to blot out awareness of audience when I need all

my concentration for just trying to fi gure

out or express what I want to say. Because the audience is

so imperiously present in a speaking situ

ation, my instinct reacts with this active attempt to avoid

audience awareness. This behavior—in

a sense impolite or anti-social—is not so uncommon. Even

when we write, alone in a room to an
absent audience, there are occasions when we are struggling
to fi gure something out and need to

push aside awareness of those absent readers. As Donald

Murray puts it, “My sense of audience

is so strong that I have to suppress my conscious awareness

of audience to hear what the text

demands” (Berkenkotter and Murray 171). In recognition of

how pervasive the role of audience is

in writing, I write to celebrate the benefi ts of ignoring

audience. 1

It will be clear that my argument for writing without

audience awareness is not meant to under

mine the many good reasons for writing with audience

awareness some of the time. (For example,

that we are liable to neglect audience because we write in

solitude; that young people often need

more practice in taking into account points of view

different from their own; and that students

often have an impoverished sense of writing as

communication because they have only written in a

school setting to teachers.) Indeed I would claim some part

in these arguments for audience aware

ness—which now seem to be getting out of hand.

I start with a limited claim: even though ignoring audience

will usually lead to weak writing at

fi rst—to what Linda Flower calls “writer-based prose,”

this weak writing can help us in the end to

better writing than we would have written if we’d kept

readers in mind from the start. Then I will

make a more ambitious claim: writer-based prose is

sometimes better than reader-based prose.

Finally I will explore some of the theory underlying these

issues of audience.
A Limited Claim

It’s not that writers should never think about their

audience. It’s a question of when. An audience

is a fi eld of force. The closer we come—the more we think

about these readers—the stronger

the pull they exert on the contents of our minds. The

practical question, then, is always whether a

particular audience functions as a helpful fi eld of force

or one that confuses or inhibits us.

Some audiences, for example, are inviting or enabling. When

we think about them as we write,

we think of more and better things to say—and what we think

somehow arrives more coherently

structured than usual. It’s like talking to the perfect

listener; we feel smart and come up with ideas

we didn’t know we had. Such audiences are helpful to keep

in mind right from the start.

Other audiences, however, are powerfully inhibiting—so much

so, in certain cases, that aware

ness of them as we write blocks writing altogether. There

are certain people who always make us

feel dumb when we try to speak to them: we can’t fi nd

words or thoughts. As soon as we get out

of their presence, all the things we wanted to say pop back

into our minds. Here is a student telling

what happens when she tries to follow the traditional

advice about audience:

You know ____ [author of a text] tells us to pay attention

to the audience that will be reading

our papers, and I gave that a try. I ended up without

putting a word on paper until I decided

the hell with ____; I’m going to write to who I damn well
want to; otherwise I can hardly
write at all.

Admittedly, there are some occasions when we benefi t from

keeping a threatening audience in

mind from the start. We’ve been putting off writing that
letter to that person who intimidates us.

When we fi nally sit down and write to them—walk right up

to them, as it were, and look them in

the eye—we may manage to stand up to the threat and grasp

the nettle and thereby fi nd just what

we need to write.

Most commonly, however, the effect of audience awareness is

somewhere between the two

extremes: the awareness disturbs or disrupts our writing

and thinking without completely blocking

it. For example, when we have to write to someone we fi nd

intimidating (and of course students

often perceive teachers as intimidating), we often start

thinking wholly defensively. As we write

down each thought or sentence, our mind fi lls with

thoughts of how the intended reader will

criticize or object to it. So we try to qualify or soften

what we’ve just written—or write out some

answer to a possible objection. Our writing becomes

tangled. Sometimes we get so tied in knots

that we cannot even fi gure out what we think. We may not

realize how often audience awareness

has this effect on our students when we don’t see the

writing processes behind their papers: we

just see texts that are either tangled or empty.

Another example. When we have to write to readers with whom

we have an awkward relation

ship, we often start beating around the bush and feeling

shy or scared, or start to write in a stilted,

overly careful style or voice. (Think about the cute,

too-clever style of many memos we get in our

departmental mailboxes—the awkward self-consciousness

academics experience when writing to

other academics.) When students are asked to write to

readers they have not met or cannot imag

ine, such as “the general reader” or “the educated public,”

they often fi nd nothing to say except

cliches they know they don’t even quite believe.

When we realize that an audience is somehow confusing or

inhibiting us, the solution is fairly

obvious. We can ignore that audience altogether during the

early stages of writing and direct our

words only to ourselves or to no one in particular—or even

to the “wrong” audience, that is, to

an inviting audience of trusted friends or allies. This

strategy often dissipates the confusion; the

clenched, defensive discourse starts to run clear. Putting

audience out of mind is of course a tra

ditional practice; serious writers have long used private

journals for early explorations of feeling,

thinking, or language. But many writing teachers seem to

think that students can get along without

the private writing serious writers fi nd so crucial—or

even that students will benefi t from keeping

their audience in mind for the whole time. Things often

don’t work out that way.

After we have fi gured out our thinking in copious

exploratory or draft writing—perhaps fi nding

the right voice or stance as well—then we can follow the

traditional rhetorical advice: think about

readers and revise carefully to adjust our words and

thoughts to our intended audience. For a

particular audience it may even turn out that we need to

disguise our point of view. But it’s hard to

disguise something while engaged in trying to fi gure it

out. As writers, then, we need to learn when

to think about audience and when to put readers out of mind.

Many people are too quick to see Flower’s “writer-based

prose” as an analysis of what’s wrong

with this type of writing and miss the substantial degree

to which she was celebrating a natural, and

indeed developmentally enabling, response to cognitive

overload. What she doesn’t say, however,

despite her emphasis on planning and conscious control in

the writing process, is that we can teach

students to notice when audience awareness is getting in

their way—and when this happens, con

sciously to put aside the needs of readers for a while. She

seems to assume that when an overload

occurs, the writer-based gear will, as it were,

automatically kick into action to relieve it. In truth,

of course, writers often persist in using a malfunctioning

reader-based gear despite the overload—

thereby mangling their language or thinking. Though Flower

likes to rap the knuckles of people who

suggest a “correct” or “natural” order for steps in the

writing process, she implies such an order

here: when attention to audience causes an overload, start

out by ignoring them while you attend

to your thinking; after you work out your thinking, turn

your attention to audience.

Thus if we ignore audience while writing on a topic about

which we are not expert or about

which our thinking is still evolving, we are likely to

produce exploratory writing that is unclear to

anyone else—perhaps even inconsistent or a complete mess.

Yet by doing this exploratory “swamp

work” in conditions of safety, we can often coax our

thinking through a process of new discovery

and development. In this way we can end up with something

better than we could have produced

if we’d tried to write to our audience all along. In short,

ignoring audience can lead to worse drafts

but better revisions. (Because we are professionals and

adults, we often write in the role of expert:

we may know what we think without new exploratory writing;

we may even be able to speak con

fi dently to critical readers. But students seldom

experience this confi dent professional stance in

their writing. And think how much richer our writing would
be if we defi ned ourselves as inexpert

and allowed ourselves private writing for new explorations

of those views we are allegedly sure of.)

Notice then that two pieties of composition theory are

often in confl ict:

1. Think about audience as you write (this stemming from

the classical rhetorical tradition).

2. Use writing for making new meaning, not just

transmitting old meanings already worked out (this
stemming from the newer epistemic traditon I associate with
Ann Berthoff’s classic explorations).

It’s often diffi cult to work out new meaning while

thinking about readers.

A More Ambitious Claim

I go further now and argue that ignoring audience can lead

to better writing—immediately. In

effect, writer-based prose can be better than reader-based

prose. This might seem a more contro
versial claim, but is there a teacher who has not had the
experience of struggling and struggling

to no avail to help a student untangle his writing, only to

discover that the student’s casual journal

writing or freewriting is untangled and strong? Sometimes

freewriting is stronger than the essays

we get only because it is expressive, narrative, or

descriptive writing and the student was not con

strained by a topic. But teachers who collect drafts with

completed assignments often see passages

of freewriting that are strikingly stronger even when they

are expository and constrained by the

assigned topic. In some of these passages we can sense that

the strength derives from the student’s

unawareness of readers.

It’s not just unskilled, tangled writers, though, who

sometimes write better by forgetting about

readers. Many competent and even professional writers

produce mediocre pieces because they

are thinking too much about how their readers will receive
their words. They are acting too much

like a salesman trained to look the customer in the eye and

to think at all times about the charac

teristics of the “target audience.” There is something too

staged or planned or self-aware about

such writing. We see this quality in much second-rate

newspaper or magazine or business writing:

“good-student writing” in the awful sense of the term.

Writing produced this way reminds us of the

ineffective actor whose consciousness of self distracts us:

he makes us too aware of his own aware

ness of us. When we read such prose, we wish the writer

would stop thinking about us—would
stop trying to “adjust” or “fi t” what he is saying to our
frame of reference. “Damn it, put all your

attention on what you are saying,” we want to say, “and

forget about us and how we are reacting.”

When we examine really good student or professional

writing, we can often see that its good

ness comes from the writer’s having gotten suffi ciently

wrapped up in her meaning and her lan

guage as to forget all about audience needs: the writer

manages to “break through.” The Earl of

Shaftesbury talked about writers needing to escape their

audience in order to fi nd their own ideas

(Cooper 1:109; see also Griffi n). It is characteristic of

much truly good writing to be, as it were, on

fi re with its meaning. Consciousness of readers is burned

away; involvement in subject determines

all. Such writing is analogous to the performance of the

actor who has managed to stop attracting

attention to her awareness of the audience watching her.

The arresting power in some writing by small children comes

from their obliviousness to audi

ence. As readers, we are somehow sucked into a

more-than-usual connection with the meaning

itself because of the child’s gift for more-than-usual

concentration on what she is saying. In short,

we can feel some pieces of children’s writing as being very

writer-based. Yet it’s precisely that qual

ity which makes it powerful for us as readers. After all,

why should we settle for a writer’s entering

our point of view, if we can have the more powerful

experience of being sucked out of our point

of view and into her world? This is just the experience

that children are peculiarly capable of giv
ing because they are so expert at total absorption in their
world as they are writing. It’s not just a

matter of whether the writer “decenters,” but of whether

the writer has a suffi ciently strong focus

of attention to make the reader decenter. This quality of

concentration is what D. H. Lawrence so

admires in Melville:

[Melville] was a real American in that he always felt his

audience in front of him. But when

he ceases to be American, when he forgets all audience, and

gives us his sheer apprehension

of the world, then he is wonderful, his book [Moby Dick]

commands a stillness in the soul,

an awe. (158)

What most readers value in really excellent writing is not

prose that is right for readers but

prose that is right for thinking, right for language, or

right for the subject being written about. If,

in addition, it is clear and well suited to readers, we

appreciate that. Indeed we feel insulted if the

writer did not somehow try to make the writing available to

us before delivering it. But if it suc

ceeds at being really true to language and thinking and

“things,” we are willing to put up with much

diffi culty as readers:

[G]ood writing is not always or necessarily an adaptation

to communal norms (in the Fish/

Bruffee sense) but may be an attempt to construct (and

instruct) a reader capable of reading

the text in question. The literary history of the “diffi

cult” work—from Mallarme to Pound,

Zukofsky, Olson, etc.—seems to say that much of what we

value in writing we’ve had to

learn to value by learning how to read it. (Trimbur)

The effect of audience awareness on voice is particularly

striking—if paradoxical. Even though

we often develop our voice by fi nally “speaking up” to an

audience or “speaking out” to others, and

even though much dead student writing comes from students’

not really treating their writing as a

communication with real readers, nevertheless, the opposite

effect is also common: we often do

not really develop a strong, authentic voice in our writing

till we fi nd important occasions for ignor

ing audience—saying, in effect, “To hell with whether they

like it or not. I’ve got to say this the way

I want to say it.” Admittedly, the voice that emerges when

we ignore audience is sometimes odd

or idiosyncratic in some way, but usually it is stronger.

Indeed, teachers sometimes complain that

student writing is “writer-based” when the problem is

simply the idiosyncracy—and sometimes in

fact the power—of the voice. They would value this odd but
resonant voice if they found it in a pub

lished writer (see “Real Voice,” Elbow, Writing with

Power). Usually we cannot trust a voice unless it

is unaware of us and our needs and speaks out in its own

terms (see the Ashberry epigraph). To

celebrate writer-based prose is to risk the charge of

romanticism: just warbling one’s woodnotes

wild. But my position also contains the austere classic

view that we must nevertheless revise with

conscious awareness of audience in order to fi gure out

which pieces of writer-based prose are

good as they are—and how to discard or revise the rest.

To point out that writer-based prose can be better for
readers than reader-based prose is to

reveal problems in these two terms. Does writer-based mean:

1. That the text doesn’t work for readers because it is too

much oriented to the writer’s point of view?

2. Or that the writer was not thinking about readers as she

wrote, although the text may work for readers?

Does reader-based mean:

3. That the text works for readers—meets their needs?

4. Or that the writer was attending to readers as she wrote

although her text may not work for readers?

In order to do justice to the reality and complexity of

what actually happens in both writers

and readers, I was going to suggest four terms for the four
conditions listed above, but I gradually

realized that things are even too complex for that. We

really need to ask about what’s going on

in three dimensions—in the writer, in the reader, and in

the text—and realize that the answers can

occur in virtually any combination:

— Was the writer thinking about readers or oblivious to

them?

— Is the text oriented toward the writer’s frame of

reference or point of view, or oriented toward that of
readers? (A writer may be thinking about readers and still
write a text that is largely oriented towards her own
frame of reference.)

— Are the readers’ needs being met? (The text may meet the
needs of readers whether the writer was thinking about
them or not, and whether the text is oriented toward them
or not.)

Two Models of Cognitive Development

Some of the current emphasis on audience awareness probably

derives from a model of cognitive

development that needs to be questioned. According to this

model, if you keep your readers in

mind as you write, you are operating at a higher level of

psychological development than if you

ignore readers. Directing words to readers is “more mature”

than directing them to no one in

particular or to yourself. Flower relates writer-based

prose to the inability to “decenter” which is

characteristic of Piaget’s early stages of development, and

she relates reader-based prose to later

more mature stages of development.

On the one hand, of course this view must be right.

Children do decenter as they develop.

As they mature they get better at suiting their discourse

to the needs of listeners, particularly to

listeners very different from themselves. Especially, they

get better at doing so consciously—think

ing awarely—about how things appear to people with

different viewpoints. Thus much unskilled

writing is unclear or awkward because the writer was doing

what it is so easy to do—unthinkingly

taking her own frame of reference for granted and not

attending to the needs of readers who

might have a different frame of reference. And of course

this failure is more common in younger,

immature, “egocentric” students (and also more common in

writing than in speaking since we have

no audience present when we write).

But on the other hand, we need the contrary model that affi
rms what is also obvious once we

refl ect on it, namely that the ability to turn off

audience awareness—especially when it confuses
thinking or blocks discourse—is also a “higher” skill. I am
talking about an ability to use language

in “the desert island mode,” an ability that tends to

require learning, growth, and psychological

development. Children, and even adults who have not learned

the art of quiet, thoughtful, inner

refl ection, are often unable to get much cognitive action

going in their heads unless there are other

people present to have action with. They are dependent on

live audience and the social dimension

to get their discourse rolling or to get their thinking off

the ground.

For in contrast to a roughly Piagetian model of cognitive

development that says we start out as

private, egocentric little monads and grow up to be public

and social, it is important to invoke the

opposite model that derives variously from Vygotsky,

Bakhtin, and Meade. According to this model,

we start out social and plugged into others and only

gradually, through learning and development,

come to “unplug” to any signifi cant degree so as to

function in a more private, individual and dif

ferentiated fashion: “Development in thinking is not from

the individual to the socialized, but from

the social to the individual” (Vygotsky 20). The important

general principle in this model is that we

tend to develop our important cognitive capacities by means

of social interaction with others, and

having done so we gradually learn to perform them alone. We

fold the “simple” back-and-forth of

dialogue into the “complexity” (literally, “foldedness”) of

individual, private refl ection.

Where the Piagetian (individual psychology) model calls our

attention to the obvious need

to learn to enter into viewpoints other than our own, the

Vygotskian (social psychology) model

calls our attention to the equally important need to learn

to produce good thinking and discourse

while alone. A rich and enfolded mental life is something

that people achieve only gradually through

growth, learning, and practice. We tend to associate this

achievement with the fruits of higher

education.

Thus we see plenty of students who lack this skill, who

have nothing to say when asked to free

write or to write in a journal. They can dutifully “reply”

to a question or a topic, but they cannot

seem to initiate or sustain a train of thought on their

own. Because so many adolescent students

have this diffi culty, many teachers chime in: “Adolescents

have nothing to write about. They are

too young. They haven’t had signifi cant experience.” In

truth, adolescents don’t lack experience or

material, no matter how “sheltered” their lives. What they

lack is practice and help. Desert island

discourse is a learned cognitive process. It’s a mistake to

think of private writing (journal writing

and freewriting) as merely “easy”—merely a relief from

trying to write right. It’s also hard. Some

exercises and strategies that help are Ira Progoff’s

“Intensive Journal” process, Sondra Perl’s “Com

posing Guidelines,” or Elbow’s “Loop Writing” and “Open

Ended Writing” processes (Writing with

Power 50–77).

The Piagetian and Vygotskian developmental models

(language-begins-as-private vs. language
begins-as-social) give us two different lenses through
which to look at a common weakness in stu

dent writing, a certain kind of “thin” writing where the

thought is insuffi ciently developed or where

the language doesn’t really explain what the writing

implies or gestures toward. Using the Piagetian

model, as Flower does, one can specify the problem as a

weakness in audience orientation. Perhaps

the writer has immaturely taken too much for granted and
unthinkingly assumed that her limited

explanations carry as much meaning for readers as they do

for herself. The cure or treatment is

for the writer to think more about readers.

Through the Vygotskian lens, however, the problem and the

“immaturity” look altogether dif

ferent. Yes, the writing isn’t particularly clear or

satisfying for readers, but this alternative diag

nosis suggests a failure of the private desert island

dimension: the writer’s explanation is too thin

because she didn’t work out her train of thought fully

enough for herself. The suggested cure or

treatment is not to think more about readers but to think

more for herself, to practice exploratory

writing in order to learn to engage in that refl ective

discourse so central to mastery of the writing

process. How can she engage readers more till she has
engaged herself more?

The current emphasis on audience awareness may be

particularly strong now for being fueled by

both psychological models. From one side, the Piagetians

say, in effect, “The egocentric little crit

ters, we’ve got to socialize ‘em! Ergo, make them think

about audience when they write!” From the
other side, the Vygotskians say, in effect, “No wonder
they’re having trouble writing. They’ve been

bamboozled by the Piagetian heresy. They think they’re

solitary individuals with private selves when

really they’re just congeries of voices that derive from

their discourse community. Ergo, let’s inten

sify the social context—use peer groups and publication:

make them think about audience when

they write! (And while we’re at it, let’s hook them up with
a better class of discourse community.)”

To advocate ignoring audience is to risk getting caught in

the crossfi re from two opposed camps.

Two Models of Discourse: Discourse as Communication and

Discourse

as Poesis or Play

We cannot talk about writing without at least implying a

psychological or developmental model.

But we’d better make sure it’s a complex, paradoxical, or

spiral model. Better yet, we should be

deft enough to use two contrary models or lenses. (Bruner

pictures the developmental process as

a complex movement in an upward reiterative spiral—not a

simple movement in one direction.)

According to one model, it is characteristic of the

youngest children to direct their discourse to

an audience. They learn discourse because they have an

audience; without an audience they remain

mute, like “the wild child.” Language is social from the

start. But we need the other model to show

us what is also true, namely that it is characteristic of

the youngest children to use language in a

non-social way. They use language not only because people

talk to them but also because they have
such a strong propensity to play and to build—often in a
non-social or non-audience-oriented fash

ion. Thus although one paradigm for discourse is social

communication, another is private explora

tion or solitary play. Babies and toddlers tend to babble

in an exploratory and refl ective way—to

themselves and not to an audience—often even with no one

else near. This archetypally private use

of discourse is strikingly illustrated when we see a pair

of toddlers in “parallel play” alongside each

other—each busily talking but not at all trying to

communicate with the other.

Therefore, when we choose paradigms for discourse, we

should think not only about children

using language to communicate, but also about children

building sandcastles or drawing pictures.

Though children characteristically show their castles or

pictures to others, they just as charac

teristically trample or crumple them before anyone else can

see them. Of course sculptures and

pictures are different from words. Yet discourse implies

more media than words; and even if you

restrict discourse to words, one of our most mature uses of

language is for building verbal pictures

and structures for their own sake—not just for

communicating with others.

Consider this same kind of behavior at the other end of the

life cycle: Brahms staggering from

his deathbed to his study to rip up a dozen or more

completed but unpublished and unheard string

quartets that dissatisfi ed him. How was he relating to

audience here—worrying too much about

audience or not giving a damn? It’s not easy to say.

Consider Glenn Gould deciding to renounce

performances before an audience. He used his private studio

to produce recorded performances

for an audience, but to produce ones that satisfi ed

himself he clearly needed to suppress audience

awareness. Consider the more extreme example of Kerouac

typing page after page—burning each

as soon as he completed it. The language behavior of humans

is slippery. Surely we are well advised

to avoid positions that say it is “always X” or

“essentially Y.”

James Britton makes a powerful argument that the “making”

or poesis function of language

grows out of the expressive function. Expressive language

is often for the sake of communication

with an audience, but just as often it is only for the sake

of the speaker—working something out

for herself (66–67, 74ff). Note also that “writing to

learn,” which writing-across-the-curriculum

programs are discovering to be so important, tends to be

writing for the self or even for no one

at all rather than for an outside reader. You throw away

the writing, often unread, and keep the

mental changes it has engendered.

I hope this emphasis on the complexity of the developmental

process—the limits of our models

and of our understanding of it—will serve as a rebuke to

the tendency to label students as being at

a lower stage of cognitive development just because they

don’t yet write well. (Occasionally they

do write well—in a way—but not in the way that the labeler

fi nds appropriate.) Obviously the psy

chologistic labeling impulse started out charitably.

Shaughnessy was fi ghting those who called basic

writers stupid by saying they weren’t dumb, just at an

earlier developmental stage. Flower was argu

ing that writer-based prose is a natural response to a

cognitive overload and indeed developmen

tally enabling. But this kind of talk can be dangerous

since it labels students as literally “retarded”

and makes teachers and administrators start to think of

them as such. Instead of calling poor writ

ers either dumb or slow (two forms of blaming the victim),

why not simply call them poor writers?

If years of schooling haven’t yet made them good writers,

perhaps they haven’t gotten the kind of

teaching and support they need. Poor students are often

deprived of the very thing they need most

to write well (which is given to good students): lots of

extended and adventuresome writing for self

and for audience. Poor students are often asked to write

only answers to fi ll-in exercises.

As children get older, the developmental story remains

complex or spiral. Though the fi rst

model makes us notice that babies start out with a natural

gift for using language in a social and

communicative fashion, the second model makes us notice

that children and adolescents must con

tinually learn to relate their discourse better to an

audience—must struggle to decenter better.

And though the second model makes us notice that babies

also start out with a natural gift for using

language in a private, exploratory and playful way, the fi

rst model makes us notice that children and

adolescents must continually learn to master this solitary,

desert island, poesis mode better. Thus
we mustn’t think of language only as communication—nor
allow communication to claim domi

nance either as the earliest or as the most “mature” form

of discourse. It’s true that language is

inherently communicative (and without communication we

don’t develop language), yet language is

just as inherently the stringing together of exploratory

discourse for the self—or for the creation

of objects (play, poesis, making) for their own sake.

In considering this important poesis function of language,

we need not discount (as Berkenkot

ter does) the striking testimony of so many witnesses who

think and care most about language:

professional poets, writers, and philosophers. Many of them

maintain that their most serious work

is making, not communicating, and that their commitment is

to language, reality, logic, experience,

not to readers. Only in their willingness to cut loose from

the demands or needs of readers, they

insist, can they do their best work. Here is William

Stafford on this matter:

I don’t want to overstate this … but … my impulse is to say

I don’t think of an audience at

all. When I’m writing, the satisfactions in the process of

writing are my satisfactions in deal

ing with the language, in being surprised by phrasings that

occur to me, in fi nding that this

miraculous kind of convergent focus begins to happen.

That’s my satisfaction, and to think

about an audience would be a distraction. I try to keep

from thinking about an audience.

(Cicotello 176)

And Chomsky:
I can be using language in the strictest sense with no
intention of communicating. … As a

graduate student, I spent two years writing a lengthy

manuscript, assuming throughout that

it would never be published or read by anyone. I meant

everything I wrote, intending nothing

as to what anyone would [understand], in fact taking it for

granted that there would be no

audience. … [C]ommunication is only one function of

language, and by no means an essential

one. (Qtd. in Feldman 5–6.)

It’s interesting to see how poets come together with

philosophers on this point—and even with

mathematicians. All are emphasizing the “poetic” function

of language in its literal sense—“poesis”

as “making.” They describe their writing process as more

like “getting something right” or even

“solving a problem” for its own sake than as communicating

with readers or addressing an audi

ence. The task is not to satisfy readers but to satisfy the

rules of the system: “[T]he writer is not

thinking of a reader at all; he makes it ‘clear’ as a

contract with language” (Goodman 164).

Shall we conclude, then, that solving an equation or

working out a piece of symbolic logic is at

the opposite end of the spectrum from communicating with

readers or addressing an audience?

No. To draw that conclusion would be to fall again into a

one-sided position. Sometimes people

write mathematics for an audience, sometimes not. The

central point in this essay is that we cannot

answer audience questions in an a priori fashion based on

the “nature” of discourse or of language
or of cognition—only in terms of the different uses or
purposes to which humans put discourse,

language, or cognition on different occasions. If most

people have a restricted repertoire of uses

for writing—if most people use writing only to send

messages to readers, that’s no argument for

constricting the defi nition of writing. It’s an argument

for helping people expand their repertoire

of uses.

The value of learning to ignore audience while writing,

then, is the value of learning to cultivate

the private dimension: the value of writing in order to

make meaning to oneself, not just to oth

ers. This involves learning to free oneself (to some

extent, anyway) from the enormous power

exerted by society and others, to unhook oneself from

external prompts and social stimuli. We’ve

grown accustomed to theorists and writing teachers

puritanically stressing the problem of writing:

the tendency to neglect the needs of readers because we

usually write in solitude. But let’s also

celebrate this same feature of writing as one of its

glories: writing invites disengagement too, the

inward turn of mind, and the dialogue with self. Though

writing is deeply social and though we usu

ally help things by enhancing its social dimension, writing

is also the mode of discourse best suited

to helping us develop the refl ective and private dimension

of our mental lives.

“But Wait a Minute, ALL Discourse Is Social”

Some readers who see all discourse as social will object to

my opposition between public and
private writing (the “trap of oppositional thinking”) and
insist that there is no such thing as private

discourse. What looks like private, solitary mental work,

they would say, is really social. Even on the

desert island I am in a crowd.

[B]y ignoring audience in the conventional sense, we return

to it in another sense. What I

get from Vygotsky and Bakhtin is the notion that audience

is not really out there at all but

is in fact “always already” (to use that poststructuralist

mannerism …) inside, interiorized

in the confl icting languages of others—parents, former

teachers, peers, prospective read

ers, whomever—that writers have to negotiate to write, and

that we do negotiate when we

write whether we’re aware of it or not. The audience we’ve

got to satisfy in order to feel

good about our writing is as much in the past as in the

present or future. But we experience

it (it’s so internalized) as ourselves. (Trimbur)

(Ken Bruffee likes to quote from Frost: “‘Men work

together, … /Whether they work together or

apart’” [“The Tuft of Flowers”]). Or—putting it slightly

differently—when I engage in what seems

like private non-audience-directed writing, I am really

engaged in communication with the “audi

ence of self.” For the self is multiple, not single, and

discourse to self is communication from one

entity to another. As Feldman argues, “The self functions

as audience in much the same way that

others do” (290).

Suppose I accept this theory that all discourse is really

social—including what I’ve been calling
“private writing” or writing I don’t intend to show to any
reader. Suppose I agree that all language

is essentially communication directed toward an

audience—whether some past internalized voice

or (what may be the same thing) some aspect of the self.

What would this theory say to my inter

est in “private writing”?

The theory would seem to destroy my main argument. It would

tell me that there’s no such

thing as “private writing”; it’s impossible not to address

audience; there are no vacations from

audience. But the theory might try to console me by saying

not to worry, because we don’t need

vacations from audience. Addressing audience is as easy,

natural, and unaware as breathing—and

we’ve been at it since the cradle. Even young, unskilled

writers are already expert at addressing

audiences.

But if we look closely we can see that in fact this theory

doesn’t touch my central practical argu

ment. For even if all discourse is naturally addressed to

some audience, it’s not naturally addressed

to the right audience—the living readers we are actually

trying to reach. Indeed the pervasiveness

of past audiences in our heads is one more reason for the

diffi culty of reaching present audiences

with our texts. Thus even if I concede the theoretical

point, there still remains an enormous practi

cal and phenomenological difference between writing

“public” words for others to read and writing

“private” words for no one to read.

Even if “private writing” is “deep down” social, the fact

remains that, as we engage in it, we don’t

have to worry about whether it works on readers or even

makes sense. We can refrain from doing

all the things that audience-awareness advocates advise us

to do (“keeping our audience in mind as

we write” and trying to “decenter”). Therefore this

social-discourse theory doesn’t undermine the

benefi ts of “private writing” and thus provides no support

at all for the traditional rhetorical advice

that we should “always try to think about (intended)

audience as we write.”

In fact this social-discourse theory reinforces two

subsidiary arguments I have been making.

First, even if there is no getting away from some audience,

we can get relief from an inhibiting

audience by writing to a more inviting one. Second,

audience problems don’t come only from

actual audiences but also from phantom “audiences in the

head” (Elbow, Writing with Power 186ff).

Once we learn how to be more aware of the effects of both

external and internal readers and

how to direct our words elsewhere, we can get out of the

shadow even of a troublesome phan

tom reader.

And even if all our discourse is directed to or shaped by

past audiences or voices, it doesn’t fol

low that our discourse is well directed to or successfully

shaped for those audiences or voices. Small

children direct much talk to others, but that doesn’t mean

they always suit their talk to others. They

often fail. When adults discover that a piece of their

writing has been “heavily shaped” by some

audience, this is bad news as much as good: often the

writing is crippled by defensive moves that

try to fend off criticism from this reader.

As teachers, particularly, we need to distinguish and

emphasize “private writing” in order to

teach it, to teach that crucial cognitive capacity to

engage in extended and productive thinking

that doesn’t depend on audience prompts or social stimuli.

It’s sad to see so many students who

can reply to live voices but cannot engage in productive

dialogue with voices in their heads. Such

students often lose interest in an issue that had intrigued

them—just because they don’t fi nd other

people who are interested in talking about it and haven’t

learned to talk refl ectively to themselves

about it.

For these reasons, then, I believe my main argument holds

force even if I accept the theory

that all discourse is social. But, perhaps more

tentatively, I resist this theory. I don’t know all the

data from developmental linguistics, but I cannot help

suspecting that babies engage in some pri

vate poesis—or “play-language”—some private babbling in

addition to social babbling. Of course

Vygotsky must be right when he points to so much social

language in children, but can we really

trust him when he denies all private or nonsocial language

(which Piaget and Chomsky see)? I am

always suspicious when someone argues for the total

nonexistence of a certain kind of behavior

or event. Such an argument is almost invariably an act of

defi nitional aggrandizement, not empirical

searching. To say that all language is social is to fl op

over into the opposite one-sidedness that we
need Vygotsky’s model to save us from.

And even if all language is originally social, Vygotsky

himself emphasizes how “inner speech”

becomes more individuated and private as the child matures.

“[E]gocentric speech is relatively

accessible in three-year-olds but quite inscrutable in

seven-year-olds: the older the child, the more

thoroughly has his thought become inner speech” (Emerson

254; see also Vygotsky 134). “The

inner speech of the adult represents his ‘thinking for

himself’ rather than social adaptation. … Out

of context, it would be incomprehensible to others because

it omits to mention what is obvious

to the ‘speaker’” (Vygotsky 18).

I also resist the theory that all private writing is really

communication with the “audience of

self.” (“When we represent the objects of our thought in

language, we intend to make use of

these representations at a later time. … [T]he speaker-self

must have audience directed intentions

toward a listener-self” [Feldman 289].) Of course private

language often is a communication with

the audience of self:

– When we make a shopping list. (It’s obvious when we can’t

decipher that third item that we’re confronting failed
communication with the self.)

– When we make a rough draft for ourselves but not for

others’ eyes. Here we are seeking to clarify our thinking
with the leverage that comes from standing outside and
reading our own utterance as audience—experiencing our
discourse as receiver instead of as sender.

– When we experience ourselves as slightly split. Sometimes

we experience ourselves as witness to ourselves and hear
our own words from the outside—sometimes with great
detachment, as on some occasions of pressure or stress.

But there are other times when private language is not

communication with audience of self:

– Freewriting to no one: for the sake of self but not to

the self. The goal is not to communicate but to follow a
train of thinking or feeling to see where it leads. In
doing this kind of freewriting (and many people have not
learned it), you don’t particularly plan to come back and
read what you’ve written. You just write along and the
written product falls away to be ignored, while only the
“real product”—any new perceptions, thoughts, or feelings
produced in the mind by the freewriting—is saved and
looked at again. (It’s not that you don’t experience your
words at all but you experience them only as speaker,
sender, or emitter—not as receiver or audience. To say
that’s the same as being audience is denying the very
distinction between ‘speaker’ and ‘audience.’)

As this kind of freewriting actually works, it often leads

to writing we look at. That is, we freewrite along to no
one, following discourse in hopes of getting somewhere, and
then at a certain point we often sense that we have gotten
somewhere: we can tell (but not because we stop and read)
that what we are now writing seems new or intriguing or
important. At this point we may stop writing; or we may
keep on writing, but in a new audience-relationship,
realizing that we will come back to this passage and read
it as audience. Or we may take a new sheet (symbolizing
the new audience-relationship) and try to write out for
ourselves what’s interesting.

– Writing as exorcism is a more extreme example of private

writing not for the audience of self. Some people have
learned to write in order to get rid of thoughts or
feelings. By freewriting what’s obsessively going round
and round in our head we can fi nally let it go and move
on.

I am suggesting that some people (and especially poets and

freewriters) engage in a kind of

discourse that Feldman, defending what she calls a

“communication-intention” view, has never

learned and thus has a hard time imagining and

understanding. Instead of always using language in

an audience-directed fashion for the sake of

communication, these writers unleash language for

its own sake and let it function a bit on its own, without
much intention and without much need

for communication, to see where it leads—and thereby end up

with some intentions and potential

communications they didn’t have before.

It’s hard to turn off the audience-of-self in writing—and

thus hard to imagine writing to no

one (just as it’s hard to turn off the audience of outside

readers when writing an audience-directed

piece). Consider “invisible writing” as an intriguing

technique that helps you become less of an

audience-of-self for your writing. Invisible writing

prevents you from seeing what you have written:

you write on a computer with the screen turned down, or you

write with a spent ball-point pen on

paper with carbon paper and another sheet underneath.

Invisible writing tends to get people not

only to write faster than they normally do, but often

better (see Blau). I mean to be tentative about

this slippery issue of whether we can really stop being

audience to our own discourse, but I cannot

help drawing the following conclusion: just as in

freewriting, suppressing the other as audience tends

to enhance quantity and sometimes even quality of writing;

so in invisible writing, suppressing the

self as audience tends to enhance quantity and sometimes

even quality.

Contraries in Teaching

So what does all this mean for teaching? It means that we

are stuck with two contrary tasks. On

the one hand, we need to help our students enhance the

social dimension of writing: to learn to
be more aware of audience, to decenter better and learn to
fi t their discourse better to the needs

of readers. Yet it is every bit as important to help them

learn the private dimension of writing: to

learn to be less aware of audience, to put audience needs

aside, to use discourse in the desert island

mode. And if we are trying to advance contraries, we must

be prepared for paradoxes.

For instance if we emphasize the social dimension in our

teaching (for example, by getting stu

dents to write to each other, to read and comment on each

others’ writing in pairs and groups,

and by staging public discussions and even debates on the

topics they are to write about), we will

obviously help the social, public, communicative dimension

of writing—help students experience

writing not just as jumping through hoops for a grade but

rather as taking part in the life of a com

munity of discourse. But “social discourse” can also help

private writing by getting students suf

fi ciently involved or invested in an issue so that they fi

nally want to carry on producing discourse

alone and in private—and for themselves.

Correlatively, if we emphasize the private dimension in our

teaching (for example, by using lots

of private exploratory writing, freewriting, and journal

writing and by helping students realize that

of course they may need practice with this “easy” mode of

discourse before they can use it fruit

fully), we will obviously help students learn to write

better refl ectively for themselves without the

need for others to interact with. Yet this private

discourse can also help public, social writing—
help students fi nally feel full enough of their own
thoughts to have some genuine desire to tell them

to others. Students often feel they “don’t have anything to

say” until they fi nally succeed in engaging

themselves in private desert island writing for themselves

alone.

Another paradox: whether we want to teach greater audience

awareness or the ability to

ignore audience, we must help students learn not only to

“try harder” but also to “just relax.”

That is, sometimes students fail to produce reader-based

prose because they don’t try hard

enough to think about audience needs. But sometimes the

problem is cured if they just relax and

write to people—as though in a letter or in talking to a

trusted adult. By unclenching, they effort

lessly call on social discourse skills of immense

sophistication. Sometimes, indeed, the problem

is cured if the student simply writes in a more social

setting—in a classroom where it is habitual

to share lots of writing. Similarly, sometimes students

can’t produce sustained private discourse

because they don’t try hard enough to keep the pen moving
and forget about readers. They must

persist and doggedly push aside those feelings of, “My head
is empty, I have run out of anything

to say.” But sometimes what they need to learn through all

that persistence is how to relax and

let go—to unclench.

As teachers, we need to think about what it means to be an

audience rather than just be a

teacher, critic, assessor, or editor. If our only response

is to tell students what’s strong, what’s
weak, and how to improve it (diagnosis, assessment, and
advice), we actually undermine their sense

of writing as a social act. We reinforce their sense that

writing means doing school exercises,

producing for authorities what they already know—not

actually trying to say things to readers. To

help students experience us as audience rather than as

assessment machines, it helps to respond by

“replying” (as in a letter) rather than always “giving

feedback.”

Paradoxically enough, one of the best ways teachers can

help students learn to turn off audience

awareness and write in the desert island mode—to turn off

the babble of outside voices in the

head and listen better to quiet inner voices—is to be a

special kind of private audience to them,

to be a reader who nurtures by trusting and believing in

the writer. Britton has drawn attention

to the importance of teacher as “trusted adult” for school

children (67–68). No one can be good

at private, refl ective writing without some confi dence

and trust in self. A nurturing reader can give a

writer a kind of permission to forget about other readers

or to be one’s own reader. I have benefi t

ted from this special kind of audience and have seen it

prove useful to others. When I had a teacher

who believed in me, who was interested in me and interested

in what I had to say, I wrote well.

When I had a teacher who thought I was naive, dumb, silly,

and in need of being “straightened out,”

I wrote badly and sometimes couldn’t write at all. Here is

an interestingly paradoxical instance of

the social-to-private principle from Vygotsky and Meade: we

learn to listen better and more trust

ingly to ourselves through interaction with trusting others.

Look for a moment at lyric poets as paradigm writers

(instead of seing them as aberrant), and

see how they heighten both the public and private

dimensions of writing. Bakhtin says that lyric

poetry implies “the absolute certainty of the listener’s

sympathy” (113). I think it’s more helpful to

say that lyric poets learn to create more than usual

privacy in which to write for themselves—and

then they turn around and let others overhear. Notice how
poets tend to argue for the importance

of no-audience writing, yet they are especially gifted at

being public about what they produce in

private. Poets are revealers—sometimes even grandstanders

or showoffs. Poets illustrate the

need for opposite or paradoxical or double audience skills:

on the one hand, the ability to be

private and solitary and tune out others—to write only for
oneself and not give a damn about

readers, yet on the other hand, the ability to be more than

usually interested in audience and even

to be a ham.

If writers really need these two audience skills, notice

how bad most conventional schooling is

on both counts. Schools offer virtually no privacy for

writing: everything students write is collected

and read by a teacher, a situation so ingrained students

will tend to complain if you don’t collect

and read every word they write. Yet on the other hand,
schools characteristically offer little or no

social dimension for writing. It is only the teacher who

reads, and students seldom feel that in giving
their writing to a teacher they are actually communicating
something they really want to say to a

real person. Notice how often they are happy to turn in to

teachers something perfunctory and

fake that they would be embarrassed to show to classmates.

Often they feel shocked and insulted

if we want to distribute to classmates the assigned writing

they hand in to us. (I think of Richard

Wright’s realization that the naked white prostitutes

didn’t bother to cover themselves when he

brought them coffee as a black bellboy because they didn’t

really think of him as a man or even a

person.) Thus the conventional school setting for writing

tends to be the least private and the least

public—when what students need, like all of us, is practice

in writing that is the most private and

also the most public.

Practical Guidelines about Audience

The theoretical relationships between discourse and

audience are complex and paradoxical, but

the practical morals are simple:

1. Seek ways to heighten both the public and private

dimensions of writing. (For activities, see the previous
section.)

2. When working on important audience-directed writing, we

must try to emphasize audience awareness sometimes. A
useful rule of thumb is to start by putting the readers in
mind and carry on as long as things go well. If diffi
culties arise, try putting readers out of mind and write
either to no audience, to self, or to an inviting audience.
Finally, always revise with readers in mind. (Here’s
another occasion when orthodox advice about writing is
wrong—but turns out right if applied to revising.)

3. Seek ways to heighten awareness of one’s writing process

(through process writing and discussion) to get better at
taking control and deciding when to keep readers in mind
and when to ignore them. Learn to discriminate factors
like these: (a) The writing task. Is this piece of writing
really for an audience? More often than we realize, it is
not. It is a draft that only we will see, though the fi nal
version will be for an audience; or exploratory writing
for fi guring something out; or some kind of personal
private writing meant only for ourselves. (b) Actual
readers. When we put them in mind, are we helped or
hindered? (c) One’s own temperament. Am I the sort of
person who tends to think of what to say and how to say it
when I keep readers in mind? Or someone (as I am) who needs
long stretches of forgetting all about readers? (d) Has
some powerful “audience-in-the-head” tricked me into
talking to it when I’m really trying to talk to someone
else—distorting new business into old business? (I may be
an inviting teacher-audience to my students, but they may
not be able to pick up a pen without falling under the
spell of a former, intimidating teacher.) (e) Is double
audience getting in my way? When I write a memo or report,
I probably have to suit it not only to my “target
audience” but also to some colleagues or supervisor. When
I write something for publication, it must be right for
readers, but it won’t be published unless it is also right
for the editors—and if it’s a book it won’t be much read
unless it’s right for reviewers. Children’s stories won’t
be bought unless they are right for editors and reviewers
and parents. We often tell students to write to a
particular “real-life” audience—or to peers in the
class—but of course they are also writing for us as
graders. (This problem is more common as more teachers get
interested in audience and suggest “second” audiences.)
(f) Is teacher-audience getting in the way of my students’
writing? As teachers we must often read in an odd fashion:
in stacks of 25 or 50 pieces all on the same topic; on
topics we know better than the writer; not for pleasure or
learning but to grade or fi nd problems (see Elbow,
Writing with Power 216–36).

To list all these audience pitfalls is to show again the

need for thinking about audience needs—

yet also the need for vacations from readers to think in

peace.

Note

1 There are many different entities called audience: (a)

The actual readers to whom the text will be given; (b) the
writer’s conception of those readers—which may be mistaken
(see Ong; Park; Ede and Lunsford); (c) the audience that
the text implies—which may be different still (see Booth);
(d) the discourse community or even genre addressed or
implied by the text (see Walzer); (e) ghost or phantom
“readers in the head” that the writer may unconsciously
address or try to please (see Elbow, Writing with Power
186ff. Classically, this is a powerful former teacher.
Often such an audience is so ghostly as not to show up as
actually “implied” by the text). For the essay I am writing
here, these differences don’t much matter: I’m celebrating
the ability to put aside the needs or demands of any or all
of these audiences. I recognize, however, that we
sometimes cannot fi ght our way free of unconscious or
tacit audiences (as in b or e above) unless we bring them
to greater conscious awareness.

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I benefi ted from much help from audiences in writing

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Clarke, with whom I wrote a collaborative piece containing

a case study on this subject. I am also grateful

for extensive feedback from Pat Belanoff, Paul Connolly,

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Martha’s Vineyard Summer Writing Seminar.

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Readings LEARNING TO PRAISE Donald A. Daiker Miami

University

In A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway recounts his fi rst

meeting with F. Scott Fitzgerald. One

night while Hemingway is sitting with friends at the Dingo

Bar in Paris, Fitzgerald unexpectedly

walks in, introduces himself, and proceeds to talk nonstop

about Hemingway’s writing, especially

“how great it was.” Hemingway reports that he was

embarrassed by Fitzgerald’s lavish compli

ments—not because he felt fl attered by them, but because

he and his fellow expatriates “still went

under the system, then, that praise to the face was open
disgrace” (Hemingway 1964, 150).

The distrust of praise among American writers abroad seems

to have rubbed off on composi

tion teachers at home. In a 1985 study at Texas A&M

University, Sam Dragga analyzed forty fresh

man essays that had been graded and marked by four randomly
chosen and traditionally trained

teaching assistants. They wrote a total of 864 comments on

the essays, but only 51 of them were

comments of praise. This means that 94% of the comments

focused on what students had done
poorly or incorrectly, only 6% on what had been done well
(Dragga 1986). The same pattern

apparently prevails in high school as well. A study of

responses by thirty-six secondary English

teachers revealed that although 40% of their end-of-paper

comments were positive, the percent

age of positive marginal comments was a meager .007%

(Harris 1977).

The conclusion that college composition teachers fi nd

error more attractive than excellence

is consistent with a pilot study of my own conducted in

1982 at Miami University (Daiker 1983).

I asked twenty-four colleagues to grade and comment on

“Easy Street,” a student essay chosen

because it combines strength with weakness in both content

and style (see pp. 108). I asked my

colleagues to mark the essay as if it had been submitted in

their freshman composition course.

They made a total of 378 separate markings or comments on

the student essay: 338, or 89.4%, of

them cited error or found fault; only 40, or 10.6%, of them

were comments of praise. What may

make the predominance of correction over commendation even

more signifi cant is that during the

previous month, a departmental memorandum reported

scholarly consensus on two matters of

grading: (1) an instructor should not mark every writing

error, because students cannot psycho

logically cope with a deluge of defi ciencies; and (2) an

instructor should use praise and positive

reinforcement as a major teaching strategy.

Scholarship notwithstanding, composition teachers have

traditionally withheld praise from
papers they have considered less than perfect. A case in
point is the well-known “Evaluating a

Theme,” published in the Newsletter of the Michigan Council

of Teachers of English (Stevens 1958).

The issue consists of twenty-fi ve responses—twenty-one by

college teachers, four by secondary

teachers—to a single composition, and the issue’s

popularity carried it through sixteen print

ings. According to my fi gures, the proportion of criticism

to praise is roughly the same as in the

Texas A&M and Miami studies; the Michigan teachers identifi

ed nine errors or problems for every

instance of praiseworthy writing. Just as important, fi

fteen of the twenty-fi ve teachers found noth

ing in the paper deserving of praise. In three of those

instances, college professors suffi ciently

skilled to ferret out thirty fl aws apiece in a brief essay

could not—or would not—identify a single

source of strength. Their wholly negative comments reminded

me of a grade-appeal procedure in

which I was asked to evaluate eight compositions written

for a colleague’s freshman English class.

I read the compositions in order, paper one through paper

eight, and I read them with increasing

despair—not because of what the student had written, but

because in responding to a semester’s

worth of writing, my colleague had offered not a single

word of praise. Not an idea, not an example,

not a sentence or clause or phrase or punctuation

mark—nothing, apparently, merited a compli

ment. I began to wonder why the student was appealing only

a grade, and I had visions of Bartleby

the scrivener at work in a dead-letter offi ce.

Francis Christensen observed a quarter century ago that
there are two sharply contrasting

points of view toward the teaching of English (Christensen

1962). The fi rst he calls the “school”

tradition, the second the “scholarly” tradition. The school

tradition, nourished by a view of lan

guage that regards all change as decay and degeneration,

encourages instructors to respond to

student writing primarily by identifying and penalizing

error. Because of the school tradition, it has

long been common to speak of “correcting” themes. There is

no clearer embodiment of the nega

tive and narrowly conformist values of the school tradition

than the popular correction chart. The

1985 “Harbrace College Handbook Correction Chart,” to take

a recent example of the species,

provides seventy-one correction symbols for instructors to

use and students to interpret. Why

are correction symbols needed? Why write “d” rather than

“diction,” or “frag” rather than “This

is not a complete sentence because it lacks a verb”?

Presumably because instructors fi nd so many

errors to mark that not enough time remains for them to use
whole words or complete sentences

themselves. Signifi cantly, what the correction charts

never include is a symbol for approval or

praise.

To become teachers of English in a “positive, joyous,

creative, and responsible sense,” Chris

tensen urges us to replace the inert, rule-encumbered

school tradition with more enlightened

scholarly views. For several decades now, composition

scholars have reported the value of praise
in improving student writing. Paul B. Diederich (1963,
1974), senior research associate for the

Educational Testing Service, concluded from his research in

evaluation that “noticing and praising

whatever a student does well improves writing more than any

kind or amount of correction of

what he does badly, and that it is especially important for

the less able writers who need all the

encouragement they can get” (1974, 20).

Since writing is an act of confi dence, as Mina Shaughnessy

reminds us (1977, 85), it is not surpris

ing that the scholarly tradition emphasizes responding with

encouragement. Ken Macrorie (1968)

recommends that we “encourage and encourage, but never

falsely” (688). E. D. Hirsch (1977),

who believes that written comments may turn out to be “the

most effective teaching device of

all” (159), agrees that “the best results are likely to be

produced by encouragement” (161). For

William F. Irmscher, “the psychology of positive … should

be the major resource for every writing

teacher” (1979, 150). All of these individuals would

support Diederich’s statement that “The art of

the teacher—at its best—is the reinforcement of good

things” (1963, 58).

Praise may be especially important for students who have

known little encouragement and,

in part for that reason, suffer from writing apprehension.

Writing apprehension is a measure of

anxiety established through the research of John Daly and

Michael Miller (1975b). According to

these researchers, the highly apprehensive writer is one

for whom anxiety about writing outweighs
the projection of gain from writing. Because they fear
writing and its consequences, “high appre

hensives” seek to avoid writing situations: they are

reluctant to take courses in writing, and they

choose academic majors and occupations with minimal writing

requirements. When they do write,

they use language that is signifi cantly less intense than

people with low writing apprehension; that

is, they are more reluctant to take a stand or to commit

themselves to a position. They try to play

it safe not only by embracing neutrality, but by saying

less: in response to the same assignment,

high apprehensives write fewer words and make fewer

statements than low apprehensives (Daly

1977; Daly and Miller 1975a; Daly and Shamo 1978; Holland
1980). The problem for highly appre

hensive writers is circular. Because they anticipate

negative consequences, they avoid writing. Yet

the avoidance of writing—the lack of practice—leads to

further negative consequences: writing of

poor quality that receives low grades and unfavorable

comments.

One’s attitude toward the act of writing, Daly concludes,

clearly affects not only how one writes

and how often one writes, but even how others evaluate that
writing (Daly 1977). What may be

equally important—since writing is a powerful and perhaps

even unique mode of learning (Emig

1977)—is that by systematically avoiding writing

situations, high apprehensives close off opportuni

ties for learning and discovery.

But the cause of writing apprehension may suggest its

cure—or at least its treatment. A major
cause of writing apprehension is past failure or a
perception of past failure; high apprehensives

perceive their writing experiences as signifi cantly less

successful than low apprehensives. Daly

says that the “highly apprehensive writer expects, due to a

history of aversive responses, negative

evaluations for writing attempts. This expectation likely

becomes self-fulfi lling” (1977, 571). These

“aversive responses” include negative comments on

assignments and low grades on papers and in

writing courses. The connection between writing

apprehension and teacher response is supported

by the research of Thomas C. Gee (1972). Working with 139

eleventh graders, Gee found that

students whose compositions received either criticism alone

or no commentary at all developed

signifi cantly more negative attitudes toward writing than

students whose compositions received

only praise. Moreover, after just four weeks, students who

received only negative comments or

none at all were writing papers signifi cantly shorter than

those of students who were praised.

Since positive reinforcement, or its lack, is so crucial to

a student’s level of writing apprehension

(Daly and Miller 1975c), one way of reducing apprehension

is by allowing students to experience

success with writing. They will experience success, of

course, whenever their writing is praised.

For students who do not share their writing with others—and

high apprehensives fear negative

responses from their peers as well as their instructors—the

writing teacher is likely their only

potential source of praise.

But praise, however benefi cial as a remedy for
apprehension and as a motivator of student

writing, is more easily enjoined than put into practice.

Dragga notes in his study, for instance, that

the four teaching assistants trained in praiseworthy

grading all experienced “diffi culty in labeling

and explaining the desirable characteristics of their

students’ writing.” He concludes that teacher

training must emphasize explicit criteria for praiseworthy

grading. The title of this article implies

that praise does not fl ow readily from the marking pens of

writing teachers; it must be learned.

Still, an instructor’s conscious decision to praise the

work of students is a promising starting

point. Sometimes all that’s needed is a gimmick. My own

method is to allow myself nothing but

positive comments during an initial reading of a student

paper; I lift my pen to write words of praise

only. Another practice is to ask, just before moving to

another essay, “Have I told Melissa two or

three things about her paper that I like?” R. W. Reising’s

technique is even more effective: he has

developed a grading form that requires him to write one to

three positive comments before he

even considers noting a weakness (1973, 43).

But sometimes what we need is not a gimmick but

understanding. We need to understand

that what deserves praise is, for a teacher of writing, a

relative and not an absolute question. As

Ben Jonson says, “I will like and praise some things in a

young writer which yet, if he continue in,

I cannot but justly hate him for the same” (1947, 617).
Following relative standards, we are in no
sense dishonest or condescending in praising one writer for
what we might ignore or criticize in

another—even within the same class. Diederich urges us to

praise everything a student has done

that is “even a little bit above his usual standard” (1974,

20).

After all, we follow relative standards in most of the

teaching we do outside the classroom.

In helping children learn how to talk or how to color or

how to swim, we don’t hold them up to

the absolute standards of Demosthenes, van Gogh, or Mark

Spitz; we don’t even expect them to

match their older friends or siblings. In fact, we praise

them for the most modest achievements.

I still remember trying to help my six-year-old daughter

Pam learn how to hit a softball in our

backyard on Withrow Avenue. Although I pitched the ball as

gently as I knew how, trying to make

it eminently hittable, Pam just could not get her bat on

the ball. We tried all sorts of minor adjust

ments in her batting stance—hands held closer together,

feet placed further apart, head turned at

a more acute angle—but Pam kept missing. Despite my

encouragement, she was losing heart in the

enterprise. Finally, on perhaps the thirtieth pitch, Pam

did hit the ball—nothing like solid contact,

but still a distinctly audible foul tip. Of course, I

jumped up and down; of course, I shouted, “Way

to go, Pammy!”; and of course, she smiled. I praised her

lots more when she managed fi rst a foul

pop, then a dribbler to the mound, and then a genuine

ground ball. As a high school student, Pam

started at fi rst base for the varsity softball team.

Even with relative standards, a commitment to positive
reinforcement, and perhaps a gimmick

or two, most of us could benefi t from some practice in

praise. For that purpose, let’s work with an

essay written several years ago by a Miami University

freshman in response to an open assignment. Easy Street

The crowd screams and chants, as a bewildered contestant

nervously jumps up and down in

search of help. Excitedly, Monty Hall comments on the

washer and dryer behind box num

ber two in trade for the big curtain where Carol Marroll is
standing. The contestant, with

glamour and greed in her eyes; wildly picks the curtain.

But when raised there stands a 300

pound cow munching on a bail of hay. Embarrassed and sad,

the woman slowly sits down. The old American ideal of hard
work and get ahead had traditionally been one followed by

many men. But with the arrival of the twentieth century,

there seems to be a new way to get

ahead. The new American ideal of something for nothing. It

seems to have taken the place of

honest work. In our popular television game shows, the idea

of being able to win prizes and

cash by just answering a few simple questions seems to

thrill the average American. It is so

popular and fascinating that the morning hours are consumed

with fi ve to six hours of the

programs. The viewer is thrown into a wonderland where

everything is free for the taking.

The reason for such interest in these programs is that they

show life as most of us really wish

it be to be—soft, easy, free. Our society now enjoys the

simplicities of life, and our television
game shows exemplify that. One of the newest of all
American dreams is to win a state lottery. What easier way
is

there to become a millionaire with such a small investment?

The state makes it as easy as

just reading a couple of numbers off a card, or scratching

away a secret spot. Who hasn’t at

least once in their life, dreamed of hitting the big one,

and living off the fat the rest of their

life; without ever having to work again? Our country clubs,

local junior football teams, even

our churches have lotteries now thriving on that dream. In

our whole vocabulary there is no word that can command as
much attention as the

word “free.” It sums up our modern culture and feelings.

Advertisers use the word as fre

quently as possible knowing its strong effect on the

public. The idea of giving something away

without the consumer having to pay for it has made many a

company successful. The old American ideal seems to have
moved over for the new. No longer does a man

have to work late or get up early. By just guessing the

right tune in fi ve notes; he could be

ordering caviar in the morning rather than toast.

When “Easy Street” was evaluated by college instructors,

grades ranged from B to F, with C and

C- by far the most common. But my colleagues found much to

praise even in an essay they rated

average or slightly below average in quality. Their

comments of praise are categorized below,

according to the four levels Nina Ziv (1984) used in her

study of teacher response: conceptual,

structural, sentential, and lexical.

A. Conceptual level.
1. “Your thesis—that the new American ideal is ‘something
for nothing’—is strong and clear.”

2. “Your thesis is interesting and clear, and your use of

particular, graphic details to support the thesis greatly
aids your reader’s understanding. The conversational tone
of your paper also helps the reader understand you.”

3. “The content of this paper is interesting & to the

point, the essay is fairly well unifi ed, and you show the
ability to use effective details.”

4. “There is much that is strong here; your sense of detail

is good and your ideas are insightful.”

5. “You have provided some excellent examples which capture

the essence of the ‘new’ American ideal.”

6. “Your ideas are brilliant and the way you have argued
your point is convincing. Keep up with original and
thought-provoking ways of looking at life around you.”

7. “I like the scope of your commentary, which moves from

the initial, interest-provoking example, to the statement
of American ideals in paragraph #2, to the further
example—of the state lottery—in paragraph #3.”

8. “You come across as being perceptive and as concerned

about an important trend in our culture.”

9. “Your ideas here are strong and clear” (refers to second

paragraph).

10. “Your paper has fi ne unity and some precise

illustrations.”

B. Structural level.

1. “The paper is well-organized and well-focused, with some

nice paragraph transitions.”

2. “Good details” (refers to next-to-last sentence of fi

rst paragraph and to middle sentence of third paragraph).

3 “An effective opening paragraph—good detail!”

4. “Well put, effective use of specifi c detail” (refers to

last sentence of third paragraph).
5. “A superb choice of topic—and a good natural
organization from specifi c to general—from private to
public—and from analysis to signifi cance.”

6. “Effective introduction—your detailed description gets

the reader interested and draws him into your analysis.”

7. “Good strategy for your opening; you caught my

attention.”

8. “Good details here” (refers to opening sentences of

third paragraph).

9. “I like this” (refers to the whole of fi rst paragraph).

10. “I got a good fi rst impression of this paper. You’ve

started off well with an anecdote that gives the reader a
good visual picture and gets her into your thesis.”

C. Sentential level.

1. “Good sentences” (refers to middle sentences of second

paragraph).

2. “Good parallelism” (refers to third sentence of third

paragraph and to fi rst two sentences of last paragraph).

3. “Very nice pair of sentences—clear and concise” (refers

to fi rst two sentences of fourth paragraph).

4. “Effective closing image. Good!”

5. “Nice structure” (refers to last sentence of fourth

paragraph).

D. Lexical level.

1. “Good—effective word choice here” (refers to “chants, as

a bewildered, contestant”).

2. “You have a vigorous and full vocabulary.”

3. “Nice title.”

4. “Nice series—good climax” (refers to “soft, easy, free”

of second paragraph).

5. “Nice phrase” (refers to “with glamour and greed in her

eyes’’).
Although these positive comments show that “Easy Street”
has much to praise, instructors

marking the paper more readily recognized error than they

identifi ed strengths, especially on the

sentential and lexical levels. For example, many

instructors pointed out the dangling modifi er in the

next-to-last sentence of the fi rst paragraph (“But when

raised”), but no one applauded the effec

tive use of appositive adjectives (“Embarrassed and sad”)

as modifi ers in the following sentence. It

seems clear that we have been better trained to spot comma

splices and fragments and other syn

tactic slips than to notice when students take risks: Only

one of two dozen evaluators commended

the student for “soft, easy, free,” a notable instance of

series variation with the coordinating con

junction eliminated. Instructors routinely called attention

to the misused semicolon in “By just

guessing the right tune in fi ve notes; he could be

ordering caviar in the morning rather than toast.”

Far fewer heard the interesting sentence rhythms created by

the sophisticated use of repetition.

So perhaps we need to go back to school ourselves to learn

how to recognize what merits

praise in student writing. A good starting point for syntax

are the chapters on free modifi ers in

Notes toward a New Rhetoric (Christensen and Christensen

1978) and in The Writer’s Options (Daiker,

Kerek, and Morenberg 1986), and the articles on

coordination by Winston Weathers (1966) and

Robert L. Walker (1970). But probably even more useful are

sessions at conferences, at depart

ment meetings, and at workshops for teaching assistants in

which we help each other learn what
to praise and how to praise. But, if we listen to students,
the “how” may not be all that important.

At the same time that students tell us that criticism must

be specifi c to work—a comment like

“diction” or “logic” or “awkward” is almost always

misunderstood unless explained in detail—they

receive even vague compliments like “nice” and “good” and

“well written” with gratitude and

thanksgiving (Hayes and Daiker 1984). Don Murray once

casually remarked at a Wyoming Confer

ence on Freshman and Sophomore English that one of his

favorite responses to student writing

begins with the fi ve words “I like the way you.” He told

us we could complete the sentence in any

way we chose: “I like the way you use dialogue here” or “I

like the way you started your paper with

a story” or “I like the way you repeated the key word

animal in this paragraph.”

In his preface to John Gardner’s On Becoming a Novelist,

Raymond Carver (1983) recalls his

experience as a college freshman in Gardner’s creative

writing class at Chico State College. Carver

remembers, above all, that Gardner lavished more attention

and care on his work than any student

had a right to expect. Although Gardner would cross out

what he found unacceptable in Carver’s

stories and add words and even sentences of his own,

he was always looking to fi nd something to praise. When

there was a sentence, a line of dia

logue, or a narrative passage that he liked, something that

he thought “worked” and moved

the story along in some pleasant or unexpected way, he’d

write “Nice” in the margin or else
“Good!” And seeing these comments, my heart would lift.
(xvi–xvii)

It’s a good bet that genuine praise can lift the hearts, as
well as the pens, of the writers who sit in

our own classrooms, too.

Carver, R. 1983. Preface to On Becoming a Novelist, by J.

Gardner, xvi–xvii. New York: Harper.

Christensen, F. 1962. Between Two Worlds. Paper delivered

to the California Association of Teachers of English,
February, San Diego. Reprinted in Notes toward a New
Rhetoric, edited by F. Christensen, and B. Christensen,
[1967] 1978.

Christensen, F., and B. Christensen, editors. [1967] 1978.

Notes toward a New Rhetoric: Nine Essays for Teachers. 2d
ed. New York: Harper.

Daiker, D. A. 1983. The Teacher’s Options in Responding to

Student Writing. Paper presented at the annual Conference
on College Composition and Communication, March,
Washington, D.C.

Daiker, D. A., A. Kerek, and M. Morenberg. 1986. The

Writer’s Options: Combining to Composing. 3d ed. New York:
Harper.

Daly, J. A. 1977. The Effects of Writing Apprehension on

Message Encoding Journalism Quarterly 54:566–72.

Daly, J. A, and M. D. Miller. 1975a. Apprehension of

Writing as a Predictor of Message Intensity. The Journal
of Psychology 89:175–77.

Daly, J. A, and M. D. Miller. 1975b. The Empirical

Development of an Instrument to Measure Writing
Apprehension. Research in the Teaching of English 9:242–49.

Daly, J. A., and M. D. Miller. 1975c. Further Studies on

Writing Apprehension: SAT Scores, Success Expectations,
Willingness to Take Advanced Courses and Sex Differences.
Research in the Teaching of English 9:250–56.

Daly, J. A., and W. Shamo. 1978. Academic Decisions as a

Function of Writing Apprehension. Research in the Teaching
of English 12:119–26.
Diederich, P. B. 1963. In Praise of Praise. NEA Journal
52:58–59.

Diederich, P. B.1974. Measuring Growth in English. Urbana,

Ill.: National Council of Teachers of English.

Dragga, S. 1986. Praiseworthy Grading: A Teacher’s

Alternative to Editing Error. Paper presented at the
Conference on College Composition and Communication, March,
New Orleans, La.

Emig, J. 1977, Writing as a Mode of Learning. College

Composition and Communication 28:122–28.

Gee, T. C. 1972. Students’ Responses to Teacher Comments,

Research in the Teaching of English 6:212–21.

Harris, W. H. 1977. Teacher Response to Student Writing: A

Study of the Response Pattern of High School Teachers to
Determine the Basis for Teacher judgment of Student
Writing, Research in the Teaching of English 11:175–85.

Hayes, M. F., and D. A. Darker. 1984. Using Protocol

Analysis in Evaluating Responses to Student Writing.
Freshman English News 13:1–4, 10.

Hemingway, E. 1964. A Moveable Feast New York: Scribners.

Hirsch, E. D., Jr. 1977. The Philosophy of Composition.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Holland, M. 1980. The State of the Art: The Psychology of

Writing. Paper presented at the Inland Area Writing
Project’s Summer Writing Conference, July, University of
California at Riverside.

Irmscher, W. F. 1979. Teaching Expository Writing. New

York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

Jonson, B. 1947. Timber, or Discoveries. In Ben Jonson,

vol. 8, edited by C. H. Herford Percy and E. Simpson.
Oxford, England: Clarendon.

Macrorie, K. 1968. To Be Read. English Journal 57:688–92.

Reising, R. W. 1973. Controlling the Bleeding. College

Composition and Communication 24:43–44.

Shaughnessy, M. 1977. Errors and Expectations: A Guide for

the Teacher of Basic Writing. New York: Oxford University
Press.

Stevens, A. K., editor. 1958. Evaluating a Theme.

Newsletter of the Michigan Council of Teachers of English 5
(6). Ann Arbor: Michigan Council of Teachers of English.

Walker, R. L. 1970. The Common Writer: A Case for Parallel

Structure. College Composition and Communication 21:373–79.

Weathers, W. 1966. The Rhetoric of the Series. College

Composition and Communication 17:217–22.

Ziv, N. D. 1984. The Effect of Teacher Comments on the

Writing of Four College Freshmen. In New Directions in
Composition Research, edited by R. Beach and L. S.
Bridwell, 362–80. New York: Guilford.

Reprinted from Donald Daiker. “Learning to Praise.” Writing

and Response: Theory, Practice, and Research. Ed.

Chris M. Anson. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1989, 103–113. Copyright

1989 by the National Council of Teachers of

English. Reprinted with permission. ACROSS THE DRAFTS

Nancy Sommers Harvard University

For the past thirty years, I have been a teacher of

writing—work that I love, especially teaching

fi rst-year students. I have always been curious about the

ways in which students read and interpret

my comments—why they fi nd some responses useful, others

distracting, and how these com

ments work together with the lessons of the classroom. In

1982, I published an article in CCC on

this very topic, but rereading this essay twenty-four years

later, I feel the absence of any “real”

students who, through voice, expertise, and years of being

responded to, could offer their teach

ers valuable lessons. In returning to a topic that has

captured my imagination for over a quarter

of a century, I’m also returning to a topic that is part of

our collective imagination, with so much
scholarly attention paid to it that if you search
“responding to student writing” on Google, you

arrive in 2.7 seconds at the fi rst of about 230,000

entries (Harvey 44). 1 Our collective interest in

responding, I suspect, is deeply professional and personal.

We feel a weighty responsibility when we

respond to our students’ words, knowing that we, too, have

received comments that have given us

hope—and sometimes made us despair—in our abilities as

writers. The words teachers scribbled

on our papers, inscribed in memory, are often the same

words we scribble in the margins or at the

bottom of our own students’ pages—well-intended, most often

written with great care, though

sometimes carelessly, often caffeine-induced, usually late

at night. These words, we hope, our

students will take with them as they move from our class to
the next, from one paper assignment

to another, across the drafts. We don’t take this

responsibility lightly. The work of entering into

our students’ minds and composing humane, thoughtful, even

inspiring responses is serious busi

ness. Given the enormous amount of time it takes to comment

fairly upon a single paper, let alone

twenty or thirty, we often wonder whether our students

actually read our comments and what, if

anything, they take from them.

As I look back across a quarter of a century of my own

drafts, I remember that my fi rst impulse

when researching the topic of response was to imagine a

hierarchy of effective and ineffective

comments that could be isolated, identifi ed, even

memorized by new writing teachers. I quickly
learned the limits of such research when I tried to
separate comments from the context in which

they were written—that is, the language established in the

classroom. There is a story behind each

effective comment that animates it for a student, making it

more than mere marks on a page. But

in our professional literature about responding, we too

often neglect the role of the student in this

transaction, and the vital partnership between teacher and

student, by focusing, almost exclusively,

on the role of the teacher. We offer prescriptions to new

teachers that imply a hierarchy of com

ments: offering praise, for instance, is more constructive

than criticism; posing questions is better

than issuing commands; and using green or blue ink is

always preferable to red.

The new perspective I bring to this topic today comes from

the Harvard Study of Undergraduate

Writing, which followed four hundred students for four

years to see college writing through their

eyes. With the leisurely perspective of time, and with the

collection of over six hundred pounds of

student writing, fi ve hundred hours of taped interviews,

and countless megabytes of survey data,

my fellow researchers and I have witnessed the wide range

of comments that students receive,

not just in one course or from one teacher, but over four
years and across the disciplines. 2 To see

these comments through the eyes of college students is a

kaleidoscopic experience: papers never

returned; papers returned with bewildering

hieroglyphics—dots, check marks, squiggly or straight

lines; papers with responses that treat students like

apprentice scholars, engaging with their ideas,

seriously and thoughtfully. That students might benefi t

from a decoding ring to determine whether

the check marks and squiggles are a good or bad thing will
not surprise us. That students might fi nd

comments useful throughout the process—before and between

drafts, not just at the end—will

also not surprise us. What did surprise us, though, is the
role feedback plays in the complex story

of why some students prosper as college writers while

others lag. 3

It would be comforting to think that those fortunate

students who receive the most useful

comments make the greatest leaps in writing development.

And it would be equally comforting to

think we could link the lack of writing development to a

student’s scorecard of useful and useless

comments. But in the matter of writing development, nothing

is straightforward. The movement

from fi rst-year writing to senior, from novice to expert,

if it happens at all, looks more like one

step forward, two steps back, isolated progress within

paragraphs, one compositional element

mastered while other elements fall away. For some students,

progress is uneven but continuous.

Other students stall and become stuck writing the same kind
of formulaic paper, again and again,

no matter what assignment they receive. We wondered—would

more or better comments have

made a difference to these stalled writers? And what

relationship could we perceive between those

who progressed as writers and the comments they received?

A quarter of a century ago, I wouldn’t have known how to

ask such questions, let alone answer

them. At that point, I focused entirely upon comments

written in fi rst-year composition courses

to prompt revisions. And I concluded, “We do not know in

any defi nitive way what constitutes

thoughtful commentary or what effect, if any, our comments

have on helping our students become

more effective writers” (148). In the Harvard Study,

though, we looked at all comments students

received over four years. Outside the fi rst-year or

upper-division writing courses, we learned,

students rarely receive writing instruction and are rarely

required to revise. Consequently, instruc

tors’ comments on fi nal drafts take on an even greater

role; they often become the only place for

writing instruction. After following four hundred students

for four years, I now challenge my ear

lier conclusion by arguing that feedback plays a leading

role in undergraduate writing development

when, but only when, students and teachers create a

partnership through feedback—a transaction

in which teachers engage with their students by treating

them as apprentice scholars, offering hon

est critique paired with instruction. The role of the

student in this exchange is to be open to an

instructor’s comments, reading and hearing their responses

not as personal attacks or as isolated

moments in a college writing career but, rather, as

instructive and portable words to take with

them to the next assignment, across the drafts.

Colleges have great expectations for their students. But if

we understand how slow writing

development is—that is, how long it takes to learn how to

write a college paper, to have something

to say to a reader who wants to hear it—we become rather

humble about the enterprise of com

menting. If our comments move students forward as writers,

they do so because such comments

resonate with some aspect of their writing that our

students are already thinking about. As we

learned from the students we followed, most comments,

unfortunately, do not move students for

ward as writers because they underwhelm or overwhelm them,

going unread and unused. As one

student suggested, “Too often comments are written to the

paper, not to the student.” The under

whelming comments look a lot like check marks and

squiggles, or papers returned with the most

cryptic of comments like “B+; your style needs improvement;

otherwise, a good treatment of the

topic.” The overwhelming comments assume too much on the

part of a student, as if instructors

imagine their job is to comment on every compositional

element all at once, and as if they believe

that pointing out such errors will prevent students from

ever making them again.

What emerged in every conversation we had with students

about their college writing is the

power of feedback, its absence or presence, to shape their

writing experiences. As one student

told me, “Without a reader, the whole process is

diminished.” That students care deeply about

the comments they receive was revealed in our survey of

four hundred students, who were asked

as juniors to offer one piece of advice to improve writing

instruction at Harvard. Overwhelm
ingly—almost 90 percent—they responded: urge faculty to
give more specifi c comments. And

when we asked students each year to describe their best

writing experiences, two overriding

characteristics emerged: the opportunity to write about

something that matters to the student,

and the opportunity to engage with an instructor through

feedback. What became clear from

students’ testimonials is that feedback plays a much larger

role than we might expect from mere

words scribbled in the margins or at the end of a paper;

feedback plays an important social role,

especially in large lecture classes, to help students feel

less anonymous and to give them a sense of

academic belonging. As we learned from the students we

followed, it isn’t just that without a reader

“the whole process is diminished”; rather, it is with a

thoughtful reader that the whole process is

enriched, deepened, and inscribed in memory.

One might easily imagine that this partnership around

feedback is so valuable to students

because it affi rms them as writers. And, yes, affi rmation

is often the end result, but a key fi nding

is that constructive criticism, more than encouraging

praise, often pushes students forward with

their writing; constructive criticism more than praise

reveals instructors’ investments in their

students’ untapped potential. In the case of praise, the

messages it contains—you belong at this

college; you are not the admissions committee’s one

mistake—are vitally important to propel fi rst

year students forward with their writing and to inspire

them to work harder. But over a college
career, when such praise is not paired with constructive
criticism, when it doesn’t involve a back

and-forth exchange between student and teacher, writer and

reader, it has the opposite effect.

Instead, undeserved praise neglects to offer students an

incentive to improve, nor does it provide

any alternative approaches for future papers. Students who

repeatedly receive comments from

their instructors such as “I have nothing to say about this

well-written paper,” often stall as writ

ers because they are never asked to do anything

differently, never shown what skills they need to

develop, nor are they engaged in a dialogue that challenges

their own thinking.

The surprise was watching so many students make great leaps

in their writing development

after receiving what they identifi ed as tough and honest

assessment of their work. For one student,

Ellery, the harsh critique he received as a junior was the

only thing that could shake him from his

glibness. His political science instructor wrote: “Ellery,

this is supposed to be an essay, not a rush

hour radio talk show. What you write is a good piece of

entertainment, but it is not the kind of

writing that goes under the label of academic.” Though

blunt, this response was written not as a

pronouncement, but in the context of a lengthy comment in

which the instructor engaged with

Ellery and his ideas. She goes on to model the kind of

questions he might have asked and to model

the way in which skeptical readers might look at the same

evidence. Although tough in her assess

ment, Ellery’s instructor treated him as a colleague,

someone capable of great things, even if not
yet achieved. This kind of intellectual partnership created
through feedback showed Ellery that he

was part of an academic community, made up of thinkers

sorting out ideas, arguing with each other,

and questioning each other’s thinking. Criticism is not

enough; like praise, it has to be paired with

instruction. But in the call and response of feedback, when

instructors model for their students

a live, listening person, they offer students an image of a

reader at the other end of the writing

process, someone willing to listen and comment, critically

yet constructively.

The success of this partnership has as much to do with

students’ willingness to hear and accept

honest assessment of their work as it does with

instructors’ willingness to offer such responses.

Ellery, for instance, received honest assessments of his

writing his fi rst and second years, but these

assessments didn’t help him become a stronger writer

because he dismissed these responses as

his instructors’ idiosyncrasies. Or, in the case of

Jackson, another student in our study, who, when

asked as a junior how he might use his instructors’

comments in future assignments, responded:

“I don’t think I can use these comments since each paper is

a different assignment and a different

kind of paper to work through.” Jackson intuited the great

challenge of undergraduate writing: to

move from discipline to discipline, writing about Confucius

in a philosophy course one semester, a

Haydn piano sonata in a music course the next. But on

another level, Jackson’s observation makes

clear that it will be diffi cult for him to apply even the
best comments to future writing assignments

since he believes that each essay assignment is defi ned by

its topic, a discrete unit. In Jackson’s view

of writing, comments are tailored to each essay but also

isolated from all other essays, and their

purpose is, simply, to show students what they did wrong on

a particular assignment.

We learn from Jackson’s undergraduate writing career that

part of becoming a good writer

involves learning to receive criticism, both in

understanding what an instructor intends and in the

practical sense of knowing how to put that advice into

effect in other courses and contexts. Jackson

is correct that his essay on Confucius is a text onto

itself, but part of Jackson’s stasis as a writer

stems from his belief that there is no continuity from one

assignment to another. Because he sees

no way to transport lessons from one paper to the next, he

reads his instructors’ comments as

isolated moments in his college writing career, not as

bridges between assignments. Even the best,

most thoughtful comments will not move students like

Jackson forward as writers.

But for any writer learning how to receive and accept

critique, how to read comments not as

judgment about one’s limitations as a human being, or about

one’s failings as a writer, is not simple,

especially for beginners who are quick to dismiss or defl

ect feedback. For fi rst-year students,

feedback is monumental, their most personal, most intimate

and direct interaction with their col

lege writing culture. And feedback comes, implicitly or

explicitly, with messages of hope or despair
about who they are and who they might become as students.
While one student will respond, “My

greatest reaction to all that red ink is gratitude,”

another fi rst-year will shrug and say, “I guess all

these comments mean he didn’t really like my paper.” Or, if

a fi rst-year student believes, as one

told me, that the purpose of her composition course was to

teach her how to “write quickly, ade

quately, and painlessly,” we understand why such an

attitude might prevent her from being open to

comments that ask her to slow down, read texts closely and
carefully, and, in a word, change. The

differences among fi rst-year students, we found, are less

about ability and more about an openness

and receptivity to comments, a way of seeing their writing

experiences as something under their

control, not random and outside of themselves. We found

that one of the important predictors of

undergraduate writing development is a fi rst-year

student’s willingness to accept and benefi t from

feedback, to see it as instruction, not merely as judgment.

At its best, feedback comes out of an exchange in which

instructors explain to their students

what is expected of them as college writers, and students

are open to learning about these expec

tations. By giving students a generalized sense of the

expectations of academic writing, teaching

one lesson at a time, and not overwhelming them by asking

them to improve all aspects of their

writing at once, instructors show their students how to do

something differently the next time.

The comments that students identify as the most helpful are

responses that straddle the present
world of the paper at hand with a glance to the next paper,
articulating one lesson for the future.

Consider, for instance, the feedback Louisa, another

student in our study, received in response to

her weak thesis and introduction. Here is her instructor’s

comment: “Louisa, a technique that can

work well for opening a paper is to begin with an

intriguing detail, especially one you fi nd diffi cult

to account for. Beginning in this manner not only draws in

your reader, but also forces you as a

writer to grapple with a troubling aspect of the text,

which can often be a key aspect that you had

previously set aside. This, in turn, can focus your thesis

and argument.”

As a sophomore, Louisa had complained in an interview:

“It’s tough getting better as a writer

when nobody is showing you how.” But as a junior, she was

fortunate to work with an instructor

who didn’t assume that she arrived in his class as a fully

formed writer. Instead, the instructor

treated Louisa as an apprentice, an evolving writer. The

tone of his comment is phrased, respect

fully, as a writing lesson on how to arrive at a thesis,

and how to engage a reader with an arguable

claim. By giving Louisa a generalized sense of what

academic writing calls for—write about what

you don’t understand; those things you have dismissed might

be more important than you fi rst

imagined; start with details because they engage

readers—Louisa’s instructor composes his com

ment to offer a bridge for her to cross to future writing

assignments. We concluded that when

students have been taken seriously as apprentice writers,

when instructors model the role of an
attentive reader, such comments function to anchor students
in their academic lives and, ultimately,

make a vast difference in their college writing.

Writing development is painstakingly slow because academic

writing is not a mother tongue; its

conventions require instruction and practice, years of

imitation and experimentation in rehearsing

other people’s arguments before being able to articulate

one’s own. The conclusion from the Har

vard Study is that feedback shapes the way students learn

to write, but feedback alone, even the

best feedback, doesn’t move students forward as writers if

they are not open to its instruction and

critique, or if they don’t understand how to use their

instructors’ comments as bridges to future

writing assignments. For students to improve as writers, a

number of factors are necessary: in addi

tion to honest comments, they need plenty of opportunities

to practice writing throughout their

college careers, not merely in one course or in one year,

and plenty of opportunities to receive

writing instruction in and beyond the fi rst year,

especially instruction in one discipline’s method.

Feedback is rooted in the partnership between student and

teacher, and as in any relationship,

it develops its own language and meaning. That this

relationship provides students their most

direct contact with their college writing culture seems

simple enough. But what isn’t simple is the

profound infl uence the relationship created through

feedback has, not only upon students’ writ

ing development, but also upon students’ sense of

themselves as thinkers. When students receive
feedback telling them they have “great insights” that their
instructors have “never seen the topic

discussed this way before,” or that there might be “a whole

level of other questions” for them to

imagine, students understand that their teachers view them

as people “with things to say,” think

ers capable of insight and asking other levels of

questions. Or, when a student tells us that he will

always hear his instructor’s voice telling him to change

his ideas, revise his thinking, it is not just the

instructor’s words the student hears and carries with him

across the drafts; it is also the instruc

tor’s belief in the student as a thinker, someone capable

of doing good work, even if as a fi rst-year

student he is not yet accomplishing it. When students

respond to feedback as an invitation to con

tribute something of their own to an academic conversation,

they do so because students imagine

their instructors as readers waiting to learn from their

contributions, not readers waiting to report

what they’ve done wrong on a given paper.

I once read a defi nition of a “true gift” not just as a

possession passed from giver to receiver but,

rather, something that is kept in motion, moving back and

forth between giver and receiver, and

outward into the world. One college senior, refl ecting on

the role of feedback in his undergraduate

writing career, told me about such a gift: “If I bumped

into one of my professors twenty years from

now, I would know what this professor thought of my work;

our minds connected at this juncture

of my paper, and I will always be indebted.” The word

indebted caught me off guard. Indebtedness,
after all, carries with it a connotation of obligation, of
being beholden. But indebtedness also car

ries with it a feeling of appreciation and gratitude, a

legacy of connectedness. And indebtedness

goes two ways, like any bridge. As teachers, we respond to

our students’ great insights because we

are grateful for the insights they have given us. And in
encouraging our students to imagine other

levels of questions, we, too, are inspired to think more

widely and deeply. Feedback doesn’t need

to be monumental, but its infl uence often is.

As our students teach us, their papers don’t end when they
turn them in for a grade, nor do

our comments end when we write them. The partnership

between writer and reader, between

student and teacher, creates something new—a collection of

ideas that are larger than the paper

itself, ideas milling around, moving forth into the world,

across the drafts.

Acknowledgments

As I worked through the various drafts of this essay, I

have been fortunate to receive comments

from wise colleagues and friends. I would like to

acknowledge the enormous contributions of the

following colleagues to my own thinking about this topic:

Joshua Alper, David Bartholomae, Patricia

Bellanca, Faye Halpern, Gordon Harvey, Karen Heath, Jim

Herron, Tom Jehn, Suzanne Lane, Soo

La Kim, Emily O’Brien, Stuart Pizer, Maxine Rodburg, Jane

Rosenzweig, Susanna Ryan, Laura Saltz,

Mimi Schwartz, Dawn Skorczewski, Stephen Sutherland, Kerry

Walk, and Suzanne Young.
Notes

1 A rich and abundant literature exists on the topic of

responding to student writing. In particular, I would

mention the important work of Chris Anson, Lil Brannon and

Cy Knoblauch, Summer Smith, Richard

Straub and Ronald Lunsford, and Kathleen Blake Yancey.

2 To learn more about the Harvard Study of Undergraduate

Writing, see http://www.fas.harvard.

edu/~expos. To date, scholars in our fi eld—Marilyn

Sternglass, Anne Herrington, Marcia Curtis, Lee

Ann Carroll, and Jenn Fishman, Andrea Lunsford and

colleagues have demonstrated the value of longi

tudinal studies to provide a wider perspective than

research focused upon one college course or one

undergraduate year.

3 To bring the voices of undergraduates into a larger

pedagogical discussion about responding, my col

league, Jane Rosenzweig, and I created a fi lm, Across the

Drafts: Students and Teachers Talk about Feedback.

In this fi lm, we follow one student, Jon Stona, and his

writing teacher, Tom Jehn, as they move through

the process of composing the last assignment in Jon’s fi

rst-year writing course. The fi lm also features a

wide range of students, fi rst-years through seniors, as

well as their professors, speaking about the chal

lenges and rewards of receiving and giving feedback. The fi

lm can be viewed on the Harvard Study Web

site, http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~expos; copies of the fi

lm can be obtained by writing to wrstudy@fas.

harvard.edu.

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Clift on Justice, who is now a lecturer at California State

University, Channel Islands, wrote

this essay when he was an undergraduate student at

California State University , North
ridge. Clift on had had previous experience in fundraising,
and his essay shows how his

knowledge of the fundraising genre enable him to raise

funds successfully.

| | Essay Clifton Justice How Do You Raise That Money?

Without ever intending to become one, I have become an

expert on soliciting and receiving

foundation support for charitable programs. Over a

four-year period of time I raised from

both public and private sources more than $100,000.00 each

year for a small nonprofi t

performing arts group. Arts organizations oft en get short

shrift by foundations because

they are not able to substantiate their community impact,

but with issues of literacy domi

nating the fi eld in the 1990s, I was able to fi nd a way

of blending foundation concerns and

arts programming. To be successful in this arena, it was

necessary that I learn to write the

two-page request for support letter. Th is letter is the

instrument whereby a nonprofi t orga

nization solicits money from a charitable foundation. Th is

mechanism brings together

features from academic writing and business writing in

order to make a compelling case

for funding an organization’s project. Th e genre reveals a

system that favors structured

management, clear outcomes for complex problems, and

measured advances in changing

people’s lives. It is conservative, like the people who

established the foundations. In the early part of the 20th
century the U.S. developed tax codes that placed federal

taxes on each citizen or resident of the country. Th e

federal tax was a progressive act that

allowed the federal government to raise additional revenue.

Since there were no govern

ment services for those who faced personal or economic

catastrophe, the government used

the increased funds from taxes to lead the way in providing

a social safety net for its

citizens who had fallen on hard times. But conservatives in

the government did not want

citizens to look just to the government for assistance.

Private individuals were encour

aged to participate in the enterprise and if they did,

their taxes would be exempted or

reduced. Th e most popular method used by the wealthy to

assist those less fortunate than

themselves was to establish foundations designed to fund

worthy enterprises by nonprofi t

organizations. Nonprofi t organizations provide services to

the community through their

programs, and since their programs are off ered free or at

a reduced cost to the community,

outside funds must be solicited in order to continue

operations. Because of the federal

government’s tax codes, wealthy individuals and their

foundations have fi nancial as well

as humanitarian reasons to give money to nonprofi t

organizations. Now the two entities, foundation and
nonprofi t, have a reason to talk with one another,

but how will they communicate? Th e last thing a wealthy

individual wants is every direc

tor of a charity banging on his door with a personal

appeal. In the beginning of a founda

tion, the man (sometimes a woman) with the money has pet
projects, such as Carnegie
and his libraries, and as long as the philanthropist is
alive, giving his money away is a

relatively simple task. Th e foundation donates to whatever

organizations the gentleman

(sometimes gentlewoman) prefers. But aft er that

individual’s passing, a professional

staff and board of directors must decide each year how to

give away a percentage of the

founder’s lifetime accumulation of wealth as mandated by

the tax code. Th e staff and the

board of foundations are usually well-educated, oft en

holding advanced degrees, so ask

ing nonprofi ts to put their requests in writing made sense

and it was an easy solution to

a pressing problem. From the 1960’s forward, nonprofi t

growth skyrocketed and pleas to

foundations increased each year. Foundations wanted an

orderly way of communicating

with nonprofi ts to be imposed. Personal visits and

telephone calls could take up too much

of the staff ’s day. Comfortable with academic writing, the

grantsmakers borrowed the

concept of “thesis” and “support” and merged it into

“problem to be addressed” and “com

munity impact,” then imposed that all requests must be in

writing. To assist fundraisers in

conforming to the requirements, pamphlets, such as the PP &

PG (Program Planning and

Proposal Guide), were printed and widely distributed.

Another prominent reason for demanding that requests be in
writing is to avoid per

sonal involvement in projects. With the internal structure

based in academic writing,
the two-page request for support letter serves the
foundation’s need of creating a space

between themselves and the nonprofi t. Since a substantial

percentage of the proposals,

well over 50%, will be rejected, foundations want to

maintain distance from the organiza

tions. Distance allows them a more careful and objective

examination. It also forces both

sides to take a “cool” approach to the problem, viewing it

with a dispassionate nature. Of course, this style of
discourse has its vagaries that favor college-educated,
economi

cally advantaged grant writers. Th ese individuals,

particularly those who come from a

composition background, are able to communicate in a manner

society has determined

superior. Th us, their programs are deemed superior and

receive funding. Rarely do you see

awards given to organizations run by individuals without a

strong writing background.

At the time, I was one of those few exceptions. Th e

components of the two-page request for support letter are:
1) mission of the orga

nization or the purpose of the group, 2) history of the

organization focusing on recent

accomplishments by the organization, 3) the community

problem to be addressed—and

you never say the problem is lack of money (even though it

oft en is), 4) the actions your

organization will take to address the problem, 5) the long

term impact of your program

and their money on the community to be addressed, and 6)

how much money you want

from the foundation along with who else is supporting the

project. Funders rarely go it
alone. While the genre’s internal structure is derived from
academia, its appearance is simi

lar to that of a business letter. It is most oft en

single-spaced, printed on organization

letterhead, and has a clean, no-fuss appearance. Th is

appearance somehow conveys to

the foundation strong management, fi scal responsibility,

and community involvement. It

does this through paragraphs borrowed from the business

world that are ten to twelve lines

long, oft en with a space between them and no indentation.

On the page, the paragraphs

form powerful-looking blocks meant to inspire trust in the

organization. Letterhead, in

and of itself, indicates the serious intent of the

organization. It is printed, not photocopied,

on heavy stock, and may include wood pulp mixed with cotton
or linen. Generally, let

terhead includes a listing of the board of directors, which

indicates a system of hierarchy

similar to the foundation’s own structure. Familiarity, in

this instance, breeds confi dence

rather than contempt. Certainly the limit of two pages is

derived from the genre’s attachment to the business

letter. In that form the writer needs to get to the point

quickly and move on. Two pages

are a limited amount of space to describe the project;

great care must be taken with each

word and phrase. Confusion is disastrous. If the foundation

looks favorably on the request

letter then the next step is usually to require a more

formal proposal that can run many

pages. Th e essence of that well-thought out proposal must

be synthesized within the two

page appeal. Th is is challenging since the project is

almost always over two years away

from starting. Foundation’s move at such a slow pace that

even an affi rmative response

to a funding request can take over a year and a half.

Negative responses to the request for

support letter come quicker, usually within a few weeks or

months, so no news can be good

news to the grantwriter. Th e organization I wrote grants

for presented programs that were based on classic

stories or poems—Th e Walrus and the Carpenter,

Jabberwocky—and folk tales from

Mexico, Africa, and Asia. I partnered with larger

organizations, such as the Los Angeles

City Library, to bring further attention to the company’s

work by local foundations. With

support from the Parsons Foundation, the Weingart

Foundation and the Norris Founda

tion, the company twice visited all 89-library sites in Los

Angeles providing them with

family programs designed to encourage reading. I believe

much of my success came from

knowing how to tailor my program to the foundation’s goals

of literacy, particularly for

children. Th e more the nonprofi t advances the goals of

the foundation in their request,

the more likely the organization will receive funding. Th

is can have a detrimental aspect;

organizations can lose their own sense of mission when they

are chasing funds from a

foundation. I believe, for the most part, I was able to

avoid this error. Th e skill I learned in writing two-page
requests for support letters has served me well
in college. First, it provided me a way to earn a living.
By working part time out of my

home, I have been able to pursue a career in teaching. My

reputation as a grantwriter is

such that I have numerous organizations desiring my

services and I can choose for whom

I want to write. Second, I fi nd that determining what a

professor wants and then giving it

to them is remarkably similar to structuring a program that

a foundation will fund. Th e

ability to mold your idea to the vision of another without

losing your way is central to suc

cess, not only in college, but also in life.

| |

Reading SITES OF INVENTION: GENRE AND THE ENACTMENT OF

FIRST-YEAR WRITING Annis Bawarshi Genres themselves form
part of the discursive context to which rhetors respond in
their writing and, as such, shape and enable the writing;
it is in this way that form is generative. Aviva Freedman,
“Situating Genre” We need to be aware not only that genres
are socially constructed but also that they are socially
constitutive—in other words, that we both create and are
created by the genres in which we work. Thomas Helscher,
“The Subject of Genre” [A genre’s discursive features] are
united within the relatively stable discursive “type” to
offer us a form within which we can locate ourselves as
writers—that is, a form which serves as a guide to
invention, arrangement, and stylistic choices in the act of
writing. James F. Slevin “Genre Theory Academic Discourse,
and Writing in the Disciplines”

Refl ecting on the concept of invention in the classical

rhetorical tradition, Jim Corder writes that

“inventio, by its nature, calls for openness to the

accumulated resources of the world a speaker lives

in, to its landscapes, its information, its ways of

thinking and feeling. … Inventio is the world the

speaker lives in” (109). Similarly, Sharon Crowley writes

that “invention reminds rhetors of their

location within a cultural milieu that determines what can

and cannot be said or heard” (Methodical

168). Invention takes place, which is why classical

rhetoricians recommended the topoi or com

monplaces as the sites in which rhetors could locate the

available means of persuasion for any given

situation. As heuristics for invention, the topoi were thus

rhetorical habitats—“language-consti

tuted regions” (Farrell 116) and “resources, seats, places,

or haunts” (Lauer, “Topics” 724)—which

framed communal knowledge and provided rhetors with shared

methods of inquiry for navigating

and participating in rhetorical situations. Invention, as

such, was not so much an act of turning

inward as it was an act of locating oneself socially, a way

of participating in the shared desires, val

ues, and meanings already existing in the world. As Scott

Consigny explains, the topoi were both

“the instrument with which the rhetor thinks and the realm
in and about which he thinks” (65; my

emphasis). The topoi helped rhetors locate themselves and

participate within common situations. In much the same way,
genres are also instruments and realms—habits and habitats.
Genres

are the conceptual realms within which individuals

recognize and experience situations at the same

time as they are the rhetorical instruments by and through

which individuals participate within and

enact situations. The Patient Medical History Form, for

example, not only conceptually frames the

way the individual recognizes the situation of the doctor’s

offi ce; it also helps position the individual

into the fi gure of “patient” by providing him or her with

the rhetorical habits for acting in this situ

ation. Likewise, George Washington “invents” the fi rst

state of the union address by rhetorically

situating himself within the conceptual realm of an

antecedent genre, the “king’s speech,” which

provides him not only with a way of recognizing the

situation he is in, but also a way of rhetorically

acting within it. And similarly, D. H. Lawrence is

motivated to invent his autobiography differently

as he perceives and enacts it within different genres. As

such, why individuals are motivated to act

and how they do so depends on the genres they are using.

These genres serve as the typifi ed and

situated topoi within which individuals acquire, negotiate,

and articulate desires, commitments, and

methods of inquiry to help them act in a given situation,

thereby inventing not only certain lines of

argument (logos), but also certain subjectivities

(ethos—think of the subject position Washington

assumes when he writes the “king’s speech) and certain ways

of relating to others (pathos—think

of the relation Washington sets up between himself and

Congress, and, as a result, how Congress

reacts to Washington). 1 Conceived thus, invention does

not involve an introspective turn so much

as it involves the process by which individuals locate

themselves within and devise ways of rhetori

cally acting in various situations. In this way, invention

is a process that is inseparable from genre

since genre coordinates both how individuals recognize a

situation as requiring certain actions and

how they rhetorically act within it. Genres, thus, are

localized, textured sites of invention, the situated topoi
in which commu
nicants locate themselves conceptually before and
rhetorically as they communicate. To begin to

write is to locate oneself within these genres, to become

habituated by their typifi ed rhetorical

conventions to recognize and enact situated desires,

relations, practices, and subjectivities in cer

tain ways. I will now consider one such genre-constituted

environment within which teacher and

students “invent” various situated practices, relations,

and subjectivities as they (re)locate them

selves from one genre-situated topoi to the next: the fi

rst-year writing course. In Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric
of Assent, Wayne Booth speculates on a theory of
interaction

and self-formation similar to the one I have been proposing

in my discussion of genre and agency.

“What happens,” he wonders, “if we choose to begin with our

knowledge that we are essentially

creatures made in symbolic interchange, created in the

process of sharing intentions, values, meanings?

… What happens if we think of ourselves as essentially

participants in a fi eld or process or mode

of being persons together?” (134, my emphasis). In this

chapter, I will examine the fi rst-year writ

ing course from the perspective of Booth’s question,

describing and analyzing the fi rst-year writing

course as an activity system coordinated by a constellation

of genres, each of which constitutes

its own topoi within which teachers and students assume and
enact a complex set of desires,

relations, subjectivities, and practices. By investigating

how teachers and students make their way

through these genres, we can observe the complex relations

and repositioning that teachers and
students negotiate as they participate within and between
genred discursive spaces. Invention takes

place within and between these genred spaces, as one genre

creates the timing and opportunity

for another. When they write their essays, for example,

students are expected to perform a dis

cursive transaction in which they recontextualize the

desires embedded in the writing prompt as

their own self-sponsored desires in their essays. Invention

takes place at this intersection between

the acquisition and articulation of desire. By analyzing

the syllabus, writing prompt, and student

essay as genred sites of invention, I hope to shed light on

how students and teachers reposition

themselves as participants within these topoi at the same

time as they enact the activity system we

call the fi rst-year writing course.

The First-Year Writing Course and Its Genres

Elsewhere I have discussed how a site of activity (for

example, a physician’s offi ce) is coordinated

by a variety of genres, referred to as “genre sets”

(Devitt, “Intertextuality”) or “genre systems”

(Bazerman “Systems”), each genre within the set or system

constituting its own site of action within

which communicants instantiate and reproduce situated

desires, practices, relations, and subjec

tivities. Within a site of activity, thus, we will

encounter a constellation of related, even confl icting

situations, organized and generated by various genres.

David Russell, adapting Vygotsky’s concept

of activity theory to genre theory, has described this

constellation of situations that make up an
environment as an “activity system,” which he defi nes as
“any ongoing, object-directed, histori

cally conditioned, dialectically structured, tool-mediated

human interaction” (“Rethinking” 510).

Examples of activity systems range from a family, to a

religious organization, to a supermarket, to

an advocacy group. As Russell defi nes it, an activity

system resembles what Guddens calls “struc

ture.” Like structure, an activity system is constituted by

a dialectic of agents or subjects, motives

or social needs, and mediational means or tools (what

Giddens refers to as “structura-tional prop

erties”). Each element of the dialectic is constantly

engaged in supporting the other, so that,

for instance, agents enact motives using tools which in

turn reproduce the motives that require

agents to use these tools and so on. As Russell explains,

“activity systems are not static, Parsonian

social forces. Rather, they are dynamic systems constantly

re-created through micro-level interac

tions” (512). In their situated, micro-level activities and

interactions, discursively and ideologically

embodied as genres, participants in an activity system are

at work “operationalizing” and, in turn,

reproducing the ideological and material conditions that

make up the activity system within which

they interact. Each genre enables individuals to enact a

different situated activity within an activ

ity system. Together, the various genres coordinate and

synchronize the ways individuals defi ne,

interact within, and enact an activity system. Russell’s

description of an activity system helps us conceptualize
both how genres interact

within a system of activity and how they help make that

system possible by enabling individuals to

participate within and in turn reproduce its related

actions. The genres that constellate an activity

system do not only organize and generate participants’

activities within the system, however. They

also, as Russell describes, link one activity system to

another through the shared use of genres

(“Rethinking”; “Kindness”). Participants in one activity

system, for instance, use some genres to

communicate with participants in other activity systems,

thereby forming intra- and intergenre

system relations. By applying the concept of activity

system to school settings, especially to the

interactions among micro-level disciplinary and

administrative activity systems that together form

the macro-level activity system of the university, Russell

provides us with a model for analyzing the

fi rst-year writing course as one activity system within a

larger activity system (the English depart

ment), within an even larger activity system (the College

of Liberal Arts and Sciences), within an

even larger activity system (the university), and so on.

The constellation of genres within each of

these related systems operationalizes the situated actions

of participants within that system in

order “to create stabilized-for-now structures of social

action and identity” (Russell, “Rethinking”

514). The genres that coordinate each of the micro-level

activity systems within a macro-level

activity system function interactively as a series of

uptakes, with one genre creating an opportunity

for another, as in the example of the Department of

Defense, in which requests for proposals
generate funding proposals, which generate contracts, which
generate reports and experimental

articles, and so on (520). At the same time, not everyone

involved in an activity system is or needs

to be engaged in all its genres. As Russell explains, “in a

typical school, for example, the teacher

writes the assignments; the students write the responses in

classroom genres. The administrators

write the grade form; the teachers fi ll it out. The

parents and/or the government offi cials write the

checks; the administrators write the receipts and the

transcripts and report to regents” (520). In

this scenario, the various participants (teachers,

students, parents, administrators) are all involved

in micro-level activity systems which interact in close

proximity to one another and which together

comprise the macro-level activity system called a school.

In what follows, I will focus on one par

ticular micro-level activity system within a college or

university: the fi rst-year writing course. Like other
college or university courses, the fi rst-year writing
(FYW) course takes place, for the

most part, in a physical setting, a material,

institutionalized site most often situated within a
building

on campus. 2 It is a place a teacher and students can

physically enter and leave. But as in the case of

the physician’s offi ce, the classroom is not only a

material site; it is also a discursive site, one medi

ated and reproduced by the various genres its participants

use to perform the desires, positions,

relations, and activities that enact it. For example, one

of the fi rst ways that a classroom becomes

a FYW course (or any other course for that matter) is

through the genre of the syllabus, which,
as I will describe shortly, organizes and generates the
classroom as a textured site of action which

locates teacher and students within a set of desires,

commitments, relations, and subject positions.

At the same time, the syllabus also manages the set of

genres that will enable its users to enact

these desires, relations, and subjectivities. In this way,

the syllabus and its related FYW course

genres orient teachers and students in a discursive and

ideological scene of writing which locates

them in various, sometimes simultaneous and confl icting

positions of articulation. The choices

teachers and students make in this scene emerge from,

against, and in relation to these positions.

As such, “the classroom is always invented, always

constructed, always a matter of genre” (Bazer

man, “Where” 26). When we only identify students as writers

in the writing classroom, then, we

are ignoring the extent to which teachers (as well as those

who administer writing programs) are

also writers of and in the writing classroom—writers of the

genres that organize and generate

them and their students within a dynamic, multitextured

site of action. The FYW course, thus, is a

site where writing is already at work to make writing

possible. Seen in this light, the FYW course is

not as artifi cial as some critics make it out to be. It

may be artifi cial when, chameleon-like, it tries

to mimic public, professional, or disciplinary settings, or

when it tries to imagine a “real” external

audience for student writing. But the classroom in its own

right is a dynamic, textured site of action

mediated by a range of complex written and spoken genres

that constitute student-teacher posi

tions, relations, and practices. 3 As they reposition

themselves within and between these genres,

teachers and students acquire, negotiate, and articulate

different desires, which inform the choices

they make as participants in the FYW course. The set of

written genres that coordinates the FYW course includes,
but is not limited to, the

course description, the syllabus, the course home page,

student home pages, the grade book, the

classroom discussion list, assignment prompts, student

essays, the teacher’s margin and end com

ments in response to student essays, peer workshop

instructions, student journals or logs, peer

review sheets, and student evaluations of the class. These

“classroom genres” (Christie, “Cur

riculum”; Russell, “Rethinking”) constitute the various

typifi ed and situated topoi within which

students and teacher recognize and enact their situated

practices, relations, and subjectivities. I

will now examine three of these classroom genres, the

syllabus, the assignment prompt, and the

student essay, in order to analyze how writers reposition

and articulate themselves within these

sites of invention. By doing so, I hope to demonstrate the

extent to which, when they invent, writ

ers locate themselves in a complex, multilayered set of

discursive relations, so that by the time

students begin to write their essays they do so in relation

to the syllabus, the writing assignment,

and the various other genres that have already located them
and their teachers in an ideological

and discursive system of activity.

The Syllabus

In many ways, the syllabus is the master classroom genre,

in relation to which all other class

room genres, including the assignment prompt and the

student essay, are “occluded” (Swales,

“Occluded”). According to Swales, occluded genres are

genres that operate behind the scenes

and often out of more public sight, yet play a critical

role in operationalizing the commitments and

goals of the dominant genre, in this case, the syllabus, As

such, the syllabus plays a major role in

establishing the ideological and discursive environment of

the course, generating and enforcing the

subsequent relations, subject positions, and practices

teacher and students will perform during

the course. In some ways, the syllabus, like the

architecture students’ sketchbooks described in

the previous chapter, functions as what Giltrow calls a

“meta-genre,” an “atmosphere surrounding

genres” (195) that sanctions and regulates their use within

an activity system. It is not surprising,

thus, that the syllabus is traditionally the fi rst

document students encounter upon entering the

classroom. Immediately, the syllabus begins to transform

the physical setting of the classroom into

the discursive and ideological site of action in which

students, teacher, and their work will assume

certain signifi cance and value. That is, within the

syllabus, to paraphrase Giddens, the desires that

inform the structure of the course become textually

available to the students and teacher who

then take up these desires as intentions to act. No doubt,

the syllabus is a coercive genre, in the
same way that all genres are coercive to some degree or
another. It establishes the situated rules

of conduct students and teacher will be expected to meet,

including penalties for disobeying them.

But even more than that, the syllabus also establishes a

set of social relations and subjectivities that

students and teacher have available to them in the course.

It is curious that, as signifi cant a genre as it is, the
syllabus has received so little critical atten

tion (Baecker 61). In fact, to the extent that it is

discussed at all, the syllabus is mostly described

in “how to” guidebooks for novice teachers. For instance,

both Erika Lindemann’s A Rhetoric for

Writing Teachers and Robert Connors and Cheryl Glenn’s The

St. Martin’s Guide to Teaching Writing

describe the syllabus in terms of its formal conventions,

listing them in the order they most often

appear: descriptive information such as course name and

number, offi ce hours, classroom loca

tion, signifi cant phone numbers; textbook information;

course description and objectives; course

policy, including attendance policy, participation

expectations, policy regarding late work, etc.;

course requirements, including kinds and sequence of exams

and writing assignments; grading pro

cedures; any other university or departmental statements;

and then a course calendar or schedule

of assignments. In addition to presenting these

conventions, Lindemann and Connors and Glenn

also describe the purpose of the syllabus, acknowledging

its contractual as well as pedagogical

nature. Lindemann, for example, cites Joseph Ryan’s

explanation of the informational and pedagogi

cal purposes of the syllabus: Students in the course use

the syllabus to determine what it is they are to learn
(course content), in what sense they are to learn it
(behavioral objectives), when the material will be taught
(schedule), how it will be taught (instructional
procedures), when they will be required to demonstrate
their learning (exam dates), and exactly how their learning
will be assessed (evaluation) and their grade determined.
(256–57)

In this sense, Lindemann claims that “syllabuses are

intended primarily as information for students”

(256). Connors and Glenn, however, recognize the more

political function of the syllabus. For them,

“the syllabus, for all intents and purposes, is a contract

between teacher and students. It states

the responsibilities of the teacher and the students as

well as the standards for the course” (10).

The syllabus, then, informs the students and the teacher,

protecting both from potential misunder

standing. It also informs the “structure of the class” by

developing “a set of expectations and inten

tions for composition courses” (10–11). In other words, the

syllabus establishes the course goals

and assumptions as well as the means of enacting these

goals and assumptions—both the structure

of the course and the rhetorical means of instantiating

that structure as situated practices. As Con

nors and Glenn remind teachers, the syllabus is “the fi rst

written expression of your personality

that you will present to your students” (10). Neither

Lindemann nor Connors and Glenn, however, go on to analyze
exactly how the syllabus

locates teachers and students within this position of

articulation or how it frames the discursive

and ideological site of action in which teacher and

students engage in coordinated commitments,

relations, subjectivities, and practices. What effect, for

instance, does the contractual nature of the

syllabus have on the teacher-student relationship? What

positions does the syllabus assign to stu

dents and teacher, and how do these positions get enacted

and reproduced in the various situations

and activities that constitute the FYW course? An analysis

of the typifi ed rhetorical features of the

syllabus, especially its use of pronouns, future tense

verbs, and abstract nominalizations, helps us

begin to answer some of these questions. 4 One of the more

obvious characteristics of the syllabus is the way it
positions students and

teachers within situated subjectivities and relations. The

student is frequently addressed as “you”

(“This course will focus on introducing you to …”), as

“students” (“Students will learn …” or “The

goal of this course is to introduce students to …”), and as

“we” (“We will focus on learning …”)

quite often interchangeably throughout the syllabus but at

times even within the same section. For

example, one teacher addresses her students in the “Course

Objectives” section as follows: “Over

the course of the semester, you will develop specifi c

writing strategies which will help you adapt your

writing skills to different contexts and audiences. Also,

we will discuss how to approach and analyze

the arguments of other writers, and how to either adapt or

refute their views in your writing.” This

interchange between “you” and “we” on the pronoun level

refl ects a larger tension many teach

ers face when writing a syllabus: between establishing

solidarity with students and demarcating

lines of authority (Baecker 61). This tension is especially

heightened in FYW courses which tend
to be taught mostly by inexperienced teachers, most often
graduate students who are themselves

struggling with the tension between being teachers and

students. Diann Baecker, drawing on Müh

lhäusler and Harré’s work on pronouns and social identity,

applies this tension within pronouns

to the social relations they make possible in the syllabus.

Pronouns such as “you” and, in particu

lar, “we” not only create social distinctions among

communicants; they also “blur the distinction

between power and solidarity and, in fact, allow power to

be expressed as solidarity” (Baecker 58). It is perhaps
this desire to mask power as solidarity that most
characterizes the syllabus, a desire

that teachers, as the writers of the syllabus, acquire,

negotiate, and articulate. Positioned within

this desire, the teacher tries to maintain the contractual

nature of the syllabus while also invoking

a sense of community. On the one hand, the teacher has to

make explicit what the students will

have to do to fulfi ll the course requirements, including

the consequences for not doing so. On the

other hand, the teacher also has to create a sense of

community with the students so they can feel

responsible for the work of learning. This balance is diffi

cult, and, as we saw in the above example,

many teachers will awkwardly fl uctuate between “you” and

“we” in order to maintain it. The fol

lowing excerpt from another syllabus also reveals this fl

uctuation: The goals of the course are two-fold. During the
initial part of the semester, we will focus on learning to
read critically—that is, how to analyze the writing of
others. The skills that you will acquire while learning
how to read an argument closely … will be the foundation
for the writing you will do for the rest of the course.
Our second objective … This “we”/“you” tension refl ects
the balance the teacher is attempting to create between com

munity and complicity. As Baecker explains, citing

Mühlhäusler and Harré, “we is a rhetorical device

that allows the speaker(s) to distance themselves from

whatever is being said, thus making it more

palatable because it appears to come from the group as a

whole rather than from a particular

individual” (59). The “we” construction tries to minimize

the teacher’s power implicit in the “you”

construction by making it appear as though the students are

more than merely passive recipients

of the teacher’s dictates; instead, they have ostensibly

acquiesced consensually to the policies and

activities described in the syllabus. The teacher, then,

uses “you” and “we” in order to position

students as subjects, so that without knowing it, they seem

to have agreed to the conditions that

they will be held accountable for. In this way, the

syllabus is an effective contract, incorporating the

student as other (“you”) into the classroom community

(“we”) at the same time as it distinguishes

the individual student from the collective. “What the

“you”/“we” construction seems to suggest is

that “we as a class will encounter, be exposed to, and

learn the following things, but you as a student

are responsible for whether or not you succeed. You will do

the work and be responsible for it, but

we all agree what the work will be.” In her research,

Baecker fi nds that “you” is by far the most common pronoun
employed in syl

labi (60), a fi nding supported by my own analysis. This

“you,” coupled with the occasional “we,” the

second most common pronoun, works as a hailing gesture,

interpellating the individual who walks
into the classroom as a student subject, one who then
becomes part of the collective “we” that

will operationalize this activity system we call the FYW

course. As Mühlhäusler and Harré explain,

it is “largely through pronouns and functionally equivalent

indexing devices that responsibility for

actions is taken by actors and assigned to them by others”

(89). When a teacher identifi es the

student as “you,” he or she is marking the student as the

“other,” the one on whom the work of

the class will be performed: “You will encounter,” “You

will develop,” “You will learn.” But who

exactly prescribes the action? Passive constructions such

as the following are typical of the syl

labus: “During the semester, you will be required to

participate in class discussions,” “You will be

allowed a week to make your corrections.” But who will be

doing the requiring and the allowing?

The teacher? Not really. As much as the syllabus locates

students within positions of articulation, it also

positions the teacher within a position of articulation.

The teacher’s agency is seldom explicitly

asserted through the fi rst person singular; Baecker fi nds

that “I” comprises an average of 24 per

cent of total pronoun usage per syllabus (60). More often,

teachers mask their agency by using

“we.” Yet this “we” implicates the teacher into the

collective identity of the goals, resources,

materials, and policies of the course so that the teacher

as agent of the syllabus becomes also

an agent on behalf of the syllabus. The syllabus, in short,

constructs its writer, the teacher, as an

abstract nominalization in which the doer becomes the thing

done. This is in part the genred sub

jectivity the teacher assumes when he or she writes the

syllabus. For example, writers of syllabi

rely on abstract nominalizations and nominal clauses to

depict themselves as though they were the

events and actions that they describe. Take, for instance,

these typical examples: “Missing classes

will negatively affect your participation grade,” “Good

class attendance will help you earn a good

grade,” “Acceptable excuses for missing a class include …,”

“Each late appearance will be counted

as an absence,” “Guidance from texts constitutes another

important component,” “Writing is a

process,” “Conferences give us a chance to discuss the

course and the assignments,” “Plagiarism

will not be tolerated.” In these examples, we fi nd

objects, events, and actions that are incapable of

acting by themselves treated as if they in fact are

performing the actions. When a verb that con

veys action in a sentence is transformed into a noun, we

have the effect that somehow the action

is performing itself—is its own subject, as in “missing

classes” or “attendance.” Rather than being

the identifi able agents of the syllabus they write,

teachers become part of the action they expect

students to perform. This way, students come to see

teachers less as prescribers of actions and

more as guiding, observing, and evaluating student actions.

As such, activities become substitutes

for the agents who perform them, activities that teachers

recognize and value and students sub

sequently enact. The syllabus, therefore, is not merely

informative; if is also, as all genres are, a site of
action that
produces subjects who desire to act in certain ideological
and discursive ways. It establishes the

habitat within which students and teachers rhetorically

enact their situated relations, subjectivities,

and activities. Both the teacher and the students become

habituated by the genre of the syllabus

into the abstract nouns that they will eventually perform.

It is here, perhaps, that the syllabus’s

contractual nature is most evident, as it transforms the

individuals involved into the sum of their

actions, so that they can be described, quantifi ed, and

evaluated. No wonder, then, that the most

dominant verb form used in the syllabus is the future

tense, which indicates both permission and

obligation, a sense that the activities and behaviors (the

two become one in the syllabus) outlined

in the syllabus are possible and binding. To be sure, the

overwhelming number of future tense verbs

present in the syllabus (“you will learn,” “we will

encounter”) indicate that it is a genre that antici

pates or predicts future action. Yet the discursive and

ideological conditions it initially constitutes

are already at work from day 1 to insure that these future

actions will be realized. The syllabus, in short, maintains
and elicits the desires it helps its users fulfi ll. When a
teacher

writes the syllabus, he or she is not only communicating

his or her desires for the course, but is also

acquiring, negotiating, and articulating the desires

already embedded in the syllabus. These desires

constitute the exigencies to which the teacher rhetorically

responds in the syllabus. For example,

the contractual nature of the syllabus, especially the way

it objectifi es agency by constituting actors
as actions which can then be more easily quantifi ed and
measured, is socio-rhetorically realized by

such typifi ed conventions as the “we”/“you” pronoun

constructions, the abstract nominalizations,

and the auxiliary “will” formations. By using these

rhetorical conventions, the teacher internalizes

the syllabus’s institutional desires and enacts them as his

or her intentions, intentions that he or

she will expect students to respect and abide by. The

teacher’s intentions, therefore, are gener

ated and organized rhetorically by the generic conventions

of the syllabus. Teachers invent their

classes, themselves, as well as their students by locating

themselves within the situated topoi of the

syllabus, which functions both as the rhetorical instrument

and the conceptual realm in which the

FYW course is recognized and enacted. Indeed, the syllabus,

as Connors and Glenn warn teachers,

is “the fi rst expression of your personality,” but the

syllabus does not so much convey this a priori

personality as it informs it. The syllabus, then, helps

establish the FYW course as a system of activity and also
helps coor

dinate how its participants manage their way through and

perform the various genres that opera

tionalize this system, each of which constitutes its own

site of invention within which teachers and

students assume and enact a complex set of textured

actions, relations, and subjectivities. Within

this scene of writing, one such genre, the assignment (or

writing) prompt, plays a critical role in

constituting the teacher and student positions that shape

and enable student writing.
The Writing Prompt

While it does receive scholarly attention, mainly in

handbooks for writing teachers such as Linde

mann’s and Connors and Glenn’s (see also Murray and James
Williams), the writing prompt remains

treated as essentially a transparent text, one that

facilitates “communication between teacher and

student” (Reiff and Middleton 263). As a genre, it is

mainly treated as one more prewriting heuris

tic, helping or “prompting” student writers to discover

something to write about. As Connors and

Glenn describe it, “a good assignment … must be many

things. Ideally, it should help students prac

tice specifi c stylistic and organizational skills. It

should also furnish enough data to give students

an idea of where to start, and it should evoke a response

that is the product of discovering more

about those data. It should encourage students to do their

best writing and should give the teacher

her best chance to help” (58). Indeed, the most obvious

purpose of the writing prompt is to do just

that, prompt student writing by creating the occasion and

the means for writing. To treat the writing prompt merely
as a conduit for communicating a subject matter from

the teacher to the student, a way of “giving” students

something to write about, however, is to

overlook the extent to which the prompt situates student

writers within a genred site of action

in which students acquire and negotiate desires,

subjectivities, commitments, and relations before

they begin to write. The writing prompt not only moves the
student writer to action; it also cues

the student writer to enact a certain kind of action. This

is why David Bartholomae insists that
it is within the writing prompt that student writing
begins, not after the prompt. The prompt, like

any other genre, organizes and generates the conditions

within which individuals perform their

activities. As such, we cannot simply locate the beginning

of student writing in student writers and

their texts. We must also locate these beginnings in the

teachers’ prompts, which constitute the

situated topoi that the student writers enter into and

participate within. As Bartholomae notes, a

well-crafted assignment “presents not just a subject, but a

way of imagining a subject as a subject,

a discourse one can enter, and not as a thing that carries

with it experiences or ideas that can be

communicated” (“Writing Assignments” 306). This means that

the prompt does not precede stu

dent writing by only presenting the student with a subject

for further inquiry, a subject a student

simply “takes up” in his or her writing, although that

certainly is part of its purpose. More signifi

cantly, the prompt is a precondition for the existence of

student writing, a means of habituating the

students into the subject as well as the subjectivity they

are being asked to explore so that they can

then “invent” themselves and their subject matter within

it. As situated topoi, writing prompts are both rhetorical
instruments and conceptual realms—

habits and habitats. They conceptually locate students

within a situation and provide them with

the rhetorical means for acting within it. We notice

examples of this in assignments that ask stu

dents to write “literacy narratives,” narratives about

their experiences with and attitudes relating
to the acquisition of literacy. Teachers who assign them
usually presume that these narratives

give students the opportunity to access and refl ect on

their literacy experiences in ways that

are transformative and empowering, ways that describe the

challenges and rewards of acquiring

literacy. What these assignments overlook, however, is that

literacy narratives, like all genres,

are not merely communicative tools; they actually refl ect

and reinscribe desires and assumptions

about the inherent value and power of literacy. Students

who are asked to write literacy narra

tives come up against a set of cultural

expectations—embedded as part of the genre—about the

transformative power of literacy as a necessary tool for

success and achievement. Kirk Branch, for

instance, describes how students in his reading and writing

class at Rainier Community Learning

Center struggled to invent themselves within the

assumptions of these narratives. Aware of the

social motives rhetorically embedded within these

narratives, Branch explains, students wrote

them as much to describe their experiences with literacy as

to convince themselves and others of

the transforming power of literacy. For example, commenting

on one such student narrative, titled

“Rosie’s Story,” Branch concludes, “Rosie’s Story” writes

itself into a positive crescendo, a wave of enthusiasm
which tries to drown out the self-doubt she reveals
earlier. “Rosie’s Story” does not suggest an unbridled
confi dence in the power of literacy to solve her problems,
but by the end of the piece she drops the provisional
“maybes” and “shoulds” and encourages herself to maintain
her momentum: “Just keep it up.” Her story, then, reads as
an attempt to quash her self-doubt and to reassert the
potential of literacy in her own life. (220; my emphasis)
In the end, it seems, the power of genre and the ideology
it compels writers to sustain and articu

late wins out. Rosie does not seem to be expressing some

inherent intention as she writes this

narrative. Rather, she seems to be locating herself within

the desires embedded within the literacy

narrative, desires that inform how she recognizes and

performs herself in the situation of the read

ing and writing class. To claim, then, that her narrative

begins with and in her is to overlook the

extent to which she herself is being written by the genre

she is writing. We notice a remarkable example of how
genres shape our perceptions and actions when Lee, a

student in Branch’s class, writes in his literacy

narrative: “Furthermore Mr. Kirk gives us our assign

ments and he has always wanted us to do our best. He said,

‘If you hadn’t improved your English,

you wouldn’t have got a good job.’ Therefore I worry about

my English all the time” (Branch 221).

“Does it matter,” Branch wonders afterwards, “that I never

said this to Lee?” (221) Apparently,

Branch does not have to say it; Lee’s assumption about

literacy as a necessary tool for success is

already rhetorically embedded in the genre of the literacy

narrative as understood by the student,

an assumption that Lee internalizes as his intention and

enacts as his narrative when he writes this

genre. It is within the situated topoi of the genre that

Lee “invents” his narrative. Often, teachers of writing
overlook the socializing function of their writing prompts
and con

sequently locate the beginnings of student writing too

simply in the students rather than in the

prompts themselves. What these teachers overlook—and

writing teacher guides are no excep
tion—is that students fi rst have to situate and “invent”
themselves in our prompts before they can

assume the position of student writer. In fact, as we will

discuss momentarily, it is the prompt that

tacitly invokes the position that student writers are asked

to assume when they write, so that stu

dents read their way into the position of writer via our
prompts. Given this, it is perhaps more than

a little ironic that most guides to writing effective

assignment prompts emphasize the importance

of specifying an audience in the prompt while more or less

ignoring the students as audience of the

prompt. As one of her fi ve heuristics for designing

writing assignments, for instance, Lindemann

includes the following: “For whom are students writing? Who

is the audience? Do students have

enough information to assume a role with respect to the

audience? Is the role meaningful?” (215).

Here, the student is perceived only as potential writer to

the audience we construct in the prompt.

But what about the student as audience to the teacher’s

prompt, the position that the student fi rst

assumes before he or she begins to write? The assumption

seems to be that the student exists a

priori as a writer who has only to follow the instructions

of the teacher’s prompt rather than as

a reader who is fi rst invoked or interpellated into the

position of writer by the teacher’s prompt.

This process of interpellation involves a moment of tacit

recognition, in which the student fi rst

becomes aware of the position assigned to him or her and is

consequently moved to act out that

position as a writer. The prompt is a genre whose explicit

function is to make another genre, the student essay,

possible. Within the FYW course activity system, it helps

to create a timeliness and an opportu

nity for student writing in what Yates and Orlikowski,

following Bazerman, refer to as “kairotic

coordination” (110). In coordinating this interaction, the

writing prompt functions to transform

its writer (the teacher) and its readers (the students)

into a reader (the teacher) and writers (the

students). It positions the students and teacher into two

simultaneous roles: the students as read

ers and writers, the teacher as writer and reader. First of

all, the prompt rhetorically positions the

teacher as both a writer and a reader. As he or she writes

the prompt, the teacher positions him or

herself as reader for the student text that the prompt will
eventually make possible. The challenge

that the prompt creates for the teacher is how to create

the conditions that will allow students to

recognize him or her not as the writer of the prompt, but

as the eventual reader of their writing.

That is, the teacher has to fi nd a way to negotiate a

double subject position, a subject subject, one

who is doing the action (the subject as writer) and one on

whom the action is done (the subject as

reader). One way the teacher manages this double position

is through a series of typifi ed rhetorical

moves and statements. For example, the following phrases

are typical of prompts: “You should be

sure to consider,” “You probably realize by now that,” “As

you have probably guessed,” “As you all

know.” 5 These are loaded phrases, because they not only

offer suggestions the teacher-writer is
giving to the student-readers; they also offer hints about
what the teacher-writer will be expect

ing as a teacher-reader. When the teacher writes, “You

probably realize by now that one effective

way to support YOUR evaluation of those reviews is to offer

examples from them in the way of

quotes,” he is telling the students something about him as

an audience. He is basically saying, “Look,

I care about using quotes to support evaluation, so if you

want to write an effective evaluation for

me, use quotes.” Writing “one effective way” allows the

teacher-writer to covertly express what

he cares about as a reader. The next example is even more

covert—and clever. After describing

the assignment to the students, the teacher writes: To do

this, you should be able to explain why the scene is
central to the story’s plot, what issues are being dealt
with, and how or why the characters change. The trick here
is to employ as many specifi c details from the story as
possible. You have the responsibility to explain to your
audience why you made the decision you did. (my emphasis)
The teacher who begins this prompt as a writer describing
the assignment to the students as

readers here begins to emerge as a reader to the students

as writers. “You should be able to” is a

subtle, or perhaps not so subtle, way of letting students

know what he as a teacher-reader expects

from their writing. “The trick here” is even more

effective, because it allows the teacher to enact

the role of reader while seeming to be an objective

observer giving helpful advice. In fact, however,

there is no “trick” involved here, just a calculated

rhetorical way for the teacher to let students

know that he as a reader cares a great deal about the use

of specifi c details. The only “trick” at

work here is how the teacher creates the illusion that the
writer addressing them is not the same

person as the reader who will be reading their writing. It

is this rhetorical sleight of hand that the

prompt makes possible. The prompt, therefore, allows the

teacher to occupy two subject positions at once: writer/

coach and reader/evaluator. As a result, and at the same

time, the prompt also constitutes the

students as readers and writers. The students are prompted

into position or invoked as writers

by the prompt, within which they read and invent

themselves. Indeed, every prompt has inscribed

within it a subject position for students to assume in

order to carry out the assignment. In FYW

prompts, these roles can be quite elaborate, asking

students to pretend that “you have just been

hired as a student research assistant by a congressperson

in your home state” or “you have been

asked by Rolling Stone to write a critique of one of the

following fi lms.” The prompts do not stop

here, however. They go on to specify to students how they

should enact these roles, as in the fol

lowing example, in which the teacher asks students to

pretend that they are congressional aides: You must not
explain what you “think” about this subject; the
congressperson is more interested in the objective
consideration of the issues themselves. And of course, you
shouldn’t recommend whether or not your employer should
support the bill; you are, after all, only an aide. (my
emphasis)

Words such as “of course,” “obviously,” “after all,”

“remember,” and “certainly” all typically appear

in prompts. Their function is to establish shared

assumptions; however, we have to question just

how shared these assumptions really are. How shared, for

example, is the “of course” in the above
example? Does the student-writer share this knowledge about
congresspersons or is this a subtle

way in which the prompt writer coerces complicity? The fact

that the teacher-writer goes to the

trouble of mentioning it suggests that perhaps the

knowledge is not so obvious, that, in fact, “of

course,” “certainly,” and “as we all know” are rhetorical

means of presenting new information in

the guise of old information (Pelkowski 7). If this is the

case, then what we are witnessing is the

prompt at work constituting the students as writers who

assent to the ideology presented in the

prompt, just as we saw in the case of the literacy

narratives. To a great extent, students have to accept the
position(s) made available to them in the prompt

if they are to carry out the assignment successfully. As

all genres do, the prompt invites an uptake

commensurate with its ideology, just as we saw in the

example of the fi rst state of the union

address in which George Washington’s choice of the “king’s

speech” prompted an appropriate con

gressional reply mirroring the echoing speeches of

Parliament. While there is room for resistance,

for students to refuse to accept the shared assumptions the

prompt makes available to them, Pel

kowski reminds us that “the power structure of the

university denies students the ability to offer

alternative interpretations of prompts. … Rather, an

alternative interpretation of the assignment

is not seen as such, but as a ‘failure to respond to the

assignment’ (the F paper is often character

ized in this way in statements of grading criteria)” (16).

The writing prompt, in short, functions as

a site of invention in which teacher and student create the

conditions in which they will eventually

interact as reader and writer.

The Student Essay

The very coercion masked as complicity that we observe in

the syllabus and writing prompt is

also at work when students begin to write their essays.

This time, though, rather than being

objects of this discursive move, students are expected to

become its agents. In this way, students

learn to enact the desires they acquire as participants

within the FYW course and its system of

genres. For example, one of the tricks teachers often

expect students to perform in their writing

involves recontextualizing the desires embedded in the

writing prompt as their own self-generated

desires. That is, students are expected to situate their

writing within the writing prompt without

acknowledging its presence explicitly in their writing so

that it appears as though their writing cre

ated its own exigency, that somehow their writing is

self-prompted. This rhetorical sleight of hand

appears most visibly in the introductions of student

essays, because it is there that students are

asked to create the opportunity and timing for their essays

in relation to the opportunity and tim

ing as defi ned by the writing prompt. Experienced student

writers know that they must negotiate

this transaction between genres and do so with relative

ease. Less experienced student writers,

however, sometimes fail to recognize that the prompt and

essay are related but separate genres,

and their essays can frustrate teachers by citing the

prompt explicitly in a way that shatters the
illusion of self-suffi ciency we desire students to create
in their writing. In what follows, I will look

at several examples of student essays to examine to what

extent and how students negotiate this

diffi cult transaction between genres as they function as

agents on behalf of the prompt and agents

of their own writing. Yates and Orlikowski’s work on the

function of chronos and kairos in communicative interac

tion can help us interrogate the relation between the

writing prompt and the student essay. They

describe how genre systems choreograph interactions among

participants and activities chronolog

ically (by way of measurable, quantifi able, “objective”

time) and kairotically (by way of constructing

a sense of timeliness and opportunity in specifi c

situations) within communities (108–10). In terms

of chronos, the writing prompt assigns a specifi c time

sequence for the production of the student

essay, often delimiting what is due at what time and when.

In this way, the writing prompt defi nes

a chronological relationship between itself and the student

essay. At the same time, however, the

writing prompt also establishes the kairos for the student

essay by providing it with a timeliness

and an opportunity. In this way, the writing prompt defi

nes a recognizable moment that authorizes

the student essay’s raison d’Étre. Participating within

this kairotic relationship between two genres,

the student must, on the one hand, recognize the

opportunity defi ned for him or her in the prompt

and, on the other hand, reappropriate that opportunity as

his or her own in the essay. Carolyn

Miller describes this interaction as “the dynamic interplay

between … opportunity as discerned

and opportunity as defi ned” (312). Engaged in this

interplay, the student writer must discern the

opportunity granted by the prompt while writing an essay

that seemingly defi nes its own oppor

tunity. As such, the student writer needs to achieve and

demonstrate a certain amount of generic

dexterity, functioning within a genre system while masking

its interplay. I will now look at some

examples of how student writers negotiate this discursive

transaction. The following examples, from a FYW course, are
all written in response to the same writing

prompt. The students had read and discussed Clifford

Geertz’s “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese

Cockfi ght,” had been assigned to take on the “role of

‘cultural anthropologist’ or ‘ethnographer,’”

had conducted some fi eld observations, and were then

prompted to write, “in the vein of Geertz

in ‘Deep Play,’” a claim-driven essay about the “focused

gathering” [a term that Geertz uses] you observed. Your
essay should be focused on and centered around what you fi
nd to be most signifi cant and worth writing about in
terms of the “focused gathering” you observed. … Some
issues you might want to attend to include: How does the
event defi ne the community taking part in it? What does
the event express about the beliefs of the community? What
does the event say about the larger society?

Not only does the prompt assign students a subjectivity

(the role of cultural anthropologist), but

it also grants them an opportunity to transform their

observations into an argument. In taking up

this opportunity, the students perform a range of

transactions between their essays and the writ

ing prompt. Below, I will describe a sample of these

transactions, starting with essays in which the

writing prompt fi gures prominently (so that the coercion

is visible) and concluding with essays in

which the writing prompt is recontextualized as the

student’s own self-generated opportunity. In those examples
where students fail to enact the desired relationship
between the prompt and

the essay, the writing prompt fi gures explicitly in their

essays, fracturing the illusion of autonomy

that the essay, although prompted, tries to maintain. In

the most obvious cases, such as the follow

ing, the student narrates explicitly the process of the

essay’s production: In my last literary endeavor
[ostensibly referring to an earlier draft of the essay] I
focused on one facet of the baseball game that I had gone
to see. This time I am going to try to bring a few more
topics to the table and focus on one thing in particular
that I feel is signifi cant. 6

In this excerpt, the student appears to be narrating the

prompt’s instructions (stated as “be focused

on and centered around what you fi nd to be most signifi

cant”) as he fulfi lls them. That is, he is

telling us what he has been asked to do from one stage of

the assignment sequence to the next

as he does it, thereby making the coercion visible, as in

the words, “This time I am going to try to

…” Purposefully or not, the student in this case fails to

perform the desired uptake between the

prompt and his essay so that the prompt essentially speaks

through him. In a similar but less explicit way, the next
essay also fails to reappropriate the prompt’s defi ned

opportunity as its own, so that the essay remains overly

reliant on the prompt. The essay begins: Cultural events
are focused gatherings that give observers insights to that
certain culture. Geertz observes the Balinese culture and
gains insights on how signifi cant cockfi ghting is to the
Balinese: including issues of disquieting and the symbolic
meaning behind the cockfi ghts. My observations at a
bubble tea shop in the International District also have
similarities with Geertz’s observations of the Balinese
cockfi ght on the cultural aspect.
The phrases “cultural events” and “focused gatherings”
locate the language of the prompt in the

essay, but the fi rst sentence simply rewords the language

of the prompt rather than recontextualiz

ing it as part of the essay’s own constructed exigency. The

question that would likely come to most

teachers’ minds, even though they already know the answer,

would be, “So what? Why do we need

to know this?” Similarly, in the second sentence, the only

way to understand the relevance of the

transition into Geertz is to know the prompt, which makes

that connection. By the time the stu

dent describes her own observations in the third sentence,

too much of the prompt’s background

knowledge is assumed, so that, for the logic of these

opening sentences to work, a reader needs

the prompt as context, yet this is the very relationship

that the prompt and essay wish to downplay. Compare the
opening sentences of the above essay to the opening
sentences of the following

essay: When you want to know more about a certain society

or culture what is the fi rst thing that you need to do?
You need to make and analyze detailed observations of that
particular society or culture in its natural environment.
From there you should be able to come up with a rough idea
of “why” that particular culture or society operates the
way it does. That’s exactly what Clifford Geertz did. He
went to Bali to study the Balinese culture as an observer.

As in the earlier example, this excerpt borrows the

language of the prompt, but rather than

rewording that language, it reappropriates it. This time,

the reader meets Geertz on the essay’s

terms, after the student has provided a context for why

Geertz would have done what he did. The

same exigency that motivated Geetz becomes the student’s

exigency for writing his essay. Crude
as it might be, the question that begins the essay performs
the sleight of hand I described earlier, in

which the student recontextualizes the question the prompt

asks of him and asks it of his readers

as if this is the question he desires to ask. In this way,

the student becomes an agent of the agency

at work on him. The student, however, seems unable or

unwilling to sustain this uptake, for in the

very next paragraph, he fractures the illusion he has begun

to create. He writes: A couple of weeks ago I decided to go
visit some friends in Long Beach Washington. Since it was
something different from the norm of people in my class
analyzing concerts and baseball games I decided to do my
paper on Long Beach. I didn’t have to look far for a
cultural event to observe because the little ocean-side
town was having a parade. … I pretty much took the Geertz
approach and just tried to fi gure out what was going on.

Here, the student not only slips out of his assigned role
as a “cultural anthropologist” by acknowl

edging his position as a student, along with other students

writing a paper for class, but he also

makes visible the coercion that prompted his essay when he

writes that it did not take him long

to fi nd a cultural event to observe. Suddenly, he identifi

es himself as someone who has been

prompted to fi nd an event. At the same time, although he

does refer to Geertz in the previous

paragraph, the student’s statement, “I pretty much took the

Geertz approach,” appears to be

addressed to a reader who knows more than what the student

has already explained about Geertz.

That is, the statement imagines a reader who is familiar

with the prompt that directed the student

to take the Geertz approach in the fi rst place. After all,

the prompt asks students to write an essay
“in the vein of Geertz.” In the previous example, we
witness a student who begins to negotiate but does not
quite

sustain the complex interplay between the genred discursive

spaces of the writing prompt and the

student essay. In the next couple of examples, we observe

students who manage this discursive

transaction by recontextualizing the desires embedded in

the prompt as their own seemingly self

prompted desires to write. The following student begins her

essay by describing the activities and interactions that
typically

occur at her church, thereby performing her role as a

cultural anthropologist. Her third paragraph,

which follows two paragraphs of observations, marks a

transition. She writes: What purpose does all this serve?
Geertz states in Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfi
ght, “the cockfi ght is a means of expression.” (Geertz
420) In much the same way the Inn [the name of the church]
is the same thing. It is a gathering for college aged
people to express their faith in God.

By asking, “What purpose does all this serve?” this student

asks the question that the prompt asks

of her. In so doing, she makes it appear as though the

inquiry that follows stems from her own

curiosity. In the context of this appropriation, Geertz is

not so much a fi gure she inherits from the

prompt as he is a fi gure she invokes to create an

opportunity for her essay to analyze the signifi

cance of the Inn. The student recontextualizes the

opportunity as well as the authority from the

discursive space of the prompt to the discursive space of

the essay. The next student performs a similar uptake, and
does so with greater elegance. The student

begins her essay by describing underground hip-hop music

and the function it serves for its lis
teners, and then poses the question: “Is music created from
culture, or is culture created from

music?” The second paragraph begins to compare hip-hop to

symphonies. The student writes: On a different note, a
symphonic band concert creates a congregation of different
status people uniting to listen to a type of music they
all enjoy. “Erving Goffman has called this a type of
‘focused gathering’—a set of persons engrossed in a common
fl ow of activity and relating to one another in terms of
that fl ow” (Geertz 405). This type of “focused gathering”
is an example of music created from culture. “Focused
gatherings” provide different emotions according to
preference. The fl ocking of similar interests in the form
of “focused gatherings” makes up a culture. Similar values
are shared to create one group of equals producing music
for the same reason.” (my emphasis)

By posing the question, “Is music created from culture, or

is culture created from music?” the stu

dent creates an opportunity for her essay rather than

inheriting that opportunity from the prompt.

This is the question the student is asking. In the above

excerpt, the student does not rely on the

prompt’s authority to justify the claim that “a symphonic

band concert creates a congregation of

different status people uniting to listen to a type of

music they all enjoy.” Instead, she appropri

ates the authority the prompt grants her to assert this

claim. Only in the context of her authority

does Geertz then fi gure into the essay. Notice how

cleverly the student uses the quotation from

Geertz to make it appear as though his description of a

“focused gathering” was meant to defi ne

her focused gathering, the symphonic band concert. The

determiner “this” no longer modifi es the

cockfi ght as Geertz meant it to; instead, it refers back

to the concert, which is the student’s subject

of inquiry. In a way, this move creates the impression that

the student found Geertz rather than
having been assigned to use Geertz. There is very little
evidence of prompting here. In the remainder of the above
excerpt, the student appears to perform what Fuller and Lee

have described as an interiorized uptake, in which the

student becomes positioned, through her

interaction with the writing prompt, as a desiring subject

who speaks from that subjectivity (222).

In this case, the student internalizes the authority

embedded in the prompt as her own authority in

statements such as, “The fl ocking of similar interests in

the form of ‘focused gatherings’ makes up a

culture. Similar values are shared to create one group of

equals producing music for the same rea

son.” The student has appropriated the subjectivity

assigned to her and now speaks from that posi

tion as a “cultural anthropologist.” Fuller and Lee refer

to this process of negotiation as “textual

collusion,” a term they use to describe how writers and

readers move “around inside relations of

power” (215). More so than her peers, this student seems

able to negotiate the textured relations

between the prompt and the essay, repositioning herself in

the interplay between genred spaces so

that she becomes an agent of the agency at work on her.

Invention takes place at the intersection between the
acquisition and articulation of desire.

When teachers assign students a writing prompt, they

position students at this intersection so that

part of what students do when they invent their essays

involves recontextualizing the desires they

have acquired as their own self-prompted desires to write.

As such, teachers expect students to

manage the interplay between coercion and complicity that

we saw teachers perform in the syllabus
(manifested in the “you” and “we” formations). Not all
students, as we see in the above examples,

are able to perform this sleight of hand with the same

dexterity. And the reason for this, I would

argue, has partly to do with the fact that some students do

not know that this transaction requires

them to move around between two genred sites of action,

each with its own situated desires, rela

tions, subjectivities, and practices—in short, its own

positions of articulation. When they confl ate

these two worlds, students not only fracture the illusion

of self-suffi ciency the essay desires them

to maintain, but students also fail to reposition their

subjectivity and their subject matter within

the discursive and ideological space of the essay. One way

teachers can help students reposition

themselves within such spheres of agency is to make genres

analytically visible to students so that

students can participate within and negotiate them more

meaningfully and critically. …

Summary

Writing involves a process of learning to adapt,

ideologically and discursively, to various situations

via the genres that coordinate them. Writing is not only a

skill, but a way of being and acting in the

world in a particular time and place in relation to others.

The FYW course bears this out. As an

activity system, it is sustained and coordinated by its

various genres. Teachers and students assume

ways of being and acting in the classroom not only because

of its material setting—although that

certainly does play a major part (see Reynolds)—but also

because of its multitextured sites of
action as they are embodied within and between genres. As
such, the writing that students do in

the FYW course does not just begin with them by virtue of
their being (enrolled) in this setting;

it begins, rather, in the textured topoi that are already

in place, shaping and enabling the writing

that students as well as teachers do. As such, the

environment of the classroom—or any other

environment for that matter, including the doctor’s offi

ce—is not only an ontological fact, but also

a generic fact. It exists largely because we reproduce it

in our genres, each of which constitutes

a different but related topoi within which students and

teacher function, interact, and enact sub

jectivities and practices. Since we reproduce the FYW

course in the ways we articulate it, there is

really little that is artifi cial or arbitrary about it, at

least not in the way that Paul Heilker describes

the FYW course as being artifi cial: “Writing teachers need

to relocate the where of composition

instruction outside the academic classroom because the

classroom does not and cannot offer stu

dents real rhetorical situations in which to understand

writing as social action” (71). Part of my argument in this
essay is that the FYW course is a “real rhetorical
situation,” one

made up of various scenarios within which students (and

their teachers) recognize one another,

reposition themselves, interact, and enact their situated

practices in complex social and rhetori

cal frameworks. Once we recognize this, once we acknowledge

that the FYW course, like any

activity system, is “not a container for actions or texts”

but “an ongoing accomplishment” (Russell
“Rethinking” 513), we are on our way to treating the FYW
course as a complex and dynamic scene

of writing, one in which students can not only learn how to

write, but … can also learn what it

means to write: what writing does and how it positions

writers within systems of activity. Partici

pating in the textual dynamics of the FYW course is as

“real” a form of social action and interaction

as any other textual practice. As we have observed …,

genres position their users to perform certain situated
activities by

generating and organizing certain desires and

subjectivities. These desires and subjectivities are

embedded within and prompted by genres, which elicit the

various, sometimes confl icting, inten

tions we perform within and between situations. To assume

that the writer is the primary locus of

invention, then, is to overlook the constitutive power of

genre in shaping and enabling how writers

recognize and participate in sites of action. Rather than

being defi ned as the agency of the writer, invention is
more a way that writers

locate themselves, via genres, within various positions and

activities. Invention is thus a process

in which writers act as they are acted upon. The Patient

Medical History Form is a case in point.

So are the examples of George Washington and the fi rst

state of the union address, the example

of the social workers’ assessment report, and the example

of the student essay in relation to the

assignment prompt. All these examples point to the fact

that there is more at work in prompting

discourse than simply the writer’s private intentions or

even, for that matter, the demands of the
writer’s immediate exigencies. After all, George Washington
responded to the exigencies of an

unprecedented rhetorical situation not by inventing

something new, but by turning to an anteced

ent genre, the “king’s speech,” which carried with it a

rhetorical form of social action very much

at odds with his more immediate exigencies. The available

genre, rhetorically embodying social

motives so powerful as to override the inspired democratic

moment at hand, not only shaped the

way Washington recognized and acted within his rhetorical

situation, but the way Congress did

too. We notice a similar phenomenon at work in the example

of the writing prompt. The writing

prompt does not merely provide students with a set of

instructions. Rather, it organizes and gener

ates the discursive and ideological conditions which

students take up and recontextualize as they

write their essays. As such, it habituates students into

the subjectivities they are asked to assume

as well as enact—the subjectivities required to explore

their subjects. By expanding the sphere of

agency in which the writer participates, we in composition

studies can offer both a richer view of

the writer as well as a more comprehensive account of how

and why writers makes the choices

they do. … .

Notes

1 It is worth noting here that the word ethos in Greek

means “a habitual gathering place.” Just like rhetorical
strategy, then, the persona a rhetor assumes takes place
within a place, a habitation or topoi, so that when
rhetors invent, they are not only formulating the available
means of persuasion, but also the rhetorical persona they
need to carry out that rhetorical strategy. As LeFevre
explains, “ethos … appears in that socially created space,
in the ‘between,’ the point of intersection between speaker
or writer and listener or reader” (46). Considered as
situated topoi, genres not only shape and enable how
communicants recognize and enact social situations; genres
also shape and enable how communicants recognize and enact
their ethos or subjectivities within these situations.

2 With the increased use of computer technology in

education, especially networked classes and distance
learning, this claim becomes less generalizable. If
anything, though, the emergence of the “virtual classroom”
only strengthens my claims about genre and the classroom
that follow.

3 It is worth noting that the FYW classroom is no more

artifi cial than Epcot is “artifi cial” when compared to
the “real” Florida. As I discussed in chapter 4, Epcot is
as complex a rhetorical ecosystem as any
wilderness-designated area. Both are rhetorical
constructions, ways we defi ne, conceptualize, and behave
in our environments.

4 For this analysis, I randomly collected fi fteen syllabi

from colleagues at a research university and from
published teaching guides. All the syllabi are from FYW
courses, and refl ect a balance between experienced and new
teachers,

5 The examples I analyze in this section are culled from my

examination of fi fteen randomly collected writing prompts
from experienced and new teachers of FYW at a research
university.

6 I reprint this and the following student excerpts as they

appear in the students’ essays, errors and all.

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Readings HOW TO GET POWER THROUGH VOICE Peter Elbow

What if this hypothesis about voice is correct? One thing

follows from it that’s more important

than anything else: everyone, however inexperienced or

unskilled, has real voice available; every

one can write with power. Even though it may take some
people a long time before they can write

well about certain complicated topics or write in certain

formal styles, and even though it will take

some people a long time before they can write without

mistakes in spelling and usage, nevertheless,

nothing stops anyone from writing words that will make

readers listen and be affected. Nothing

stops you from writing right now, today, words that people
will want to read and even want to

publish. Nothing stops you, that is, but your fear or

unwillingness or lack of familiarity with what I

am calling your real voice.

But this clarion call—for that’s what I intend it to be

despite my careful qualifi ers—immediately

raises a simple question: Why doesn’t everyone use power if

it is sitting there available and why

does most writing lack power? There are lots of good

reasons. In this section I will give advice

about how to get real voice into your writing, but I will
present it in terms of an analysis of why

people so seldom use that power. …

People often lack any voice at all in their writing, even

fake voice, because they stop so often in the

act of writing a sentence and worry and change their minds

about which words to use. They have

none of the natural breath in their writing that they have

in the conditions for speaking. The list of

conditions is awesome: we have so little practice in

writing, but so much more time to stop and

fi ddle as we write each sentence; we have additional rules

of spelling and usage to follow in writing

that we don’t have in speaking; we feel more culpable for

our written foolishness than for what we

say; we have been so fully graded, corrected, and given

feedback on our mistakes in writing; and we

are usually trying to get our words to conform to some

(ill-understood) model of “good writing”

as we write.

Frequent and regular freewriting exercises are the best way

to overcome these conditions of
writing and get voice into your words. These exercises
should perhaps be called compulsory writ

ing exercises since they are really a way to compel

yourself to keep putting words down on paper

no matter how lost or frustrated you feel. To get voice

into your words you need to learn to get

each word chosen, as it were, not by you but by the

preceding word. Freewriting exercises help

you learn to stand out of the way.

In addition to actual exercises in nonstop writing—since

it’s hard to keep writing no matter what

for more than fi fteen minutes—force yourself simply to

write enormous quantities. Try to make

up for all the writing you haven’t done. Use writing for as
many different tasks as you can. Keep a

notebook or journal, explore thoughts for yourself, write

to yourself when you feel frustrated or

want to fi gure something out.

Practice revising for voice. A powerful exercise is to

write short pieces of prose or poetry that

work without any punctuation at all. Get the words so well

ordered that punctuation is never

missed. The reader must never stumble or have to reread a

phrase, not even on fi rst reading—and

all without benefi t of punctuation. This is really an

exercise in adjusting the breath in the words till

it guides the reader’s voice naturally to each pause and

full stop.

Read out loud. This is a good way to exercise the muscle

involved in voice and even in real

voice. Good reading out loud is not necessarily dramatic.

I’m struck with how some good poets or

readers get real voice into a monotone or chant. They are

trying to let the words’ inner resonance

come through, not trying to “perform” the words. (Dylan

Thomas reads so splendidly that we

may make the mistake of calling his technique “dramatic.”

Really it is a kind of chant or incantation

he uses.) But there is no right way. It’s a question of

steering a path between being too timid and

being falsely dramatic. The presence of listeners can

sharpen your ear and help you hear when you

chicken out or overdramatize. …

Real voice. People often avoid it and drift into fake

voices because of the need to face an audience. I

have to go to work, I have to make a presentation, I have

to teach, I have to go to a party, I have to

have dinner with friends. Perhaps I feel lost, uncertain,

baffl ed—or else angry—or else uncaring—

or else hysterical. I can’t sound that way with all these

people. They won’t understand, they won’t

know how to deal with me, and I won’t accomplish what I

need to accomplish. Besides, perhaps

I don’t even know how to sound the way I feel. (When we

were little we had no diffi culty sound

ing the way we felt; thus most little children speak and
write with real voice.) Therefore I will use

some of the voices I have at my disposal that will serve

the audience and the situation—voices I’ve

learned by imitation or made up out of desperation or out

of my sense of humor. I might as well. By

now, those people think those voices are me. If I used my

real voice, they might think I was crazy.

For real voice, write a lot without an audience. Do

freewritings and throw them away. Remove

yourself from the expectations of an audience, the demands

of a particular task, the needs of a

particular interaction. As you do this, try out many

different ways of speaking.

But a certain kind of audience can help you toward real

voice even though it was probably the

pressures of audience that led you to unreal voices in the

fi rst place. Find an audience of people

also committed to getting power in their writing. Find

times when you can write in each other’s

presence, each working on your own work. Your shared

presence and commitment to helping each

other will make you more powerful in what you write. Then
read your rough writing to each other.

No feedback: just welcoming each other to try out anything.

Because you often don’t even know what your power or your
inner self sounds like, you have to

try many different tones and voices. Fool around, jump from
one mood or voice to another, mimic,

play-act, dramatize and exaggerate. Let your writing be

outrageous. Practice relinquishing control.

It can help to write in settings where you never write (on

the bus? in the bathtub?) or in modes

you never use. And if, as sometimes happens, you know you
are angry but somehow cannot really

feel or inhabit that feeling, play-act and exaggerate it.

Write artifi cially. Sometimes “going through

the motions” is the quickest way to “the real thing.”

Realize that in the short run there is probably a confl ict

between developing real voice and

producing successful pragmatic writing—polished pieces that

work for specifi c audiences and situ

ations. Keeping an appropriate stance or tone for an

audience may prevent you from getting real
voice into that piece of writing. Deep personal outrage,
for example, may be the only authentic

tone of voice you can use in writing to a particular

person, yet that voice is neither appropriate nor

useful for the actual document you have to write—perhaps an

offi cial agency memo or a report to

that person about his child. Feedback on whether something

works as a fi nished piece of writing

for an audience is often not good feedback on real voice.

It is probably important to work on both

goals. Work on polishing things and making sure they have

the right tone or stance for that audi

ence. Or at least not the wrong one: you may well have to
play it safe. But make sure you also work

on writing that doesn’t have to work and doesn’t have to be

revised and polished for an audience.

And yet you needn’t give up on power just because a

particular writing situation is very tricky

for you. Perhaps you must write an essay for a teacher who
never seems to understand you;

or a report for a supervisor who never seems able to see

things the way you do; or a research

report on a topic that has always scared and confused you.

If you try to write in the most use

ful voice for this situation—perhaps cheerful politeness or

down-to-business impersonality—the

anger will probably show through anyway. It might not show

clearly, readers might be unaware of

it, yet they will turn out to have the kind of responses
they have to angry writing. That is, they will

become annoyed with many of the ideas you present, or

continually think of arguments against

you (which they wouldn’t have done to a different voice),

or they will turn off, or they will react

condescendingly.

To the degree that you keep your anger hidden, you are
likely to write words especially lack

ing in voice—especially dead, fi shy, fake-feeling. Or the

process of trying to write in a non-angry,

down-to-business, impersonal way is so deadening to you

that you simply get bored and sleepy and

devoid of energy. Your mind shuts off. You cannot think of

anything to say.

In a situation like this it helps to take a roundabout

approach. First do lots of freewriting where

you are angry and tell your reader all your feelings in
whatever voices come. Then get back to the

real topic. Do lots of freewriting and raw writing and

exploration of the topic—writing still in

whatever style comes out. Put all your effort into fi nding
the best ideas and arguments you can,

and don’t worry about your tone. After you express the
feelings and voices swirling around in you,

and after you get all the insights you can while not having
to worry about the audience and the

tone, then you will fi nd it relatively easy to revise and

rewrite something powerful and effective

for that reader. That is, you can get past the anger and
confusion, but keep the good ideas and the

energy. As you rewrite for the real audience, you can

generally use large chunks of what you have

already written with only minor cosmetic changes. (You

don’t necessarily have to write out all the

anger you have. It may be that you have three hundred pages
of angry words you need to say to

someone, but if you can get one page that really opens the
door all the way, that can be enough.

But if this is something new to you, you may fi nd you

cannot do it in one page—you need to rant

and rave for fi ve or ten pages. It may seem like a waste

of time, but it isn’t. Gradually you will get

more economical.)

By taking this roundabout path, you will fi nd more energy

and better thinking. And through the

process of starting with the voices that just happen and

seeing where they lead, often you will come

to a new voice which is appropriate to this reader but also

rings deeply. You won’t have to choose

between something self-defeatingly angry that will simply

turn off the reader or something pussy

footing, polite, and full of fog—and boring for you to

write.

A long and messy path is common and benefi cial, but you
can get some of the benefi ts quicker if

you are in a hurry. Just set yourself strict time limits

for the early writing and force yourself to write

without stopping throughout the early stages. When I have

to write an evaluation of a student I am

annoyed at, I force myself to write a quick freewriting

letter to the student telling him everything

on my mind. I make this uncensored, extreme, exaggerated,

sometimes even deliberately unfair—

but very short. And it’s for the wastepaper basket. Having
done this, I can turn to my offi cial evalu

ation and fi nd it much easier to write something fair in a

suitable tone of voice (for a document that

becomes part of the student’s transcript). I fi nish these

two pieces of writing much more quickly

than if I just tried to write the offi cial document and

pick my way gingerly through my feelings. …

Another reason people don’t use real voice is that it makes

them feel exposed and vulnerable. I

don’t so much mind if someone dislikes my writing when I am

merely using an acceptable voice, but

if I use my real voice and they don’t like it—which of

course is very possible—that hurts. The more

criticism people get on their writing, the more they tend

to use fake voices. To use real voice feels

like bringing yourself into contact with the reader. It’s

the same kind of phenomenon that happens

when there is real eye contact and each person experiences

the presence of the other; or when

two or more people stop talking and wait in silence while

something in the air gets itself clear.

Writing of almost any kind is exhibitionistic; writing with

real voice is more so. Many professional

writers feel a special need for privacy. It will help you,

then, to get together with one or more

others who are interested in recovering their power.

Feeling vulnerable or exposed with them is

not so diffi cult.

Another reason people don’t use their real voice is that it

means having feelings and memories

they would rather not have. When you write in your real
voice, it often brings tears or shaking—

though laughter too. Using real voice may even mean fi

nding you believe things you don’t wish to

believe. For all these reasons, you need to write for no

audience and to write for an audience that’s

safe. And you need faith in yourself that you will

gradually sort things out and that it doesn’t matter

if it takes time.
Most children have real voice but then lose it. It is often
just plain loud: like screeching or bang

ing a drum. It can be annoying or wearing for others.

“Shhh” is the response we often get to the

power of our real voice. But, in addition, much of what we

say with real voice is diffi cult for those

around us to deal with: anger, grief, self-pity, even love

for the wrong people. When we are hushed

up from those expressions, we lose real voice.

In addition, we lose real voice when we are persuaded to

give up some of our natural responses

to inauthenticity and injustice. Almost any child can feel

inauthenticity in the voices of many TV

fi gures or politicians. Many grown-ups can’t hear it so

well—or drown out their distrust. It is dif

fi cult to get along in the world if you hear all the

inauthenticity: it makes you feel alone, depressed,

hopeless. We need to belong, and society offers us

membership if we stop hearing inauthenticity.

Children can usually feel when things are unfair, but they
are often persuaded to go along

because they need to belong and to be loved. To get back to

those feelings in later life leads to rage,

grief, aloneness and—since one has gone along—guilt. Real

voice is often buried in all of that. If you

want to recover it, you do well to build in special support

from people you can trust so you don’t

feel so alone or threatened by all these feelings.

Another reason people don’t use real voice is that they run
away from their power. There’s

something scary about being as strong as you are, about

wielding the force you actually have. It
means taking a lot more responsibility and credit than you
are used to. If you write with real voice,

people will say “You did this to me” and try to make you
feel responsible for some of their actions.

Besides, the effect of your power is liable to be different

from what you intended. Especially at

fi rst. You cause explosions when you thought you were just
asking for the salt or saying hello. In

effect I’m saying, “Why don’t you shoot that gun you have?
Oh yes, by the way, I can’t tell you how

to aim it.” The standard approach in writing is to say you

mustn’t pull the trigger until you can aim

it well. But how can you learn to aim well till you start
pulling the trigger? If you start letting your

writing lead you to real voice, you’ll discover some

thoughts and feelings you didn’t know you had.

Therefore, practice shooting the gun off in safe places.

First with no one around. Then with

people you know and trust deeply. Find people who are
willing to be in the same room with you

while you pull the trigger. Try using the power in ways
where the results don’t matter. Write letters

to people that don’t matter to you. You’ll discover that

the gun doesn’t kill but that you have more

power than you are comfortable with.

Of course you may accept your power but still want to

disguise it. That is, you may fi nd it con

venient, if you are in a large organization, to be able to

write about an event in a fuzzy, passive “It

has come to our attention that …” kind of language, so you

disguise not only the fact that it was

an action performed by a human being with a free will but

indeed that you did it. But it would be
incorrect to conclude, as some people do, that all
bureaucratic, organizational, and governmental

writing needs to lack the resonance of real voice. Most

often it could do its work perfectly well

even if it were strong and clear. It is the personal,

individualistic, or personality-fi lled voice that is inap

propriate in much organizational writing, but you can write

with power in the impersonal, public,

and corporate voice. You can avoid “I” and its fl avor, and
talk entirely in terms of “we” and “they”

and even “it,” and still achieve the resonance of real

voice. Real voice is not the sound of an indi

vidual personality redolent with vibes, it is the sound of

a meaning resonating because the individual

consciousness of the writer is somehow fully behind or in

tune with or in participation with that

meaning.

I have stressed the importance of sharing writing without

any feedback at all. What about asking

people to give you feedback specifi cally on real voice? I

think that such feedback can be useful, but

I am leery of it. It’s so hard to know whether someone’s

perception of real voice is accurate. If you

want this feedback, don’t get it early in your writing

development, make sure you get it from very

different kinds of people, and make sure not to put too

much trust in it. The safest method is to

get them to read a piece and then ask them a week later
what they remember. Passages they dislike

often have the most real voice.

But here is a specifi c exercise for getting feedback on

real voice. It grows out of one of the fi rst

experiences that made me think consciously about this

matter. As an applicant for conscientious

objector status, and then later as a draft counselor, I

discovered that the writing task set by Selec

tive Service was very interesting and perplexing. An

applicant had to write why he was opposed to

fi ghting in wars, but there was no right or wrong answer.

The draft board would accept any reasons

(within certain broad limits); they would accept any style,

any level of skill. Their only criterion was

whether they believed that the writer believed his own

words. (I am describing how it worked when

board members were in good faith.)

Applicants, especially college students, often started with

writing that didn’t work. I could infer

from all the arguments and commotion and from conversations

with them that they were sincere

but as they wrote they got so preoccupied with theories,

argument, and reasoning that in the end

there was no conviction on paper. When I gave someone this

feedback and he was willing to try

and try again till at last the words began to ring true,
all of a sudden the writing got powerful and

even skillful in other ways.

The exercise I suggest to anybody, then, is simply to write

about some belief you have—or even

some experience or perception—but to get readers to give

you this limited, peculiar, draft-board

like feedback: where do they really believe that you

believe it, and where do they have doubts? The

useful thing about this exercise is discovering how often

words that ring true are not especially full

of feeling, not heavy with conviction. Too much “sincerity”

and quivering often sounds fake and
makes readers doubt that you really believe what you are
saying. I stress this because I fear I have

made real voice sound as though it is always full of loud

emotion. It is often quiet. …

In the end, what may be as important as these specifi c

exercises is adopting the right frame of mind.

Look for real voice and realize it is there in everyone

waiting to be used. Yet remember, too,

that you are looking for something mysterious and hidden.

There are no outward linguistic char

acteristics to point to in writing with real voice.

Resonance or impact on readers is all there is.

But you can’t count on readers to notice it or to agree

about whether it is there because of all the

other criteria they use in evaluating writing (e.g.,

polished style, correct reasoning, good insights,

truth-to-life, deep feelings), and because of the negative

qualities that sometimes accompany real

voice as it is emerging. And you, as writer, may be wrong

about the presence or absence of real

voice in your writing—at least until you fi nally develop a

trustworthy sense of it. You have to be

willing to work in the dark, not be in a hurry, and have

faith. The best clue I know is that as you

begin to develop real voice, your writing will probably

cause more comment from readers than

before (though not necessarily more favorable comment).

If you seek real voice you should realize that you probably
face a dilemma. You probably have

only one real voice—at fi rst anyway—and it is likely to

feel childish or distasteful or ugly to you.

But you are stuck. You can either use voices you like or
you can be heard. For a while, you can’t
have it both ways.

But if you do have the courage to use and inhabit that real
voice, you will get the knack of reso

nance, you will learn to expand its range and eventually

make more voices real. This of course is

the skill of great literary artists: the ability to give

resonance to many voices.

It’s important to stress, at the end, this fact of many

voices. Partly to reassure you that you are

not ultimately stuck with just one voice forever. But also
because it highlights the mystery. Real

voice is not necessarily personal or sincere. Writing about

your own personal concerns is only one

way and not necessarily the best. Such writing can lead to
gushy or analytical words about how

angry you are today: useful to write, an expression of

strong feelings, a possible source of future

powerful writing, but not resonant of powerful for readers

as it stands. Real voice is whatever

yields resonance, whatever makes the words bore through.

Some writers get real voice through

pure fantasy, lies, imitation of utterly different writers,

or trance-writing. It may be possible to get

real voice by merging in your mind with another

personality, pretending to be someone else. Shed

ding the self’s concerns and point of view can be a good

way to get real voice—thus writing fi ction

and playing roles are powerful tools. Many good literary

artists sound least convincing when they

speak for themselves. The important thing is simply to know

that power is available and to fi gure

out through experimentation the best way for you to attain

it.
Reprinted from Peter Elbow. “How to Get Power Through
Voice.” Writing With Power. 2nd edition. Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1981, 304–313. Reprinted by

permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. STYLE AND THE
RENAISSANCE OF COMPOSITION STUDIES Tom Pace

I must say, though, that An Alternative Style is the only

work I’ve published that has generated

hate mail, and the only work I’ve ever done that was
attacked at a national meeting by a colleague

who knew I was in the audience. —Winston Weathers

Why is it that the one feature most popularly associated

with writing is the one most ignored by

writing instructors? Many of us who became English majors

in college and later pursued careers as

professionals in graduate programs did so because of a love

for the written word, that feeling of

magic and mystery that overcame us when we read a

well-crafted sentence or a perfectly placed

word in our favorite book, poem, play, or essay. We wanted

our writing to achieve at least some

semblance of that magic. We wanted our writing to be

beautiful, our language to inspire, our words

to mean something to someone. For those of us who became

English teachers, perhaps we wanted

to help others appreciate a well-wrought sentence or

paragraph, to arouse others to be moved

by beautiful language. Perhaps we wanted our students to

appreciate the beauty of the way John

Keats describes a centuries-old urn, the way Virginia Woolf

describes the winds and waves during a

journey to a distant lighthouse, or the way Toni Morrison

relates the pain of a young girl upon being

thrust into a terrifying world of racism and hate. Or

perhaps we wanted our students to recognize

the political power of language, its capacity to lead

people to social justice—the way Martin Luther

King, in a speech on a hot August day, inspired an entire

generation to change the world. Whatever

our reasons, all of us at one time or another came across

words that stirred us enough to want to

make that love of language our life’s work.

But many writing teachers since the mid-1980s or so have

gravitated away from teaching the

actual craft of writing interesting sentences, well-chosen

words, or fi nely tuned paragraphs. Many

professionals in the fi eld of composition studies have

shunned, it seems, the one feature most read

ers and writers associate with good writing—style. While

the public, as well as professors outside

of English departments, complain loudly about student

writers’ lack of stylistic grace and control,

many writing teachers devote very little of their courses

to direct instruction in style or to analysis

of stylistic choices. Part of the reason why many

instructors neglect to introduce their students

to style stems from their misunderstanding of the term and

its place within rhetorical education.

In a 2002 opinion piece in College English, Peter Elbow

makes a call for the fi eld of composition

and the fi eld of literary studies to learn from, rather

than oppose, one another. Elbow hopes that

“both cultures could fully accept that a discipline can be

even richer and healthier if it lacks a single

vision center. A discipline based on this multiplex model

can better avoid either-or thinking and

better foster a spirit of productive catholic pluralism”

(544). In the course of this argument, he

makes a confession: “I miss elegance.” He also misses the

fun of playing with language that the fi eld

of composition, he insists, has lost. Elbow continues: “I’m

sad that the composition tradition seems

to assume discursive language as the norm and imaginative,

metaphorical language as somehow

special or marked or additional. I’d argue that we can’t

harness students’ strongest linguistic and

even cognitive powers unless we see imaginative and

metaphorical language as the norm—basic

or primal” (536).

Elbow, in other words, misses style. He says as much late

in the essay when he suggests a list of

traits that the fi eld of composition could learn from

literary studies: “And what do I wish people

in composition could learn from the culture of literature?

More honoring of style, playfulness, fun,

pleasure, humor. Better writing—and a more pervasive

assumption that even in academic writing,

even in prose, we can have playfulness, style,

pleasure—even adornment and artifi ce—without

being elitist snobs” (543).

Amen.

Elbow is insisting here that studying and teaching

style—and playing with language in both

scholarship and the classroom—are by no means an exercise

in some type of dainty humanism for

a few privileged souls, or dull regurgitation of rules. No.

Rather, Elbow is suggesting that the study

and teaching of style should reside at the very heart of

what we should do as composition teach
ers—instruction in the craft, the skill, and the infi nite
richness of language. And, I would add, the

teaching of style, the playing around with words, the

messing around with metaphorical language

is conducive, not adverse, to academic writing and to

socially responsible writing instruction. But

how did the fi eld of composition fi nd itself in this

state? What is it about the condition of composi

tion studies at the beginning of the twenty-fi rst century

that could lead Elbow to make such a con

fession? One answer to this question is that

compositionists over the last twenty years or so have

regarded style as a throwaway element of writing pedagogy,

an element that has less to do with

knowledge building and more to do with mere surface

correctness. Many of these scholars operate

within a linear narrative that assumes more complex writing

theories supersede less complicated

ideas about composing. A review of a key moment in

composition and rhetoric’s more recent past,

the early process movement, will show that their

multifaceted approaches to stylistics is not as

simplistic as has been previously imagined.

Style and the Early Process Movement

This desire for disciplinary status in composition studies

has led to a tension between the desire to

tackle what John C. Gerber, in the very fi rst issue of

College Composition and Communication (CCC)

in 1950, called the “practical needs of the professions”

and the desire to elevate its “professional

standards” (12). In her essay “Reading—and Rereading—the

Braddock Essays,” Lisa Ede refl ects on

the early days of the CCCC conference and of its journal,

CCC. Ede recognizes that this tension

informed much of the work during the early process years:

Service to colleagues, students, and society—or progress as

a scholarly discipline? Since the

inception of the CCCC, many have believed that it is

possible and necessary to achieve both

goals. Indeed, many have hoped not only to achieve these

goals but also to contribute broadly

to progressive values and practices—to function, in other

words, as agents of social, political,

and economic changes. … Beliefs such as these have marked

the fi eld as transgressive within

the academy, even as many in the fi eld have worked to

acquire accoutrements of traditional

disciplinarity “such” accoutrements as graduate programs

and specialized journals, confer

ences, and associations (all of which have had the effect

of extending the scholarly and pro

fessional enterprise of composition beyond the domains of

the CCCC and CCC) (1999, 11).

Ever since, the fi eld of composition has been working

through the tensions among its service

mission, its agenda for social reform, and its desire for
professional status. The early process move

ment of the 1960s and 1970s, in many ways, was an attempt

“to achieve both goals,” as Ede put it.

The sense was that in studying how students learned to

write, writing teachers could accomplish

the two goals at once—one, discover practical, usable

pedagogical methods to teach writing more

effectively and two, build a body of research and methods

of inquiry that could serve as the founda

tion for composition studies. These two results combined

led the way for social reform.

Out of this work, style became an important aspect of

writing pedagogy during the days of the

early process movement. Style was often seen as a tool of

writing instruction in which students

could learn various writing strategies and learn to

conceive of writing as choice. Certain composi

tionists drew from several areas of inquiry to develop

pedagogies that used style as a key element

of teaching writing: Ken Macrorie wrote a text-book,

Telling Writing (1970), in which he encour

aged students to break out of the routine of writing dull,

monotonous prose—which he termed

“Engfi sh” – and stretch their writing legs by using

journals and analyzing word choice in an effort

to make connections between language use and personal

experience; and Peter Elbow published

such works as Writing without Teachers (1973) and Writing

with Power (1981), in which he provided

numerous writing exercises and prompts in an effort to

encourage people to think of themselves

as writers, to break through the conventional roadblocks of

traditional grammar instruction and

drill exercises, and to write with vividness and magic. In

many ways, these teachers were offering

alternatives to the tradition-bound constraints of grammar

instruction and the focus on surface

error that process pedagogy also countered. For these

teachers and scholars, the teaching of style

formed the centerpiece of writing pedagogy, a type of

pedagogy that connected language acquisi

tion to its contexts.

Francis Christensen, for instance, drew from a background

in linguistics to develop a method

of teaching writing that focused on sentence- and

paragraph-level writing instruction. Edward P.

J. Corbett looked to the recovery of classical rhetorical

texts as sources for the teaching of style.

And Winston Weathers examined alternative writing styles as

a way of teaching students to resist

dominant, oppressive forms of language. Although these

scholars drew from different sources and

backgrounds, they all used studies in style as a gateway

for students to become more sophisticated

and profi cient users of language.

Unfortunately, their work has not always been remembered in

that way. In 1991, The Politics of

Writing Instruction: Postsecondary, edited by Richard

Bullock and John Trimbur, appeared. This col

lection features essays on the political implications of

teaching writing in college and offers many

examples of classrooms infl uenced by critical pedagogy.

Yet, none of these essays says anything

about the teaching of style, or even about the teaching of

writing in general. That same year,

Patricia Harkin and John Schilb published their collection

titled Contending with Words, a series of

essays that explores the role of composition studies in a

postmodern world. As the introduction

attests, this collection is “for college and university

teachers of English who believe that the study

of composition and rhetoric is not merely the service

component of the English department, but

also an inquiry into cultural values” (1991, 3). Again,

nothing on style or on teaching the craft of

writing appears in its pages. On the contrary, one of the

essays, John Clifford’s “The Subject in Dis

course,” regards the teaching of craft as antithetical to

teaching critical pedagogy. Clifford argues

that institutions of education, including writing

classrooms, are subservient to dominant ideologies.

He criticizes such composition textbooks as St. Martin’s

Handbook that make assumptions about

apolitical subjectivity based on “romantic” notions of the

individual writer. Clifford concludes; “We

should do the intellectual work we know best: helping

students to read and write and think in ways

that both resist domination and exploitation and encourage

self consciousness about who they are

and can be in the social world” (1991, 51).

What strikes me about Clifford’s argument is the dichotomy

he establishes between teaching

writing as a service and teaching writing as critical

literacy. Clifford appears to suggest that teaching

skills such as diction, sentence structure, and paragraph

organization contradict the goals of teach

ing students that writing is a site “where hegemony and

democracy are contested, where subject

positions are constructed, where power and resistance are

enacted, where hope for a just society

depends on our committed intervention” (1991, 51). If we

see style merely as a prescriptive set of

colonizing rules—as Clifford argues such books as St.

Martin’s Handbook do—then, yes, it can be

very destructive. But style is more than just a set of

colonizing rules. Style can fi nd a space within

critical pedagogy.

Ten years later, Gary Tate, Amy Ruppier, and Kurt Schick
edited a series of essays entitled A
Guide to Composition Pedagogies, in which the only mention
of style comes in William Covino’s essay

on “Rhetorical Pedagogy.” Here, Covino refers to style only

in his review of how Ramus placed

it under “Rhetoric” as part of his method. These three

collections of essays on writing pedagogy

ignore completely the teaching of style as a viable element

of writing pedagogy in the post-process

era.

This dismissal suggests that the teaching of style has been

ignored over the last twenty years,

with many believing the work of the early process-movement

compositionists to be “uncritical” or

worse, elitist. But as a rereading of Christensen, Corbett,

and Weathers will show, their work in

style encourages students to become sophisticated language

users and, in some instances, to resist

dominant forms of discourse. In some ways, these

collections had an unforeseen effect: while they

were successful at articulating the political nature of

writing instruction, they did so at the expense

of lumping some early composition scholars into a

collective heap that labeled their work as devoid

of contextual concerns. In other words, those of us who

came of age in composition and rhetoric

graduate programs during the mid- to late 1990s, in the

wake of “the social turn,” often assumed

that the work of scholars such as Christensen, Corbett, and

Weathers was oversimplistic, too

surface-oriented, and apolitical.

Francis Christensen’s Generative Rhetoric

Francis Christensen was a composition and language scholar

who was interested in discovering

ways for students to write sentences and paragraphs in the

manner of professional writers. His

hope was that teachers could introduce the composing of

sentences and paragraphs to their stu

dents in a fashion that would lead students to generate

ideas at the same time that they learn new

and varied writing strategies. Christensen called this idea

“generative rhetoric,” and he developed

it in a pair of articles for CCC—“The Generative Rhetoric

of the Sentence” (1963) and “The Gen

erative Rhetoric of the Paragraph” (1965)—and later in a

longer work, Notes toward a New Rhetoric

(1967; I cite from the second edition of 1978).

Christensen’s method of using generative rhetoric

to help students develop their style while inventing ideas

in their writing at the same time enjoyed

a brief period of popularity during the 1960s and 1970s.

“We need,” he wrote, “a rhetoric of the sentence that will

do more than combine the ideas of

primer sentences. We need one that will generate ideas”

(1978, 26). Rather than teach students

how to develop sentences based on traditional classifi

cations, such as loose, balanced, or periodic

sentences, or on traditional grammatical structures—simple,

compound, complex—Christensen’s

method asks students to examine the ideas expressed in the

sentences and then rephrase the

idea in a more effective way. In “The Generative Rhetoric

of the Sentence,” Christensen develops

the idea of the “cumulative sentence,” in which ideas are

generated by student writers who add

modifying words and phrases to their sentences, either

before, after, or within the main clause of

the sentence. The words or phrases that modify the base

clause can have either a subordinate or

coordinate relationship to the base clause. In other words,

Christensen sees the sentence not as a

simple list of words that convey ideas. The sentence, he

says, “is dynamic rather than static, repre

senting the mind thinking.” He adds that “the mere form of

the sentence generates ideas” (p. 28).

For Christensen, therefore, instruction in sentence

development is not a static exercise but is the

very way writers construct meaning in their texts.

Christensen suggested that students practice studying

multiple sentence types to recognize how

meaning is developed by the addition of various clauses and

clusters. Again, his assumption here

is not for students to develop stylistic fl ourish and

confi dence in a decontextualized environment.

Rather, he stressed that these exercises give students more

options for their own compositions,

as well as help them develop into stronger readers. In “The

Generative Rhetoric of the Sentence,”

Christensen argues that his exercises go beyond

decontextualized drill and provide students with

the tools they need to develop confi dence in their reading

of texts and in their writing:

What I am proposing carries over of itself into the study

of literature. It makes the student

a better reader of literature. It helps him thread the

syntactical mazes of much mature writ

ing, and it gives turn insight into that elusive thing we

call style. Last year, a student told me

of rereading a book by her favorite author, Willa Cather,

and of realizing for the fi rst time

why she liked reading her: she could understand and

appreciate the style. For some students,

moreover, such writing makes life more interesting as well

as giving them a way to share their

interest with others. When they learn to put concrete

details into a sentence, they begin to

look at life with more alertness (1978, 37–38).

Here, Christensen makes the connection between instruction

in style and instruction in larger,

contextual factors that go into language learning. He

insists that classroom focus on the stylistics of

language allows students to make connections between their

writing and their reading and, in the

process, leads them to be able to make larger connections

that go beyond the classroom.

Christensen’s idea of coordinate and subordinate combine to

create what he terms “cumula

tive sentences.” In other words, students create new

sentences and phrases at the same time

they develop new ideas for composition. So, in a very

concrete way, Christensen’s rhetoric of the

sentence is not merely a tool to develop style but is an

invention technique as well. His rhetoric

encourages student writers to examine their thoughts and

the meanings that their words convey.

Christensen’s ideas provide students with a way to make

their writing more textured, more rich,

and less threadbare, They will create and make meaning as

they write more complex sentences.

Christensen points out the difference between teaching the

cumulative sentence and teaching the

periodic sentence, a type of sentence that combines a

number of thoughts and statements in a

number of balanced clauses. Christensen notes that the

cumulative sentence is a more effective

sentence for composition instruction because of its

capacity to be used as a tool of invention:

The cumulative sentence is the opposite of the periodic

sentence. It does not represent

the idea as conceived, pondered over, reshaped, packaged,

and delivered cold. It is dynamic

rather than static, representing the mind thinking. … The

additions stay with the same idea,

probing its bearings and implications, exemplifying it or

seeking an analogy or metaphor for

it. … Thus the mere form of the sentence generates ideas.

It serves the needs of both writer

and reader, the writer by compelling him to examine his

thought, the reader by letting him

into the writer’s thought (28).

As students work and grapple with the base clause by adding

modifi ers and other clauses to

it, they generate ideas. These ideas expand on the basic

idea conveyed in the main clause and, in

the process, lead students to develop and engage additional

ideas. Christensen’s rhetoric of the

sentence, in many ways, hearkens back to Quintilian’s call

for facilitas with language, because the

generative nature of cumulative sentences allow student

writers to work with and play around with

language in a manner that provides students with numerous

options and choices. This generative

quality is ethical and political, not merely formal and

apolitical.

Here’s a student example where additional description, via

subordinate clauses, adds to the

generative quality of the writing in a way that provides

additional options for composing:

the hospital was set for night running,

smooth and silent, (A + A)

its normal clatter and hum muffl ed, (Abs)

the only sounds heard in the white walled room distant and
unreal: (Abs)

a low hum of voices from the nurses’ desk, (NC)

quickly stifl ed, (VC)

the soft squish of rubber-soled shoes on the tiled

corridor, (NC)

starched white cloth rustling against itself, (NC)

and, outside, the lonesome whine of wind in the country

night (NC) and the Kansas dust beating against the
windows. (NC). (34)

Here, the student sets the scene for the reader: a hospital
at night. One by one, the writer adds

additional clauses that not only add description of the

setting, but also add possibilities for new

ideas and circumstances: the “low hum of voices”

introducing characters, the “lonesome whine”

suggesting a certain mood and atmosphere, “the Kansas dust”

bringing in geographical possibilities.

In other words, the student has a long sentence in which a

series of events and circumstances can

be further invented and developed in a manner that leads

the student to more mature composi

tions and to a more mature style.

Christensen’s generative method has not been completely

forgotten. It is featured prominently
in two popular handbooks for fi rst-time teachers of
composition: The St. Martin’s Guide to Teach

ing Writing, edited by Robert Connors and Cheryl Glenn

(1995), and Erika Lindemann’s A Rhetoric

for Writing Teachers (1995). Both texts feature chapters

that introduce composition instructors to

teaching style, sentences, and paragraphs. But, while

Christensen’s rhetoric has found a space in

these popular handbooks, it seems to me that his placement

in these texts merely reinforces the

popular critiques of his work—that his theories about

rhetoric succeed for the more mundane,

uncritical work of actually teaching writing and have

nothing to do with the social context sur

rounding students’ writing experiences. For example, The

St. Martin’s Guide relegates Christensen

to the back of its text in a chapter titled “Teaching the

Sentence and the Paragraph.” This chapter

comes after lengthy chapters on invention and arrangement.

Their placement of Christensen’s

rhetoric suggests that his rhetoric of the sentence and

paragraph should be reserved for matters

of composition outside of invention and arrangement, or

other elements where ideas may be

discovered. Rather, assumptions at play in The St. Martin’s

Guide hold that Christensen’s method is

a prescriptive one that teaches students rigid form without

exploring the tension between form

and content. In The St. Martin’s Guide, the editors write

that Christensen’s generative rhetoric rein

forces a mechanistic, surface-driven pedagogy:

Should you become uncomfortable with the prescriptive

nature of any of the approaches
in this chapter, you are not alone. We all may worry that
in condensing writing to discrete,

mechanical formulas, we are taking away from more than we

are giving. But be assured that

with continued reading and practice in writing, your

students should eventually transcend

rigid, formal rules. In the fi nal analysis, a grasp of the

rules seldom holds anyone down and,

when understood correctly, can help keep one up (Connors

and Glenn 1995, 262).

On the one hand, Connors and Glenn recognize that sentence

rhetorics like Christensen’s are

useful in teaching a student to write. On the other hand,

they assume that Christensen’s methods

reinforce “rigid, formal rules,” and are “discrete,

mechanical formulas” that are to be learned and

then quickly advanced upon. Christensen’s call for a

generative rhetoric of the sentence and the

paragraph gets at the very heart of the tension between

form and content and, in the process,

provides students with tools to develop syntactic maturity

while, at the same time, they develop

ideas to write about.

Edward P. J. Corbett and Classical Style

Corbett was among a coterie of scholars who rediscovered

and made available to writing teach

ers classical rhetorical texts during the 1960s and 1970s.

His fi rst article for CCC was titled “The

Usefulness of Classical Rhetoric” (1963). In his preface to

Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student,

Corbett connects his interest in classical rhetoric to the

preparation of students for civic participa

tion. It is acknowledged that a knowledge of rhetoric helps

citizens defend against demagogues and

other “exploiters of specious arguments, half-truths, and

rank emotional appeals to gain personal

advantage rather than to promote the public welfare” (1990,

30).

Style, of course, played a signifi cant role in Corbett’s

recovery of classical rhetoric. For Corbett,

style was not simply a matter of writing pretty language

for the sake of artifi ce but was interwoven

with discovering ideas and creating textual choices. In his

textbook on rhetoric, Corbett connects

style to Aristotle’s defi nition of rhetoric: 1 “Style

does provide a vehicle for thought, and style can

be ornamental; but style is something more than that. It is

another one of the ‘available means of

persuasion,’ another of the means of arousing appropriate

emotional responses in the audience,

and of the means of establishing the proper ethical image”

(1990, 381).

He dismissed the notion that style is merely “dressed up

thought,” and tried to remind the fi eld

that classical rhetoricians also rejected the idea that

style is mere ornament, noting that “none of

the prominent classical rhetoricians—Isocrates, Aristotle,

Demetrius, Longinus, Cicero, Quintil

ian—ever preached such a doctrine” (1990, 381). But again,

many in the fi eld did not perceive

these classical rhetoricians in this way—due in large part

to the types of histories that were being

written, as well as composition’s desire to defi ne itself

differently from its classical predecessors. 2

Corbett understood that how something is written directly

affects what is being conveyed in the
writing. “A writer must be in command of a variety of
styles,” Corbett asserted, “in order to draw

on the style that is most appropriate to the situation”

(1990, 381). He stressed that the modern

student could become a better writer by focusing primarily

on invention.

In “The Usefulness of Classical Rhetoric” Corbett reminds

readers that imitation is not merely

slavish copying of someone else’s style but rather the

study and adaptation of multiple styles that

assist students in gathering the “available means.”

Many of our students need exercise in constructing their

own sentence patterns. They can

be assisted in acquiring this skill by such exercises as

merely copying passages of sophisticated

prose, constructing their own sentences according to

models, varying sentence patterns.

The term imitation suggests to some people the attempt to

encourage students to acquire

someone else’s style. Such a view betrays a total

misunderstanding of what the rhetoricians

meant by imitation and what they hoped to accomplish by it.

(1963, 163).

In Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student, Corbett put

together a series of imitation exercises

to help students develop an eloquent style. The point here

is for students to draw from a whole

host of prose styles and not focus solely on one style.

Here, Corbett echoes the suggestion of

Erasmus nearly fi ve hundred years earlier, who implored

students at St. Paul’s not to imitate Cicero

only but to draw from other writers as well. Corbett

provides examples from a wide range of
authors and prose styles, including the Bible, John Dryden,
Edward Gibbon, Mary Wollstonecraft,

Abraham Lincoln, James Baldwin, Susan Sontag, Alice Walker,

and Toni Morrison, to name only a

few. Corbett stresses that students who imitate writers do

so with a pen or pencil, copying and

imitating the authors slowly, paying attention to the

sentence structure and placement of words.

He encourages students to focus on a single passage each

day, rather than try to cram many differ

ent passages into a single day’s work. “You must have time
to absorb what you have been observing

in this exercise,” Corbett advises, “and you will not have

time to absorb the many lessons to be

learned from this exercise if you cram it into a short

period” (1990, 476).

After students copy passages, Corbett suggests they move

toward imitation proper. He recom

mends that students begin with simple sentences and work up

to more complex sentences and

eventually to imitation of entire passages. Corbett wants

students to use these imitation exercises

to introduce novice writers to the complexity and variety

of professional prose styles. “The aim

of this exercise,” Corbett cautions, “is not to achieve a

word-for-word correspondence with the

model but rather to achieve an awareness of the variety of

sentence structures of which the

English language is capable … writing such patterns

according to models will increase [students’]

syntactical resources” (Corbett 1990, 495). Again, Corbett

supplies a variety of sample sentences

for students to imitate. Corbett also draws from Erasmus’s

method of expressing an idea in mul
tiple ways. “Devising an alternate expression,” Corbett
notes, “often involves the choice of differ

ent words and different syntactical structures” (498).

Here, he models several sentences, showing

variations of the sentence patterns as well as an alternate

way to express the idea in a different

style. Again, the purpose here, much like in copying other

authors’ prose, is to be introduced to a

variety of styles and to practice imitating and studying

the sentence structure of various writers.

Corbett’s work on style is viewed as part of composition’s

past that should we should acknowl

edge but move on from. Many compositionists today regard

Corbett’s work as part of the pre

professionalization era of composition studies, work that

is not as exciting, as innovative, or as

complex as the post-process era. I fi nd it interesting, as

Connors notes in his introduction to

Style and Statement (Corbett and Connors 1999), that the

individuals who fi nd Corbett’s work

on style the most relevant are high school and college

composition instructors, individuals who

struggle every day with teaching students the actual craft

of writing. I fi nd this confession interest

ing because it suggests that the professionalization of

rhetoric and composition has led scholars in

the fi eld away from the business of teaching writing.

Indeed, many of us who came to the fi eld in the

mid- to late 1990s assumed Corbett’s work on style was part

of a distant past that did not speak

to the more “complex” issues of composition: post-modern

identity, the negotiation of difference,

and discourse communities, to name only a few. For example,

during my fi rst graduate seminar on

the teaching of writing, our instructor introduced us to

Corbett’s method of analyzing prose style.

This method asks students to count the number of sentences

in an essay and identify their type—

simple, complex, and so on—and count the number of words in

each sentence. The rationale

behind such an exercise is to determine the readability of

a piece of writing and to determine areas

for possible revision and editing. As we sat in the seminar

listening to the instructor and applying

this method to our own writing sample, I noticed most of

us—budding composition and rhetoric

scholars—resisting this exercise by rolling our eyes,

grumbling under our breaths—in general, not

taking it very seriously. Later, during our break, one of

my class colleagues complained bitterly in

the hallway that the exercise was a total waste of time,

that it was too hard. At the time, I tended

to agree. How does counting sentences help students write?

What we failed to understand then,

and what many of us still fail to recognize, is that

Corbett’s pedagogy of style is not some series of

surface-oriented exercises, but rather lies at the very

heart of what rhetorical education attempts

to provide: the ability in individuals to write eloquently

and responsibly within numerous contexts,

whether they be personal, academic, or public.

Corbett’s work on style, and his insistence that style

should be taught within the realm of the

whole rhetorical canon, came out of his reading and

recovery of classical rhetorical texts—namely,

Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. His ideas about style

have a decidedly Western canonical bent to

them and, as a result, Corbett’s stylistic exercises do not

cross the line into what we might think

of as radical or alternative styles. But there is another

scholar whose work attempts to break

through traditional stylistic boundaries who has gone

largely unrecognized for the past ten to fi f

teen years—Winston Weathers.

Winston Weathers: An Alternative

Weathers, a writing teacher and scholar from the 1960s and

1970s, overtly sought alternative styles

and radical approaches to teaching writing. He published

such titles as A New Strategy of Style (1978,

with Otis Winchester) and Alternative Style: Options in

Composition (1980). Weathers was interested

in exploring a pedagogy of style that would lead students

to resist dominant modes of discourse

and write alternative prose styles. For Weathers, the

teaching of style was itself a revolutionary

act, which could lead to critical thinking against dominant

forms of communication. One way that

Weathers urged writing teachers and students to resist

these dominant discourses was through

the development of different styles, noting that “we can

point out that with the acquisition of a

plurality of styles (and we are after pluralities, aren’t

we? not just the plain style?) the student is

equipping himself for a more adaptive way of life within a

society increasingly complex and multi

faceted” (2000, 295).

He encouraged writing teachers to use style as a tool to

break through rigid systems and to
teach writing that was more socially responsible, writing
that took into consideration multiple

styles and not just the socially sanctioned conventional

style prevalent in most American writing

classrooms. Alternative styles, for Weathers, was a place

where most writers— professional and

nonprofessional alike—wrote. In a 1996 interview with Wendy

Bishop, Weathers refl ects on the

inspiration for his 1980 book, An Alternative Style:

Options in Composition.

I’d long noticed that much of the great literature I was

teaching was not written in the tradi

tional straight/linear mode. I’d noticed too, that out in

the “real world,” a great many of the

messages presented in advertising, publicity, promotion, in

personal letters, journals, diaries,

and even in more daring book reviews, testimonials,

meditations, etc. were using writing

techniques that no one in the nation’s English departments

seemed to be teaching. The Acad

emy occasionally acknowledged the existence of

“experimental writing” but never suggested

that ordinary writers might also practice something like

it. My goal in writing An Alternative

Style was simply to say to students (and their teachers)

that there’s more to writing than

the style usually found in the Freshman theme, the second

semester research report, or the

graduate literary essay. (Bishop and Weathers 1996, 76)

Style, for Weathers, is by no means some rigid, cold,

mechanistic tool used to teach infl exible

conventions of writing. For Weathers, style becomes a place

where all people use language in fresh,
inventive ways, ways that can be recast and used in
socially responsible and democratic contexts.

The rigid systems that Weathers recognized in most English

departments needed to be challenged.

One of those systems, of course, was the tradition of style

as a surface-oriented tool of writing

instruction that had been reinforced in the history of

writing instruction since the Renaissance.

In an article originally published in CCC in 1970,

“Teaching Style: A Possible Anatomy,” Weath

ers argued that for the teaching of style to be a viable

element of writing pedagogy, instructors

must accomplish three tasks:

(1) make the teaching of style signifi cant and relevant to

our students,

(2) reveal style as a measurable and viable subject matter,

and

(3) make style believable and real as a result of our own

stylistic practices (2000, 294).

Weathers’s call for a richer pedagogy of style is signifi

cant because he assumes an integration

of style in all forms of writing instruction and not just a

technique for editing or polishing students’

prose. For example, he writes that students need a strategy

of style so that they can accomplish

two objectives in literacy acquisition, by “(1) identifying

the categories of style, and (2) describing

the constituency of those categories in terms of stylistic

material” (2000, 297). In other words,

Weathers wants teachers to incorporate the study of style

into the larger purpose of writing

instruction in a way that allows the student to develop a

variety of prose styles to use in mul
tiple rhetorical situations. Weathers follows much of the
same ideas about imitation that Corbett

learned from the classical rhetoricians and that Erasmus

encouraged students in the sixteenth

century to practice. “We ask the student to write a

sentence or a topic of his own choosing, but

following the model he has just studied,” Weathers writes.

“In this process, the student is asked to

recognize, copy, understand, and imitate creatively” (2000,

296–97). For Weathers, style becomes

the very way students use language to make meaning in their

worlds. The more styles students

experiment with, Weathers argues, the more able they are to

resist dominant structures of lan

guage and use language more democratically.

One of the more telling moments in this article occurs when

Weathers associates alternative

styles with democracy. Here, Weathers articulates the role

that the teaching of style can play in a

liberating pedagogy that teaches students to become

responsible users of language:

Style is a gesture of personal freedom against infl exible

states of mind; that in a very real

way—because it is the art of choice and option—style has

something to do with freedom;

that as systems—rhetorical or political—become rigid and

dictatorial, style is reduced,

unable to exist in totalitarian environments. We can reveal

to students the connection

between democracy and style, saying that the study of style

is a part of our democratic and

free experience. And fi nally we can point out that with

the acquisition of a plurality of styles
(and we are after pluralities, aren’t we? not just the
plain style?) the student is equipping

himself for a more adaptive way of life within a society

increasingly complex and multifaceted

(2000, 295).

Even though Weathers is counseling writing teachers to

resist rigid systems of writing instruc

tion and encourage their students to write in a variety of

styles, his caution against the totalitarian

ism of systems applies to the way histories are embraced

and eventually become unyielding systems

in their own right. Questioning the received history of

style allows current composition scholars t

break through a system of instruction that consigns style

to a rigid, surface-only concern. Weath

ers wants the teaching of style to be much more. He argues

that teachers of writing can show the

connections between style and democracy to their students,

encouraging them to practice and

study multiple verbalizations. Weathers pushes students to

play with multiple styles in a manner

that could suggest stretching the boundaries of traditional

stylistic grounds. In other words, it may

lead them on a path toward recognizing how multiple styles

are representative of multiple points

of view—indeed, the very essence of democracy.

Weathers wants students to recognize and be able to

incorporate a plurality of styles. Such

plurality, Weathers insists, is necessary for educating

students to become vital participants in a

democracy. “We can reveal to students the connection

between democracy and style,” he writes,

“saying that the study of style is part of our democratic

and free experience” (2000, 295). Weath

ers wrote this call for an integrated pedagogy of style

during a time when American society was

being reminded of its own plurality in the form of the

protest against the war in Vietnam, the civil

rights movement, and the second-wave feminist movement.

Such movements, of course, were

particularly popular on college campuses. There, students

were searching for ways to connect

what they were learning in the classroom with their

concerns for social justice. Weathers’s call to

make style, and writing itself, more relevant in students’

lives shows how his work on style was

not some exercise in getting students to prettify their

language but rather to discover the richness

of language and its uses in a democracy. “Many students

write poorly and with deplorable styles

simply because they do not care,” Weathers insists (2000,

295). Weathers simply wanted to make

writing more relevant to student experience.

In 1980, Weathers published An Alternative Style: Options

in Composition. The purpose of this

textbook, as Weathers notes in the preface, is to provide

student writers with ways to develop

a varied prose style. “And so this book,” he writes, “Ready

to be shared—as we become aware

of more mentalities than one (left brain/right brain if

nothing else), aware of more compositional

goals than one, more life-styles than one, more human

chemistries than one, more ‘voices’ than

one” (2000, preface). Weathers wants student writers to be

able to move in and out of different

writing situations and adjust their writing styles

accordingly, without being beholden to any one,

dominant mode of writing. “I write for many reasons,” he

notes, “to communicate many things.

And yet, much of what I wish to communicate does not seem

to be expressible within the ordinary

conventions of composition as I have learned them and

mastered them in the long years of my edu

cation” (1). In an e-mail conversation with Wendy Bishop,

almost twenty years after he published

An Alternative Style, Weathers echoes his desire for

teaching student writers multiple styles. “A

good writer—like a good architect—should know how to design

and build all kinds of structures:

traditional, art deco, baroque, functional, etc,” he

declares. “Who knows what ‘content’ require

ments will be presented to us day after day? A concern with

style is a concern with being prepared

to build the best composition we can whatever the content

happens to be” (Bishop and Weathers

1996, p.75). And encouraging students to build the best

compositions they can forms the focus of

Weathers’s interest in style.

In Alternative Style, Weathers offers a short explanation

of his theory of alternative style and

a variety of rhetorical devices and strategies that

professional writers use to develop new and

interesting styles. For Weathers, an alternate style means

any type of style that seeks to go beyond

tradition-bound notions of “good writing” in the effort to

construct the best piece of writing pos

sible. He distinguishes between what he calls Grammar A and

Grammar B. Grammar A, according

to Weathers, is the “traditional” grammar or instruction in

style in most writing classrooms, which

“has the characteristics of continuity, order, reasonable

progression and sequence, consistency,

unity, etc. We are all familiar with these characteristics,

for they are promoted in nearly every

English textbook and taught by nearly every English

teacher” (1980, 6). Grammar B, on the other

hand, seeks to expand Grammar A’s rigidity and open

students to alternative ways to express

themselves. “It is a mature and alternate (not

experimental) style used by competent writers and

offering students of writing a well-tested set of options

that, added to the traditional grammar of

style, will give them a much more fl exible voice, a much

greater communication capacity, a much

greater opportunity to put into effective language all the

things they have to say” (Weathers 1980,

8). Later, Weathers describes a number of characteristics

of Grammar B and does so in a manner

that allows users of the book to apply them to their own

writing—some tricks of the trade, as it

were. 3

What’s important to keep in mind about Weathers’s theory of

Grammar A and Grammar B is

that they are not mutually exclusive. Grammar B, for

Weathers, is an expansion of Grammar A. He

does not want to keep his students away from learning and
understanding the dimensions of Gram

mar A. Not at all. He wants them to be able to break away

from the conventions of Grammar A and

become more imaginative and creative with their style,

based on what the rhetorical constraints

are. “Grammar B in no way threatens Grammar A,” he insists,

“It uses the same stylistic deck of

fi fty-two cards and embraces the same English language we

are familiar with. Acknowledging its

existence and discovering how it works and including it in

our writing expertise, we simply become

better teachers of writing, making a better contribution to

the intellectual and emotional lives

of our students” (1980, 8). Here, Weathers echoes

Aristotle’s defi nition of rhetoric as being the

ability to discover the available means of persuasion.

Grammar B becomes another of the available

means. Playing around with and using crots, for example,

allow student writers to fi nd connections

among ideas where they may not have looked before. His
double-voice technique encourages

students to examine ideas from various perspectives, while

working on the stylistic features of

their writing. Weathers’s desire for student writers to

develop multiple, even subversive, writing

strategies also echoes Erasmus’s call for teaching students

to express ideas in a variety of ways.

Students who incorporate Weathers’s suggestions for

labyrinthine sentences and sentence frag

ments, alongside the more traditional sentences of Grammar

A, give themselves more options for

phrasing ideas in new and interesting ways.

Weathers has largely been forgotten among many rhetoric and

composition specialists. Although

his essay “Teaching Style: A Possible Anatomy” appears in

the latest edition of the perennially

popular The Writing Teacher’s Sourcebook (Corbett, Tate,

and Myers 2000), most compositionists

have ignored his work. Wendy Bishop notes that his “work
didn’t seem to be half as infl uential

as I thought it should be” (Weathers and Bishop 1996, 72).

His work is rarely, if ever, cited in the

pages of CCC or College English anymore, and his textbooks

are out of print. Graduate programs

in composition and rhetoric rarely include Weathers’s work

as part of the curriculum or reading

lists. It almost appears as if Weathers’s work has

disappeared completely.

Weathers himself tells stories of how the fi eld resisted

vehemently his theories and ideas about

the teaching of style (see the epigraph to this chapter).

Weathers also tells the story of how he

was received by his colleagues during his keynote address

at the 1982 CCCC convention in San

Francisco, a city Bishop, in a delicious moment of irony,

calls “the city of alternative styles” (Weath

ers and Bishop 1996, 79):

It was, in effect, boycotted. I was invited to give the

address by Donald Stewart. … He had

read some of my work, had written about it in an article,

which led to some correspondence,

which led to the invitation. He was the CCCC program

chairman at the time, as I remember.

Alas, though the conference attendance was large, I gave

the address to about fi fty people—

in a vast, cavernous Hyatt Regency ballroom that would have

held a thousand. It was obvious

that the title of the address, or my reputation perhaps,

had led vast numbers of people to

stay away. (79)

That was twenty years ago, and it seems safe to say that
Weathers’s reputation has not changed
much. My sense is that Weathers has been lumped into a
group of compositionists—including

Christensen and Corbett—whose work on style and rhetoric

runs counter to the goals of critical

and creative thinking espoused by the proponents of

critical pedagogy.

As the 1970s turned into the 1980s, and social construction

theories of composition slowly

took precedence in composition programs and on the pages of

composition journals, the stylistic

and sentence-level pedagogies of Christensen, Corbett, and

Weathers came under fi re. Robert

Connors argues that many of their critics pointed out that

sentence-level rhetorics like Chris

tensen’s “were quintessentially exercises, context-stripped

from what students really wanted to

say themselves” (Connors 2000, 115). James Britton, for

example, called such writing exercises

“dummy runs,” and condemned such writing instruction for

its lack of contextual awareness, argu

ing that a student writer should be “called upon to perform

a writing task in order (a) to exercise

his capacity to perform that kind of task, and/or (b) to

demonstrate to the teacher his profi ciency

in performing [the writing assignment]” (Britton et al.,

1975, 104–5). Sabina Thorne Johnson, a

contemporary of Christensen, voiced her critique by

questioning Christensen’s claim that students

can generate ideas by merely adding modifi ers to their

sentences. In her article “Some Tentative

Strictures on Generative Rhetoric,” Johnson at fi rst

praises Christensen’s method for offering a

“revolution in our assessment of style and in our approach

to the teaching of composition” (1969,

159). But later she wonders why Christensen seems to

believe that form can generate content.

“I don’t believe it can, especially if the content is of an

analytic or critical nature” (159), Later

A. B. Tibbets chimed in on the complaint against

Christensen, noting that the generative rhetoric

method led students to produce clever sentences but not

much else. Tibbets argues: “What we

are generally after in expository writing is accuracy

rather than cleverness” (1976, 144). Tibbets

assumes here that interesting sentences can’t produce

interesting ideas. And he says as much later

in his article when he notes that effective writing

instruction leads students to separate content

from form, as well as divide issues from one another (144).

Tibbets’s assumptions about the split

between form and content resonate with the other critiques

of Christensen’s rhetoric. What most

of these critiques assume, however, is that learning to

write eloquent and interesting sentences and

paragraphs is somehow antithetical to learning to express

ideas effectively.

Conclusion

During the early process years of the late 1960s and 1970s,
the teaching of style, via Christensen’s

generative rhetoric, Corbett’s recovery of classical

rhetoric, and the alternative style of Weathers,

shared, along with the process movement, prominence across

the composition landscape, As

c mpositionists started to investigate more deeply the

various social and political contexts that

affect how students learn to write, the focus on stylistics

became associated with oversimplistic,

decontextualized writing pedagogy. The work of such fi

gures as Christensen, Corbett, and Weath

ers subsequently became associated with this type of

“uncritical” pedagogy. But reassessment of

these scholars reveals that their work on style and the

sentence was done under the assumption

that the more stylistic options were available to students,

the more likely that students would be

able to demonstrate successful rhetorical activity.

Notes

1 Aristotle defi nes rhetoric as “an ability, in each

particular case, to see the available means of persuasion”

(1991, 36).

2 Two received histories of early modern rhetoric, Kennedy

(1980) and Howell (1956), both dismiss style

as a surface-oriented element of rhetoric that has little

to do with the invention of ideas. Both texts are

often cited as standard histories of the fi eld. In their

anthology The Rhetorical Tradition, Bizzell and Herz

for Teachers of Writing call Howell’s history “the standard

history of this important period in the history

of rhetoric” (2004, 40).

3 Some of these strategies include experimenting wildly

with various types of sentences: short, one-word

sentences he called crots and longer, complex sentences he

called labyrinthine. Weathers also recom

mended writing in what he termed “double voice,” a

technique that allows writers to explore two sides

of an argument and present the material on opposing sides

of a composition. This practice reminds me of

Ann Berthoff’s “Double Entry Notebook” in her book Forming,

Thinking, Writing (1982).

Aristotle. 1991. On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civil Discourse.

Translated by George A. Kennedy. New York: Oxford
University Press.

Berthoff, Ann E. 1982. Forming, Thinking, Writing.

Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.

Bizzell, Patricia, and Bruce Herzberg, eds. 1990. The

Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the
Present. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press.

Britton, James, Tony Burgess, Nancy Martin, Alex McLeod,

and Harold Rosen. 1975. The Development of Writing
Abilities (11–18). London: MacMillan Educational for the
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Bullock, Richard, and John Trimbur. 1991. The Politics of

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Reading GRAMMAR, GRAMMARS, AND THE TEACHING OF GRAMMAR

Patrick Hartwell

For me the grammar issue was settled at least twenty years

ago with the conclusion offered by

Richard Braddock, Richard Lloyd-Jones and Lowell Schoer in

1963.

In view of the widespread agreement of research studies

based upon many types of students

and teachers, the conclusion can be stated in strong and

unqualifi ed terms: the teaching of

formal grammar has a negligible or, because it usually

displaces some instruction and practice

in composition, even a harmful effect on improvement in

writing. 1

Indeed, I would agree with Janet Emig that the grammar

issue is a prime example of “magical think

ing”: the assumption that students will learn only what we

teach and only because we teach. 2

But the grammar issue, as we will see, is a complicated

one. And, perhaps surprisingly, it remains

controversial, with the regular appearance of papers

defending the teaching of formal grammar or

attacking it. 3 Thus Janice Neuleib, writing on “The

Relation of Formal Grammar to composition”

in College Composition and Communication (23 [1977],

247–50), is tempted “to sputter on paper”

at reading the quotation above (p. 248), and Martha Kolln,

writing in the same journal three years

later (“Closing the Books on Alchemy,” CCC 32 [1981],

139–51), labels people like me “alchemists”

for our perverse beliefs. Neuleib reviews fi ve

experimental studies, most of them concluding that

formal grammar instruction has no effect on the quality of

students’ writing nor on their ability to

avoid error. Yet she renders in effect a Scots verdict of

“Not proven” and calls for more research

on the issue. Similarly, Kolln reviews six experimental

studies that arrive at similar conclusions,

only one of them overlapping with the studies cited by

Neuleib. She calls for more careful defi ni

tion of the word grammar—her defi nition being “the

internalized system that native speakers of

a language share” (p. 140)—and she concludes with a

stirring call to place grammar instruction at

the center of the composition curriculum: “our goal should

be to help students understand the

system they know unconsciously as native speakers, to teach

them the necessary categories and

labels that will enable them to think about and talk about
their language” (p. 150). Certainly our

textbooks and our pedagogies—though they vary widely in

what they see as “necessary categories

and labels”—continue to emphasize mastery of formal

grammar, and popular discussions of a pre

sumed literacy crisis are almost unanimous in their call

for a renewed emphasis on the teaching of

formal grammar, seen as basic for success in writing. 4

An Instructive Example
It is worth noting at the outset that both sides in this
dispute—the grammarians and the antigram

marians—articulate the issue in the same positivistic

terms: what does experimental research tell

us about the value of teaching formal grammar? But

seventy-fi ve years of experimental research

has for all practical purposes told us nothing. The two

sides are unable to agree on how to inter

pret such research. Studies are interpreted in terms of

one’s prior assumptions about the value

of teaching grammar: their results seem not to change those

assumptions. Thus the basis of the

discussion, a basis shared by Kolln and Neuleib and by

Braddock and his colleagues—“what does

educational research tell us?”—seems designed to

perpetuate, not to resolve, the issue. A single

example will be instructive. In 1976 and then at greater

length in 1979, W. B. Elley, I. H. Barham, H.

Lamb, and M. Wyllie reported on a three-year experiment in

New Zealand, comparing the relative

effectiveness at the high school level of instruction in

transformational grammar, instruction in tra

ditional grammar, and no grammar instruction. 5 They

concluded that the formal study of grammar,

whether transformational or traditional, improved neither

writing quality nor control over surface

correctness.

After two years, no differences were detected in writing

performance or language compe

tence; after three years small differences appeared in some

minor conventions favoring the

TG [transformational grammar] group, but these were more

than offset by the less positive
attitudes they showed towards their English studies. (p. 18)

Anthony Petrosky, in a review of research (“Grammar

Instruction: What We Know,” English

Journal, 66, No. 9 [1977], 86–88), agreed with this

conclusion, fi nding the study to be carefully

designed, “representative of the best kind of educational

research” (p. 86), its validity “unquestion

able” (p. 88). Yet Janice Neuleib in her essay found the
same conclusions to be “startling” and ques

tioned whether the fi ndings could be generalized beyond

the target population, New Zealand high

school students. Martha Kolln, when her attention is drawn

to the study (“Reply to Ron Shook,”

CCC, 32 [1981], 139–151), thinks the whole experiment

“suspicious.” And John Mellon has been

willing to use the study to defend the teaching of grammar;

the study of Elley and his colleagues, he

has argued, shows that teaching grammar does no harm. 6

It would seem unlikely, therefore, that further

experimental research, in and of itself, will resolve

the grammar issue. Any experimental design can be

nit-picked, any experimental population can be

criticized, and any experimental conclusion can be

questioned or, more often, ignored. In fact, it

may well be that the grammar question is not open to

resolution by experimental research, that, as

Noam Chomsky has argued in Refl ections on Language (New

York: Pantheon, 1975), criticizing the

trivialization of human learning by behavioral

psychologists, the issue is simply misdefi ned.

There will be “good experiments” only in domains that lie

outside the organism’s cognitive
capacity. For example, there will be no “good experiments”
in the study of human learning. This discipline … will, of
necessity, avoid those domains in which an organism is
specially

designed to acquire rich cognitive structures that enter

into its life in an intimate fashion.

The discipline will be of virtually no intellectual

interest, it seems to me, since it is restricting

itself in principle to those questions that are guaranteed

to tell us little about the nature of

organisms. (p. 36)

Asking The Right Questions

As a result, though I will look briefl y at the tradition

of experimental research, my primary goal in

this essay is to articulate the grammar issue in different

and, I would hope, more productive terms.

Specifi cally, I want to ask four questions:

1. Why is the grammar issue so important? Why has it been

the dominant focus of composition research for the last
seventy-fi ve years?

2. What defi nitions of the word grammar are needed to

articulate the grammar issue intelligibly?

3. What do fi ndings in cognate disciplines suggest about

the value of formal grammar instruction?

4. What is our theory of language, and what does it predict

about the value of formal grammar instruction? (This
question—“what does our theory of language predict?”—seems
a much more powerful question than “what does educational
research tell us?”)

In exploring these questions I will attempt to be fully

explicit about issues, terms, and assumptions.

I hope that both proponents and opponents of formal grammar

instruction would agree that these

are useful as shared points of reference: care in defi

nition, full examination of the evidence, refer
ence to relevant work in cognate disciplines, and explicit
analysis of the theoretical bases of the

issue.

But even with that gesture of harmony it will be diffi cult

to articulate the issue in a balanced

way, one that will be acceptable to both sides. After all,

we are dealing with a professional dispute

in which one side accuses the other of “magical thinking,”

and in turn that side responds by charg

ing the other as “alchemists.” Thus we might suspect that

the grammar issue is itself embedded in

larger models of the transmission of literacy, part of

quite different assumptions about the teaching

of composition.

Those of us who dismiss the teaching of formal grammar have

a model of composition instruc

tion that makes the grammar issue “uninteresting” in a

scientifi c sense. Our model predicts a rich

and complex interaction of learner and environment in

mastering literacy, an interaction that has

little to do with sequences of skills instruction as such.

Those who defend the teaching of grammar

tend to have a model of composition instruction that is

rigidly skills-centered and rigidly sequential:

the formal teaching of grammar, as the fi rst step in that

sequence, is the cornerstone or linch

pin. Grammar teaching is thus supremely interesting,

naturally a dominant focus for educational

research. The controversy over the value of grammar

instruction, then, is inseparable from two

other issues: the issues of sequence in the teaching of

composition and of the role of the composi
tion teacher. Consider, for example, the force of these two
issues in Janice Neuleib’s conclusion:

after calling for yet more experimental research on the

value of teaching grammar, she ends with

an absolute (and unsupported) claim about sequences and

teacher roles in composition.

We do know, however, that some things must be taught at

different levels. Insistence on

adherence to usage norms by composition teachers does

improve usage. Students can learn

to organize their papers if teachers do not accept papers

that are disorganized. Perhaps com

position teachers can teach those two abilities before they

begin the more diffi cult tasks of

developing syntactic sophistication and a winning style.

(“The Relation of Formal Grammar

to Composition,” p. 250)

(One might want to ask, in passing, whether “usage norms”

exist in the monolithic fashion the

phrase suggests and whether refusing to accept disorganized

papers is our best available pedagogy

for teaching arrangement.) 7

But I want to focus on the notion of sequence that makes

the grammar issue so important:

fi rst grammar, then usage, then some absolute model of

organization, all controlled by the teacher

at the center of the learning process with other matters,

those of rhetorical weight—“syntactic

sophistication and a winning style”—pushed off to the

future. It is not surprising that we call each

other names: those of us who question the value of teaching

grammar are in fact shaking the whole

elaborate edifi ce of traditional composition instruction.

The Five Meanings of “Grammar”

Given its centrality to a well-established way of teaching

composition, I need to go about the

business of defi ning grammar rather carefully,

particularly in view of Kolln’s criticism of the lack of

care in earlier discussions. Therefore I will build upon a

seminal discussion of the word grammar

offered a generation ago, in 1954, by W. Nelson Francis,

often excerpted as “The Three Meanings

of Grammar.” 8 It is worth reprinting at length, if only

to re-establish it as a reference point for

future discussions.

The fi rst thing we mean by “grammar” is “the set of formal

patterns in which the words of a

language are arranged in order to convey larger meanings.”

It is not necessary that we be able

to discuss these patterns self-consciously in order to be

able to use them. In fact, all speakers

of a language above the age of fi ve or six know how to use

its complex forms of organization

with considerable skill; in this sense of the word—call it

“Grammar 1”—they are thoroughly

familiar with its grammar. The second meaning of

“grammar”—call it “Grammar 2”—is “the branch of linguistic
sci

ence which is concerned with the description, analysis, and

formulization of formal language

patterns.” Just as gravity was in full operation before

Newton’s apple fell, so grammar in the

fi rst sense was in full operation before anyone formulated

the fi rst rule that began the history

of grammar as a study. The third sense in which people use

the word “grammar” is “linguistic etiquette.” This we
may call “Grammar 3.” The word in this sense is often
coupled with a derogatory adjective:

we say that the expression “he ain’t here” is “bad

grammar.” … As has already been suggested, much confusion
arises from mixing these meanings. One

hears a good deal of criticism of teachers of English

couched in such terms as “they don’t

teach grammar any more.” Criticism of this sort is based on

the wholly unproven assumption

that teaching Grammar 2 will improve the student’s profi

ciency in Grammar 1 or improve

his manners in Grammar 3. Actually, the form of Grammar 2

which is usually taught is a very

inaccurate and misleading analysis of the facts of Grammar

1; and it therefore is of highly

questionable value in improving a person’s ability to

handle the structural patterns of his

language. (pp. 300–301)

Francis’ Grammar 3 is, of course, not grammar at all, but

usage. One would like to assume

that Joseph Williams’ recent discussion of usage (“The

Phenomenology of Error,” CCC, 32 [1981],

doubt it, and I suspect that popular discussions of the

grammar issue will be as fl awed by the intru

sion of usage issues as past discussions have been. At any

rate I will make only passing reference to

Grammar 3—usage—naively assuming that this issue has been

discussed elsewhere and that my

readers are familiar with those discussions.

We need also to make further discriminations about Francis’

Grammar 2, given that the purpose

of his 1954 article was to substitute for one form of

Grammar 2, that “inaccurate and misleading”
form “which is usually taught,” another form, that of
American structuralist grammar. Here we can

make use of a still earlier discussion, one going back to

the days when PMLA was willing to publish

articles on rhetoric and linguistics, to a 1927 article by

Charles Carpenter Fries, “The Rules of the

Common School Grammars” (42 [1927], 221–237). Fries there

distinguished between the scientifi c

tradition of language study (to which we will now delimit

Francis Grammar 2, scientifi c grammar)

and the separate tradition of “the common school grammars,”

developed unscientifi cally, largely

based on two inadequate principles—appeals to “logical

principles,” like “two negatives make a

positive,” and analogy to Latin grammar; thus, Charlton

Laird’s characterization, “the grammar

of Latin, ingeniously warped to suggest English” (Language

in America [New York: World, 1970],

p. 294). There is, of course, a direct link between the

“common school grammars” that Fries

criticized in 1927 and the grammar-based texts of today,

and thus it seems wise, as Karl Dykema

suggests (“Where Our Grammar Came From,” CE, 22 (1961),

455–465), to separate Grammar 2,

“scientifi c grammar,” from Grammar 4, “school grammar,”

the latter meaning, quite literally, “the

grammars used in the schools.”

Further, since Martha Kolln points to the adaptation of

Christensen’s sentence rhetoric in a

recent sentence-combining text as an example of the proper

emphasis on “grammar” (“Closing

the Books on Alchemy,” p. 140), it is worth separating out,

as still another meaning of grammar,
Grammar 5, “stylistic grammar,” defi ned as “grammatical
terms used in the interest of teaching

prose style.” And, since stylistic grammars abound, with

widely variant terms and emphases, we

might appropriately speak parenthetically of specifi c

forms of Grammar 5—Grammar 5 (Lanham);

Grammar 5 (Strunk and White); Grammar 5 (Williams, Style);

even Grammar 5 (Christensen, as

adapted by Daiker, Kerek, and Morenberg). 9

The Grammar in Our Heads

With these defi nitions in mind, let us return to Francis’

Grammar 1, admirably defi ned by Kolln

as “the internalized system of rules that speakers of a

language share” (“Closing the Books on

Alchemy,” p. 140), or, to put it more simply, the grammar

in our heads. Three features of Gram

mar 1 need to be stressed; fi rst, its special status as an

“internalized system of rules,” as tacit and

unconscious knowledge; second, the abstract, even

counterintuitive, nature of these rules, insofar

as we are able to approximate them indirectly as Grammar 2

statements; and third, the way in

which the form of one’s Grammar 1 seems profoundly affected

by the acquisition of literacy. This

sort of review is designed to fi rm up our theory of

language, so that we can ask what it predicts

about the value of teaching formal grammar.

A simple thought experiment will isolate the special status

of Grammar 1 knowledge. I have

asked members of a number of different groups—from sixth

graders to college freshmen to high

school teachers—to give me the rule for ordering adjectives

of nationality, age, and number in

English. The response is always the same: “We don’t know

the rule.” Yet when I ask these groups

to perform an active language task, they show productive

control over the rule they have denied

knowing. I ask them to arrange the following words in a

natural order:

French the young girls four

I have never seen a native speaker of English who did not

immediately produce the natural order,

“the four young French girls.” The rule is that in English

the order of adjectives is fi rst, number, sec

ond, age, and third, nationality. Native speakers can

create analogous phrases using the rule—”the

seventy-three aged Scandinavian lechers”; and the drive for

meaning is so great that they will create

contexts to make sense out of violations of the rule, as in

foregrounding for emphasis: “I want to

talk to the French four young girls.” (I immediately

envision a large room, perhaps a banquet hall,

fi lled with tables at which are seated groups of four

young girls, each group of a different national

ity.) So Grammar 1 is eminently usable knowledge—the way we

make our life through language—

but it is not accessible knowledge; in a profound sense, we

do not know that we have it. Thus

neurolinguist Z. N. Pylyshvn speaks of Grammar 1 as

“autonomous,” separate from common-sense

reasoning, and as “”cognitively impenetrable,” not

available for direct examination. 10 In philosophy

and linguistics, the distinction is made between formal,

conscious, “knowing about” knowledge

(like Grammar 2 knowledge) and tacit, unconscious, “knowing

how” knowledge (like Grammar

1 knowledge). The importance of this distinction for the

teaching of composition—it provides a

powerful theoretical justifi cation for mistrusting the

ability of Grammar 2 (or Grammar 4) knowl

edge to affect Grammar 1 performance—was pointed out in

this journal by Martin Steinmann, Jr.,

in 1966 (“Rhetorical Research,” CE, 27 [1966], 278–285).

Further, the more we learn about Grammar 1—and most

linguists would agree that we know

surprisingly little about it—the more abstract and implicit

it seems. This abstractness can be illus

trated with an experiment devised by Lise Menn and reported

by Morris Halle, 11 about our rule for

forming plurals in speech. It is obvious that we do indeed

have a “rule” for forming plurals, for we

do not memorize the plural of each noun separately. You

will demonstrate productive control over

that rule by forming the spoken plurals of the nonsense

words below:

thole fl itch plast

Halle offers two ways of formalizing a Grammar 2 equivalent

of this Grammar 1 ability. One

form of the rule is the following, stated in terms of

speech sounds:

a. If the noun ends in /s z š ž č Ĵ/, add /lz/;

b. otherwise, if the noun ends in /p t k f Ø/, add /s/;

c. otherwise, add /z/. 11

This rule comes close to what we literate adults consider

to be an adequate rule for plurals in

writing, like the rules, for example, taken from a recent

“common school grammar,” Eric Gould’s
Reading into Writing: A Rhetoric, Reader, and Handbook
(Boston: Houghton Miffl in, 1983):

Plurals can be tricky. If you are unsure of a plural, then

check it in the dictionary. The general rules are

Add s to the singular: girls, tables

Add es to nouns ending in ch, sh, x or s: churches, boxes,

wishes

Add es to nouns ending in y and preceded by a vowel once

you have changed y to i: monies, companies. (p. 666)

(But note the persistent inadequacy of such Grammar 4

rules: here, as I read it, the rule is inad

equate to explain the plurals of ray and tray, even to

explain the collective noun monies, not a plural

at all, formed from the mass noun money and offered as an

example.) A second form of the rule

would make use of much more abstract entities, sound

features:

a. If the noun ends with a sound that is [coronal,

strident], add /+z/;

b. otherwise, if the noun ends with a sound that is

[non-voiced], add /s/;

c. otherwise, add /z/.

(The notion of “sound features” is itself rather abstract,

perhaps new to readers not trained in

linguistics. But such readers should be able to recognize

that the spoken plurals of lip and duck, the

sound [s], differ from the spoken plurals of sea and gnu,
the sound [z], only in that the sounds of the

latter are “voiced”—one’s vocal cords vibrate—while the

sounds of the former are “non-voiced.”)

To test the psychologically operative rule, the Grammar 1

rule, native speakers of English were
asked to form the plural of the last name of the composer
Johann Sebastian Bach, a sound [x],

unique in American (though not in Scottish) English. If

speakers follow the fi rst rule above, using

word endings, they would reject a) and b), then apply c),
producing the plural as /baxz/, with word

fi nal /z/. (If writers were to follow the rule of the

common school grammar, they would produce

the written plural Baches, apparently, given the form of

the rule, on analogy with churches.) If speak

ers follow the second rule, they would have to analyze the
sound [x] as [non-labial, noncoronal,

dorsal, non-voiced, and non-strident], producing the plural

as /baxs/, with word-fi nal /s/. Native

speakers of American English overwhelmingly produce the

plural as /baxs/. They use knowledge

that Halle characterizes as “unlearned and untaught” (p.

140).

Now such a conclusion is counterintuitive—certainly it

departs maximally from Grammar 4

rules for forming plurals. It seems that native speakers of

English behave as if they have productive

control, as Grammar 1 knowledge, of abstract sound features

(± coronal, ± strident, and so on)

which are available as conscious, Grammar 2 knowledge only

to trained linguists—and, indeed,

formally available only within the last hundred years or

so. (“Behave as if,” in that last sentence, is

a necessary hedge, to underscore the diffi culty of

“knowing about” Grammar 1.)

Moreover, as the example of plural rules suggests, the form

of the Grammar 1 in the heads of

literate adults seems profoundly affected by the

acquisition of literacy. Obviously, literate adults
have access to different morphological codes: the abstract
print -s underlying the predictable /s/

and /z/ plurals, the abstract print -ed underlying the

spoken past tense markers /t/, as in “walked,”

/əd/, as in “surrounded,” /d/, as in “scored,” and the

symbol /q/ for no surface realization, as in

the relaxed standard pronunciation of “I walked to the

store.” Literate adults also have access to

distinctions preserved only in the code of print (for

example, the distinction between “a good

sailer” and “a good sailor” that Mark Aranoff points out in

“An English Spelling Convention,” Lin

guistic Inquiry, 9 [1978], 299–303). More signifi cantly,

Irene Moscowitz speculates that the ability of

third graders to form abstract nouns on analogy with pairs

like divine::divinity and serene::serenity,

where the spoken vowel changes but the spelling preserves

meaning, is a factor of knowing how

to read. Carol Chomsky fi nds a three-stage developmental

sequence in the grammatical perfor

mance of seven-year-olds, related to measures of kind and

variety of reading; and Rita S. Brause

fi nds a nine-stage developmental sequence in the ability

to understand semantic ambiguity, extend

ing from fourth graders to graduate students. 12 John

Mills and Gordon Hemsley fi nd that level of

education, and presumably level of literacy, infl uence

judgments of grammaticality, concluding that

literacy changes the deep structure of one’s internal

grammar; Jean Whyte fi nds that oral language

functions develop differently in readers and non-readers;

José Morais, Jésus Alegria, and Paul Ber

telson fi nd that illiterate adults are unable to add or

delete sounds at the beginning of nonsense

words, suggesting that awareness of speech as a series of

phones is provided by learning to read an

alphabetic code. Two experiments—one conducted by Charles

A. Ferguson, the other by Lary E.

Hamilton and David Barton—fi nd that adults’ ability to

recognize segmentation in speech is related

to degree of literacy, not to amount of schooling or

general ability. 13

It is worth noting that none of these investigators would

suggest that the developmental

sequences they have uncovered be isolated and taught as

discrete skills. They are natural concomi

tants of literacy, and they seem best characterized not as

isolated rules but as developing schemata,

broad strategies for approaching written language.

Grammar 2

We can, of course, attempt to approximate the rules or

schemata of Grammar 1 by writing fully

explicit descriptions that model the competence of a native

speaker. Such rules, like the rules for

pluralizing nouns or ordering adjectives discussed above,

are the goal of the science of linguistics,

that is, Grammar 2. There are a number of scientifi c

grammars—an older structuralist model and

several versions within a generative-transformational

paradigm, not to mention isolated schools

like tagmemic grammar, Montague grammar, and the like. In

fact, we cannot think of Grammar 2 as

a stable entity, for its form changes with each new issue
of each linguistics journal, as new “rules of

grammar” are proposed and debated. Thus Grammar 2, though

of great theoretical interest to the
composition teacher, is of little practical use in the
classroom, as Constance Weaver has pointed

out (Grammar for Teachers [Urbana, Ill.: NCTE, 1979], pp.

3–6). Indeed Grammar 2 is a scientifi c

model of Grammar 1, not a description of it, so that

questions of psychological reality, while impor

tant, are less important than other, more theoretical

factors, such as the elegance of formulation

or the global power of rules. We might, for example, wish

to replace the rule for ordering adjec

tives of age, number, and nationality cited above with a

more general rule—what linguists call a

“fuzzy” rule—that adjectives in English are ordered by

their abstract quality of “nouniness”: adjec

tives that are very much like nouns, like French or

Scandinavian, come physically closer to nouns

than do adjectives that are less “nouny,” like four or

aged. But our motivation for accepting the

broader rule would be its global power, not its

psychological reality. 14

I try to consider a hostile reader, one committed to the

teaching of grammar, and I try to think

of ways to hammer in the central point of this distinction,

that the rules of Grammar 2 are simply

unconnected to productive control over Grammar 1. I can

argue from authority: Noam Chomsky

has touched on this point whenever he has concerned himself

with the implications of linguistics

for language teaching, and years ago transformationalist

Mark Lester stated unequivocally, “there

simply appears to be no correlation between a writer’s

study of language and his ability to write.” 15

I can cite analogies offered by others: Francis

Christensen’s analogy in an essay originally published

in 1962 that formal grammar study would be “to invite a

centipede to attend to the sequence of

his legs in motion,” 16 or James Britton’s analogy,

offered informally after a conference presentation,

that grammar study would be like forcing starving people to

master the use of a knife and fork

before allowing them to eat. I can offer analogies of my

own, contemplating the wisdom of asking a

pool player to master the physics of momentum before taking

up a cue or of making a prospective

driver get a degree in automotive engineering before

engaging the clutch. I consider a hypothetical

argument, that if Grammar 2 knowledge affected Grammar 1

performance, then linguists would

be our best writers. (I can certify that they are, on the

whole, not.) Such a position, after all, is

only in accord with other domains of science: the formula

for catching a fl y ball in baseball (“Play

ing It by Ear,” Scientifi c American, 248, No. 4 [1983],

76) is of such complexity that it is beyond my

understanding and, I would suspect, that of many workaday

centerfi elders. But perhaps I can best

hammer in this claim—that Grammar 2 knowledge has no effect

on Grammar 1 performance—by

offering a demonstration.

The diagram below is an attempt by Thomas N. Huckin and

Leslie A. Olsen (English for Science

and Technology [New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983]) to offer, for

students of English as a second lan

guage, a fully explicit formution of what is, for native

speakers, a trivial rule of the language—the

choice of defi nite article, indefi nite article, or no

defi nite article. ENTER NOUN Does noun have a unique
reference? Is noun countable? Is noun singular? Use no
article Use no article Use the Use a or an yes yes no no no

There are obvious limits to such a formulation, for article

choice in English is less a matter of

rule than of idiom (“I went to college” versus “I went to a

university” versus British “I went to

university”), real-world knowledge (using indefi nite “I

went into a house” instantiates defi nite “I

looked at the ceiling,” and indefi nite “I visited a

university” instantiates defi nite “I talked with the

professors) and stylistic choice (the last sentence above

might alternatively end with “the choice

of the defi nite article, the indefi nite article, or no

article”) Huckin and Olsen invite non-native

speakers to use the rule consciously to justify article

choice in technical prose, such as the passage

below from P. F. Brandwein (Matter: An Earth Science [New

York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,

1975]). I invite you to spend a couple of minutes doing the

same thing, with the understanding that

this exercise is a test case: you are using a very explicit

rule to justify a fairly straightforward issue

of grammatical choice.

Imagine a cannon on top of ___ highest mountain on earth.

It is fi ring ___ cannonballs hori

zontally. ___ fi rst cannonball fi red follows its path. As

___ cannonball moves, gravity pulls it

down, and it soon hits ___ ground. Now ___ velocity with
which each succeeding cannonball

is fi red is increased. Thus, ___ cannonball goes farther

each time. Cannonball 2 goes farther

than ___ cannonball 1 although each is being pulled by ___

gravity toward the earth all ___
time. ___ last cannonball is fi red with such tremendous
velocity that it goes completely

around ___ earth. It returns to ___ mountaintop and

continues around the earth again and

again. ___ cannonball’s inertia causes it to continue in

motion indefi nitely in ___ orbit around

earth. In such a situation, we could consider ___

cannonball to be artifi cial satellite, just like

___ weather satellites launched by ___ U.S. Weather

Service. (p. 209)

Most native speakers of English who have attempted this

exercise report a great deal of frustra

tion, a curious sense of working against, rather than with,

the rule. The rule, however valuable it

may be for non-native speakers, is, for the most part,

simply unusable for native speakers of the

language.

Cognate Areas of Research

We can corroborate this demonstration by turning to

research in two cognate areas, studies of the

induction of rules of artifi cial languages and studies of

the role of formal rules in second language

acquisition. Psychologists have studied the ability of

subjects to learn artifi cial languages, usually

constructed of nonsense syllables or letter strings. Such

languages can be described by phrase

structure rules:

S � VX

X � MX

More clearly, they can be presented as fl ow diagrams, as

below: start ⇒ X V M R V X T T R end
This diagram produces “sentences” like the following:

VVTRXRR. XMVTTRX. XXRR.

XMVRMT. VVTTRMT. XMTRRR.

The following “sentences” would be “ungrammatical” in this

language:

*VMXTT. *RTXVVT. TRVXXVVM.

Arthur S. Reber, in a classic 1967 experiment, demonstrated

that mere exposure to grammatical

sentences produced tacit learning: subjects who copied

several grammatical sentences performed

far above chance in judging the grammaticality of other

letter strings. Further experiments have

shown that providing subjects with formal rules remarkably

degrades performance: subjects given

the “rules of the language” do much less well in acquiring

the rules than do subjects not given the

rules. Indeed, even telling subjects that they are to

induce the rules of an artifi cial language degrades

performance. Such laboratory experiments are admittedly

contrived, but they confi rm predictions

that our theory of language would make about the value of

formal rules in language learning. 17

The thrust of recent research in second language learning

similarly works to constrain the value

of formal grammar rules. The most explicit statement of the

value of formal rules is that of Stephen

D. Krashen’s monitor model. 18 Krashen divides second

language mastery into acquisition—tacit,

informal mastery, akin to fi rst language acquisition—and

formal learning—conscious application of

Grammar 2 rules, which he calls “monitoring” output. In

another essay Krashen uses his model to
predict a highly individual use of the monitor and a highly
constrained role for formal rules:

Some adults (and very few children) are able to use

conscious rules to increase the gram

matical accuracy of their output, and even for these

people, very strict conditions need to be

met before the conscious grammar can be applied. 19

In Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition

(New York: Pergamon, 1982) Krashen

outlines these conditions by means of a series of

concentric circles, beginning with a large circle

denoting the rules of English and a smaller circle denoting

the subset of those rules described by

formal linguists (adding that most linguists would protest

that the size of this circle is much too

large): rules of English rules described by formal linguists

(p. 92)

Krashen then adds smaller circles, as shown below—a subset

of the rules described by formal

linguists that would be known to applied linguists, a

subset of those rules that would be available

to the best teachers, and then a subset of those rules that

teachers might choose to present to

second language learners: rules known to applied linguists

rules known to best teachers rules taught

(P. 93)

Of course, as Krashen notes, not all the rules taught will

be learned, and not all those learned will

be available, as what he calls “mental baggage” (p. 94),

for conscious use.

An experiment by Ellen Bialystock, asking English speakers

learning French to judge the gram
maticality of taped sentences, complicates this issue, for
reaction time data suggest that learners

fi rst make an intuitive judgment of grammaticality, using

implicit or Grammar 1 knowledge, and

only then search for formal explanations, using explicit or

Grammar 2 knowledge. 20 This distinc

tion would suggest that Grammar 2 knowledge is of use to

second language learners only after

the principle has already been mastered as tacit Grammar 1

knowledge. In the terms of Krashen’s

model, learning never becomes acquisition (Principles, p.

86).

An ingenious experiment by Herbert W. Seliger complicates

the issue yet further (“On the

Nature and Function of Language Rules in Language

Learning,” TESOL Quarterly, 13 [1979], 359–

369). Seliger asked native and non-native speakers of

English to orally identify pictures of objects

(e.g., “an apple,” “a pear,” “a book,” “an umbrella”),

noting whether they used the correct form of

the indefi nite articles a and an. He then asked each

speaker to state the rule for choosing between

a and an. He found no correlation between the ability to

state the rule and the ability to apply it

correctly, either with native or non-native speakers.

Indeed, three of four adult non-native speak

ers in his sample produced a correct form of the rule, but

they did not apply it in speaking. A strong

conclusion from this experiment would be that formal rules

of grammar seem to have no value

whatsoever. Seliger, however, suggests a more paradoxical

interpretation. Rules are of no use, he

agrees, but some people think they are, and for these
people, assuming that they have internalized
the rules, even inadequate rules are of heuristic value,
for they allow them to access the internal

rules they actually use.

The Incantations of The “Common School Grammars”

Such a paradox may explain the fascination we have as

teachers with “rules of grammar” of the

Grammar 4 variety, the “rules” of the “common school

grammars.” Again and again such rules are

inadequate to the facts of written language; you will

recall that we have known this since Francis’

1927 study. R. Scott Baldwin and James M. Coady, studying

how readers respond to punctuation

signals (“Psycholinguistic Approaches to a Theory of

Punctuation,” Journal of Reading Behavior, 10

[1978], 363–83), conclude that conventional rules of

punctuation are “a complete sham” (p. 375).

My own favorite is the Grammar 4 rule for showing

possession, always expressed in terms of add

ing -’s or -s’ to nouns, while our internal grammar, if you

think about it, adds possession to noun

phrases, albeit under severe stylistic constraints: “the

horses of the Queen of England” are “the

Queen of England’s horses” and “the feathers of the duck

over there” are “the duck over there’s

feathers.” Suzette Haden Elgin refers to the “rules” of

Grammar 4 as “incantations” (Never Mind

the Trees, p. 9: see footnote 3).

It may simply be that as hyperliterate adults we are

conscious of “using rules” when we are in

fact doing something else, something far more complex,

accessing tacit heuristics honed by print

literacy itself. We can clarify this notion by reaching for

an acronym coined by technical writers to

explain the readability of complex prose—COIK: “clear only

if known.” The rules of Grammar 4—

no, we can at this point be more honest—the incantations of

Grammar 4 are COIK. If you know

how to signal possession in the code of print, then the

advice to add -’s to nouns makes perfect

sense, just as the collective noun monies is a fi ne

example of changing-y to -i and adding es to form

the plural. But if you have not grasped, tacitly, the

abstract representation of possession in print,

such incantations can only be opaque.

Worse yet, the advice given in “the common school grammars”

is unconnected with anything

remotely resembling literate adult behavior. Consider, as

an example, the rule for not writing a

sentence fragment as the rule is described in the

best-selling college grammar text, John C. Hodges

and Mary S. Whitten’s Harbrace College Handbook, 9th ed.

(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,

1982). In order to get to the advice, “as a rule, do not

write a sentence fragment” (p. 25), the stu

dent must master the following learning tasks:

Recognizing verbs.

Recognizing subjects and verbs.

Recognizing all parts of speech. (Harbrace lists eight.)

Recognizing phrases and subordinate clauses. (Harbrace

lists six types of phrases, and it offers incomplete lists
of eight relative pronouns and eighteen subordinating
conjunctions.)

Recognizing main clauses and types of sentences.

These learning tasks completed, the student is given the

rule above, offered a page of exceptions,

and then given the following advice (or is it an

incantation?):

Before handing in a composition, … proofread each word

group written as a sentence. Test

each one for completeness. First, be sure that it has at

least one subject and one predicate.

Next, be sure that the word group is not a dependent clause

beginning with a subordinating

conjunction or a relative clause. (p. 27)

The school grammar approach defi nes a sentence fragment as

a conceptual error—as not having

conscious knowledge of the school grammar defi nition of

sentence. It demands heavy emphasis

on rote memory, and it asks students to behave in ways

patently removed from the behaviors

of mature writers. (I have never in my life tested a

sentence for completeness, and I am a better

writer—and probably a better person—as a consequence.) It

may be, of course, that some devel

oping writers, at some points in their development, may

benefi t from such advice—or, more to

the point, may think that they benefi t—but, as Thomas

Friedman points out in “Teaching Error,

Nurturing Confusion” (CE, 45 [1983], 390–399), our theory

of language tells us that such advice is,

at the best, COIK. As the Maine joke has it, about a

tourist asking directions from a farmer, “you

can’t get there from here.”

Redefining Error

In the specifi c case of sentence fragments, Mina P.

Shaughnessy (Errors and Expectations [New
York: Oxford University Press, 1977]) argues that such
errors are not conceptual failures at all,

but performance errors—mistakes in punctuation. Muriel

Harris’ error counts support this view

(“Mending the Fragmented Free Modifi er,” CCC, 32 [1981],

175–182). Case studies show example

after example of errors that occur because of

instruction—one thinks, for example, of David Bar

tholmae’s student explaining that he added an -s to

children “because it’s a plural” (“The Study of

Error,” CCC, 31 [1980], 262). Surveys, such as that by

Muriel Harris (“Contradictory Perceptions of

the Rules of Writing,” CCC, 30 [1979], 218–220), and our

own observations suggest that students

consistently misunderstand such Grammar 4 explanations

(COIK, you will recall). For example,

from Patrick Hartwell and Robert H. Bentley and from Mike

Rose, we have two separate anecdotal

accounts of students, cited for punctuating a

because-clause as a sentence, who have decided to

avoid using because. More generally, Collette A. Daiute’s

analysis of errors made by college stu

dents shows that errors tend to appear at clause

boundaries, suggesting short-term memory load

and not conceptual defi ciency as a cause of error. 21

Thus, if we think seriously about error and its

relationship to the worship of formal grammar

study, we need to attempt some massive dislocation of our

traditional thinking, to shuck off our

hyperliterate perception of the value of formal rules, and

to regain the confi dence in the tacit

power of unconscious knowledge that our theory of language

gives us. Most students, reading their
writing aloud, will correct in essence all errors of
spelling, grammar, and, by intonation, punctua

tion, but usually without noticing that what they read

departs from what they wrote. 22 And Richard

H. Haswell (“Minimal Marking,” CE, 45 1983], 600–604) notes

that his students correct 61.1% of

their errors when they are identifi ed with a simple mark

in the margin rather than by error type.

Such fi ndings suggest that we need to redefi ne error, to

see it not as a cognitive or linguistic prob

lem, a problem of not knowing a “rule of grammar” (whatever

that may mean), but rather, following

the insight of Robert J. Bracewell (“Writing as a Cognitive

Activity,” Visible Language, 14 [1980],

400–422), as a problem of metacognition and metalinguistic

awareness, a matter of accessing

knowledges that, to be of any use, learners must have

already internalized by means of exposure

to the code. (Usage issues—Grammar 3—probably represent a

different order of problem. Both

Joseph Emonds and Jeffrey Jochnowitz establish that the

usage issues we worry most about are

linguistically unnatural, departures from the grammar in

our heads.) 23

The notion of metalinguistic awareness seems crucial. The

sentence below, created by Douglas

R. Hofstadter (“Metamagical Themes,” Scientifi c American,

235, No. 1 [1981], 22–32), is offered to

clarify that notion; you are invited to examine it for a

moment or two before continuing.

Their is four errors in this sentance. Can you fi nd them?

Three errors announce themselves plainly enough, the

misspellings of there and sentence and the
use of is instead of are. (And, just to illustrate the
perils of hyperliteracy, let it be noted that,

through three years of drafts, I referred to the choice of

is and are as a matter of “subject-verb

agreement.”) The fourth error resists detection, until one

assesses the truth value of the sentence

itself—the fourth error is that there are not four errors,

only three. Such a sentence (Hofstadter

calls it a “self-referencing sentence”) asks you to look at

it in two ways, simultaneously as state

ment and as linguistic artifact—in other words, to exercise

metalinguistic awareness.

A broad range of cross-cultural studies suggest that

metalinguistic awareness is a defi ning fea

ture of print literacy. Thus Sylvia Scribner and Michael

Cole, working with the triliterate Vai of

Liberia (variously literate in English, through schooling;

in Arabic, for religious purposes; and in

an indigenous Vai script, used for personal affairs), fi nd

that metalinguistic awareness, broadly

conceived, is the only cognitive skill underlying each of

the three literacies. The one statistically

signifi cant skill shared by literate Vai was the

recognition of word boundaries. Moreover, literate

Vai tended to answer “yes” when asked (in Vai), “Can you
call the sun the moon and the moon

the sun?” while illiterate Vai tended to have grave doubts

about such metalinguistic play. And in

the United States Henry and Lila R. Gleitman report quite

different responses by clerical work

ers and PhD candidates asked to interpret nonsense

compounds like “house-bird glass”: clerical

workers focused on meaning and plausibility (for example,

“a house-bird made of glass”), while
PhD candidates focused on syntax (for example, “a very
small drinking cup for canaries” or “a glass

that protects house-birds”). 24 More general research fi

ndings suggest a clear relationship between

measures of metalinguistic awareness and measures of

literacy level. 25 William Labov, speculating

on literacy acquisition in inner-city ghettoes, contrasts

“stimulus-bound” and “language-bound”

individuals, suggesting that the latter seem to master

literacy more easily. 26 The analysis here sug

gests that the causal relationship works the other way,

that it is the mastery of written language

that increases one’s awareness of language as language.

This analysis has two implications. First, it makes the

question of socially nonstandard dialects,

always implicit in discussions of teaching formal grammar,

into a non-issue. 27 Native speakers of

English, regardless of dialect, show tacit mastery of the

conventions of Standard English, and that

mastery seems to transfer into abstract orthographic

knowledge through interaction with print. 28

Developing writers show the same patterning of errors,

regardless of dialect. 29 Studies of reading

and of writing suggest that surface features of spoken

dialect are simply irrelevant to mastering

print literacy. 30 Print is a complex cultural code—or

better yet, a system of codes—and my bet

is that, regardless of instruction, one masters those codes

from the top down, from pragmatic

questions of voice, tone, audience, register, and

rhetorical strategy, not from the bottom up, from

grammar to usage to fi xed forms of organization.

Second, this analysis forces us to posit multiple
literacies, used for multiple purposes, rather

than a single static literacy, engraved in “rules of

grammar.” These multiple literacies are evident

in cross-cultural studies. 31 They are equally evident

when we inquire into the uses of literacy in

American communities. 32 Further, given that students, at

all levels, show widely variant interactions

with print literacy, there would seem to be little to do

with grammar—with Grammar 2 or with

Grammar 4—that we could isolate as a basis for formal

instruction. 33

Grammar 5: Stylistic Grammar

Similarly, when we turn to Grammar 5, “grammatical terms

used in the interest of teaching prose

style,” so central to Martha Kolln’s argument for teaching

formal grammar, we fi nd that the gram

mar issue is simply beside the point. There are two

fully-articulated positions about “stylistic gram

mar,” which I will label “romantic” and “classic,”

following Richard Lloyd-Jones and Richard E.

Young. 34 The romantic position is that stylistic

grammars, though perhaps useful for teachers, have

little place in the teaching of composition, for students

must struggle with and through language

toward meaning. This position rests on a theory of language

ultimately philosophical rather than

linguistic (witness, for example, the contempt for

linguists in Ann Berthoff’s The Making of Mean

ing: Metaphors, Models, and Maxims for Writing Teachers

[Montclair, N.J.: Boynton/Cook, 1981]); it

is articulated as a theory of style by Donald A. Murray

and, on somewhat different grounds (that
stylistic grammars encourage overuse of the monitor), by
Ian Pringle. The classic position, on the

other hand, is that we can fi nd ways to offer developing

writers helpful suggestions about prose

style, suggestions such as Francis Christensen’s emphasis

on the cumulative sentence, developed by

observing the practice of skilled writers, and Joseph

Williams’ advice about predication, developed

by psycholinguistic studies of comprehension. 35 James A.

Berlin’s recent survey of composition the

ory (CE, 45 [1982], 765–777) probably understates the gulf

between these two positions and the

radically different conceptions of language that underlie

them, but it does establish that they share

an overriding assumption in common: that one learns to

control the language of print by manipu

lating language in meaningful contexts, not by learning

about language in isolation, as by the study

of formal grammar. Thus even classic theorists, who choose

to present a vocabulary of style to

students, do so only as a vehicle for encouraging

productive control of communicative structures.

We might put the matter in the following terms. Writers

need to develop skills at two levels.

One, broadly rhetorical, involves communication in

meaningful contexts (the strategies, registers,

and procedures of discourse across a range of modes,

audiences, contexts, and purposes). The

other, broadly metalinguistic rather than linguistic,

involves active manipulation of language with

conscious attention to surface form. This second level may

be developed tacitly, as a natural adjunct

to developing rhetorical competencies—I take this to be the

position of romantic theorists. It may
be developed formally, by manipulating language for
stylistic effect, and such manipulation may

involve, for pedagogical continuity, a vocabulary of style.

But it is primarily developed by any kind

of language activity that enhances the awareness of

language as language. 36 David T. Hakes, sum

marizing the research on metalinguistic awareness, notes

how far we are from understanding this

process: [the optimal conditions for becoming

metalinguistically competent involve growing up in a

literate environment with adult models who are themselves

metalinguistically competent and who

foster the growth of that competence in a variety of ways

as yet little understood. (“The Develop

ment of Metalinguistic Abilities,” p. 205: see footnote 25)]

Such a model places language, at all levels, at the center

of the curriculum, but not as “necessary

categories and labels” (Kolln, “Closing the Books on

Alchemy,” p. 150), but as literal stuff, verbal

clay, to be molded and probed, shaped and reshaped, and,

above all, enjoyed.

The Tradition of Experimental Research

Thus, when we turn back to experimental research on the

value of formal grammar instruction,

we do so with fi rm predictions given us by our theory of

language. Our theory would predict

that formal grammar instruction, whether instruction in

scientifi c grammar or instruction in “the

common school grammar,” would have little to do with

control over surface correctness nor

with quality of writing. It would predict that any form of

active involvement with language would
be preferable to instruction in rules or defi nitions (or
incantations). In essence, this is what the

research tells us. In 1893, the Committee of Ten (Report of

the Committee of Ten on Secondary School

Studies [Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Offi

ce, 1893]) put grammar at the center of

the English curriculum, and its report established the

rigidly sequential mode of instruction com

mon for the last century. But the committee explicitly

noted that grammar instruction did not aid

correctness, arguing instead that it improved the ability

to think logically (an argument developed

from the role of the “grammarian” in the classical

rhetorical tradition, essentially a teacher of lit

erature—see, for example, the etymology of grammar in the

Oxford English Dictionary).

But Franklin S. Hoyt, in a 1906 experiment, found no

relationship between the study of gram

mar and the ability to think logically; his research led

him to conclude what I am constrained to

argue more than seventy-fi ve years later, that there is no

“relationship between a knowledge of

technical grammar and the ability to use English and to

interpret language” (“The Place of Gram

mar in the Elementary Curriculum,” Teachers College Record,

7 [1906], 483–484). Later studies,

through the 1920s, focused on the relationship of knowledge

of grammar and ability to recognize

error; experiments reported by James Boraas in 1917 and by

William Asker in 1923 are typical of

those that reported no correlation. In the 1930s, with the

development of the functional grammar

movement, it was common to compare the study of formal

grammar with one form or another
of active manipulation of language; experiments by I. O.
Ash in 1935 and Ellen Frogner in 1939 are

typical of studies showing the superiority of active

involvement with language. 37 In a 1959 article,

“Grammar in Language Teaching” (Elementary English, 36

[1959], 412–421), John J. DeBoer noted

the consistency of these fi ndings.

The impressive fact is … that in all these studies, carried

out in places and at times far

removed from each other, often by highly experienced and

disinterested investigators, the

results have been consistently negative so far as the value

of grammar in the improvement of

language expression is concerned. (p. 417)

In 1960 Ingrid M. Strom, reviewing more than fi fty

experimental studies, came to a similarly

strong and unqualifi ed conclusion:

direct methods of instruction, focusing on writing

activities and the structuring of ideas, are

more effi cient in teaching sentence structure, usage,

punctuation, and other related factors

than are such methods as nomenclature drill, diagramming,

and rote memorization of gram

matical rules. 38

In 1963 two research reviews appeared, one by Braddock,

Lloyd-Jones, and Schorer, cited at the

beginning of this paper, and one by Henry C. Meckel, whose

conclusions, though more guarded,

are in essential agreement. 39 In 1969 J. Stephen Sherwin

devoted one-fourth of his Four Problems in

Teaching English: A Critique of Research (Scranton, Penn.:

International Textbook, 1969) to the gram
mar issue, concluding that “instruction in formal grammar
is an ineffective way to help students

achieve profi ciency in writing” (p. 135). Some early

experiments in sentence combining, such as

those by Donald R. Bateman and Frank J. Zidonnis and by

John C. Mellon, showed improvement in

measures of syntactic complexity with instruction in

transformational grammar keyed to sentence

combining practice. But a later study by Frank O’Hare

achieved the same gains with no grammar

instruction, suggesting to Sandra L. Stotsky and to Richard

Van de Veghe that active manipula

tion of language, not the grammar unit, explained the

earlier results. 40 More recent summaries of

research—by Elizabeth I. Haynes, Hillary Taylor Holbrook,

and Marcia Farr Whiteman—support

similar conclusions. Indirect evidence for this position is

provided by surveys reported by Betty

Bamberg in 1978 and 1981, showing that time spent in

grammar instruction in high school is the

least important factor, of eight factors examined, in

separating regular from remedial writers at the

college level. 41 More generally, Patrick Scott and Bruce

Castner, in “Reference Sources for Com

position Research: A Practical Survey” (CE, 45 [1983],

756–768), note that much current research

is not informed by an awareness of the past. Put simply, we

are constrained to reinvent the wheel.

My concern here has been with a far more serious problem:

that too often the wheel we reinvent

is square.

It is, after all, a question of power. Janet Emig,

developing a consensus from composition
research, and Aaron S. Carton and Lawrence V. Castiglione,
developing the implications of lan

guage theory for education, come to the same conclusion:

that the thrust of current research and

theory is to take power from the teacher and to give that

power to the learner. 42 At no point in

the English curriculum is the question of power more

blatantly posed than in the issue of formal

grammar instruction. It is time that we, as teachers,

formulate theories of language and literacy

and let those theories guide our teaching, and it is time

that we, as researchers, move on to more

interesting areas of inquiry.

Notes

1 Research in Written Composition (Urbana, Ill.: National

Council of Teachers of English, 1963), pp. 37–38.

2 “Non-magical Thinking: Presenting Writing Developmentally

in Schools,” in Writing Process, Development and
Communication, Vol. II of Writing: The Nature, Development
and Teaching of Written Communication, ed. Charles H.
Frederiksen and Joseph F. Dominic (Hillsdale, N.J.:
Lawrence Erlbaum, 1980), pp. 21–30.

3 For arguments in favor of formal grammar teaching, see

Patrick F. Basset, “Grammar—Can We Afford Not to Teach
It?” NASSP Bulletin, 64, No. 10 (1980), 55–63; Mary Epes,
et al., “The COMP-LAB Project: Assessing the Effectiveness
of a Laboratory-Centered Basic Writing Course on the
College Level” (Jamaica, N.Y.: York College, CUNY, 1979)
ERIC 194 908; June B. Evans, “The Analogous Ounce: The
Analgesic for Relief,” English Journal, 70, No. 2 (1981),
38–39; Sydney Greenbaum, “What Is Grammar and Why Teach
It?” (a paper presented at the meeting of the National
Council of Teachers of English, Boston, Nov. 1982) ERIC
222 917; Marjorie Smelstor, A Guide to the Role of Grammar
in Teaching Writing (Madison: University of Wisconsin
School of Education, 1978) ERIC 176 323; and A.M. Tibbetts,
Working Papers: A Teacher’s Observations on Composition
(Glenview, Ill.: Scott, Foresman, 1982).
For attacks on formal grammar teaching, see Harvey A.
Daniels, Famous Last Words: The American Language Crisis
Reconsidered (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University
Press, 1983); Suzette Haden Elgin, Never Mind the Trees:
What the English Teacher Really Needs to Know about
Linguistics (Berkeley: University of California College of
Education, Bay Area Writing Project Occasional Paper No. 2,
1980) ERIC 198 536; Mike Rose, “Remedial Writing Courses:
A Critique and a Proposal.” College English, 45 (1983),
109–128; and Ron Shook, “Response to Martha Kolln,” College
Composition and Communication, 34 (1983), 491–495.

4 See, for example, Clifton Fadiman and James Howard, Empty

Pages: A Search for Writing Competence in School and
Society (Belmont, Cal.: Fearon Pitman, 1979); Edwin Newman,
A Civil Tongue (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1976);
and Strictly Speaking (New York: Warner Books, 1974); John
Simons, Paradigms Lost (New York: Clarkson N. Potter,
1980); A. M. Tibbetts and Charlene Tibbetts, What’s
Happening to American English? (New York: Scribner’s,
1978); and “Why Johnny Can’t Write,” Newsweek, 8 Dec.
1975, pp. 58–63.

5 “The Role of Grammar in a Secondary School English

Curriculum.” Research in the Teaching of English, 10
(1976), 5–21; The Role of Grammar in a Secondary School
Curriculum (Wellington: New Zealand Council of Teachers of
English, 1979).

6 “A Taxonomy of Compositional Competencies,” in

Perspectives on Literacy, ed. Richard Beach and P. David
Pearson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota College of
Education, 1979), pp. 247–272.

7 On usage norms, see Edward Finegan, Attitudes toward

English Usage: The History of a War of Words (New York:
Teachers College Press, 1980), and Jim Quinn, American
Tongue in Cheek: A Populist Guide to Language (New York:
Pantheon, 1980); on arrangement, see Patrick Hartwell,
“Teaching Arrangement: A Pedagogy,” CE, 40 (1979),
548–554.

8 “Revolution in Grammar,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 40

(1954), 299–312.

9 Richard A. Lanham, Revising Prose (New York: Scribner’s,

1979); William Strunk and E. B. White, The Elements of
Style, 3rd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1979); Joseph
Williams, Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace
(Glenview, Ill.: Scott, Foresman, 1981); Christensen, “A
Generative Rhetoric of the Sentence,” CCC, 14 (1963),
155–161; Donald A. Daiker, Andrew Kerek, and Max Morenberg,
The Writer’s Options: Combining to Composing, 2nd ed. (New
York: Harper & Row, 1982).

10 “A Psychological Approach,” in Psychobiology of

Language, ed. M. Studdert-Kennedy (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 1983), pp. 16–19. See also Noam Chomsky, “Language
and Unconscious Knowledge,” in Psychoanalysis and Language:
Psychiatry and the Humanities, Vol. III, ed. Joseph H.
Smith (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1978), pp.
3–44.

11 Morris Halle, “Knowledge Unlearned and Untaught: What

Speakers Know about the Sounds of Their Language,” in
Linguistic Theory and Psychological Reality, ed. Halle,
Joan Bresnan, and George A. Miller (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 1978), pp. 135–140.

12 Moscowitz, “On the Status of Vowel Shift in English,” in

Cognitive Development and the Acquisition of Language, ed.
T. E. Moore (New York: Academic Press, 1973), pp. 223–60;
Chomsky, “Stages in Language Development and Reading
Exposure,” Harvard Educational Review, 42 (1972), 1–33; and
Brause, “Developmental Aspects of the Ability to Understand
Semantic Ambiguity, with Implications for Teachers,” RTE,
11 (1977), 39–48.

13 Mills and Hemsley, “The Effect of Levels of Education on

Judgments of Grammatical Acceptability,” Language and
Speech, 19 (1976), 324–342; Whyte, “Levels of Language
Competence and Reading Ability: An Exploratory
Investigation,” Journal of Research in Reading, 5 (1982,
123–132; Morais, et al., “Does Awareness of Speech as a
Series of Phones Arise Spontaneously,” Cognition, 7 (1979),
323–331; Ferguson, Cognitive Effects of Literacy:
Linguistic Awareness in Adult Non-readers (Washington,
D.C.: National Institute of Education Final Report, 1981)
ERIC 222 85; Hamilton and Barton, “A Word Is a Word:
Metalinguistic Skills in Adults of Varying Literacy Levels”
(Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Department of
Linguistics, 1980) ERIC 222 859.

14 On the question of the psychological reality of Grammar

2 descriptions, see Maria Black and Shulamith Chiat,
“Psycholinguistics without ‘Psychological Reality’,”
Linguistics, 19 (1981), 37–61; Joan Bresnan, ed., The
Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1982); and Michael H. Long, “Inside the
‘Black Box’: Methodological Issues in Classroom Research on
Language Learning,” Language Learning, 30 (1980), 1–42.

15 Chomsky, “The Current Scene in Linguistics,” College

English, 27 (1966), 587–595; and “Linguistic Theory,” in
Language Teaching: Broader Contexts, ed. Robert C. Meade,
Jr. (New York: Modern Language Association, 1966), pp.
43–49; Mark Lester, “The Value of Transformational Grammar
in Teaching Composition,” CCC, 16 (1967), 228.

16 Christensen, “Between Two Worlds,” in Notes toward a New

Rhetoric: Nine Essays for Teachers, rev. ed., ed.
Bonniejean Christensen (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), pp.
1–22.

17 Reber, “Implicit Learning of Artifi cial Grammars,”

Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 6 (1967),
855–863; “Implicit Learning of Synthetic Languages: The
Role of Instructional Set,” Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 2 (1976), 889–894;
and Reber, Saul M. Kassin, Selma Lewis, and Gary Cantor,
“On the Relationship Between Implicit and Explicit Modes in
the Learning of a Complex Rule Structure,” Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 6
(1980), 492–502.

18 “Individual Variation in the Use of the Monitor,” in

Principles of Second Language Learning, ed. W. Richie (New
York: Academic Press, 1978), pp. 175–185.

19 “Applications of Psycholinguistic Research to the

Classroom,” in Practical Applications of Research in
Foreign Language Teaching, ed. D. J. James (Lincolnwood,
Ill.: National Textbook, 1983), p. 61.

20 “Some Evidence for the Integrity and Interaction of Two

Knowledge Sources,” in New Dimensions in Second Language
Acquisition Research, ed. Roger W. Anderson (Rowley, Mass.:
Newbury House, 1981), pp. 62–74.

21 Hartwell and Bentley, Some Suggestions for Using Open to

Language (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 73;
Rose, Writer’s Block: The Cognitive Dimension (Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press, 1983), p. 99; Daiute,
“Psycholinguistic Foundations of the Writing Process,” RTE,
15 (1981), 5–22.

22 See Bartholomae, “The Study of Error”; Patrick Hartwell,

“The Writing Center and the Paradoxes of Written-Down
Speech,” in Writing Centers: Theory and Administration, ed.
Gary Olson (Urbana, Ill.: NCTE, 1984), pp. 48–61; and
Sondra Perl, “A Look at Basic Writers in the Process of
Composing,” in Basic Writing: A Collection of Essays for
Teachers, Researchers, and Administrators (Urbana, Ill.:
NCTE, 1980), pp. 13–32.

23 Emonds, Adjacency in Grammar: The Theory of

Language-Particular Rules (New York: Academic, 1983); and
Jochnowitz, “Everybody Likes Pizza, Doesn’t He or She?”
American Speech, 57 (1982), 198–203.

24 Scribner and Cole, Psychology of Literacy (Cambridge,

Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981); Gleitman and
Gleitman, “Language Use and Language Judgment,” in
Individual Differences in Language Ability and Language
Behavior, ed. Charles J. Fillmore, Daniel Kempler, and
William S.-Y. Wang (New York: Academic Press, 1979), pp.
103–126.

25 There are several recent reviews of this developing body

of research in psychology and child development: Irene
Athey, “Language Development Factors Related to Reading
Development,” Journal of Educational Research, 76 (1983),
197–203; James Flood and Paula Menyuk, “Metalinguistic
Development and Reading/Writing Achievement,” Claremont
Reading Conference Yearbook, 46 (1982), 122–132; and the
following four essays: David T. Hakes, “The Development of
Metalinguistic Abilities: What Develops?,” pp. 162–210;
Stan A. Kuczaj, II, and Brooke Harbaugh, “What Children
Think about the Speaking Capabilities of Other Persons and
Things,” pp. 211–227; Karen Saywitz and Louise Cherry
Wilkinson, “Age-Related Differences in Metalinguistic
Awareness,” pp. 229–250; and Harriet Salatas Waters and
Virginia S. Tinsley, “The Development of Verbal
Self-Regulation: Relationships between Language, Cognition,
and Behavior,” pp. 251–277; all in Language, Thought, and
Culture, Vol. II of Language Development, ed. Stan Kuczaj,
Jr. (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1982). See also
Joanne R. Nurss, “Research in Review: Linguistic Awareness
and Learning to Read,” Young Children, 35, No. 3 [1980],
57–66.

26 “Competing Value Systems in Inner City Schools,” in

Children In and Out of School: Ethnography and Education,
ed. Perry Gilmore and Allan A. Glatthorn (Washington, D.C.:
Center for Applied Linguistics, 1982), pp. 148–171; and
“Locating the Frontier between Social and Psychological
Factors in Linguistic Structure,” in Individual
Differences in Language Ability and Language Behavior, ed.
Fillmore, Kempler, and Wang, pp. 327–340.
27 See, for example, Thomas Farrell, “IQ and Standard
English,” CCC, 34 (1983), 470–84; and the responses by
Karen L. Greenberg and Patrick Hartwell, CCC, in press.

28 Jane W. Torrey, “Teaching Standard English to Speakers

of Other Dialects,” in Applications of Linguistics:
Selected Papers of the Second International Conference of
Applied Linguistics, ed. G. E. Perren and J. L. M. Trim
(Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp.
423–428; James W. Beers and Edmund H. Henderson, “A Study
of the Developing Orthographic Concepts among First
Graders,” RTE, 11 (1977), 133–148.

29 See the error counts of Samuel A. Kirschner and G.

Howard Poteet, “Non-Standard English Usage in the Writing
of Black, White, and Hispanic Remedial English Students in
an Urban Community College,” RTE, 7 (1973), 351–355; and
Marilyn Sternglass, “Close Similarities in Dialect Features
of Black and White College Students in Remedial
Composition Classes,” TESOL Quarterly, 8 (1974), 271–283.

30 For reading, see the massive study by Kenneth S. Goodman

and Yetta M. Goodman, Reading of American Children whose
Language Is a Stable Rural Dialect of English or a Language
other than English (Washington, D.C.: National Institute
of Education Final Report, 1978) ERIC 175 754; and the
overview by Rudine Sims, “Dialect and Reading: Toward
Redefi ning the Issues,” in Reader Meets Author/Bridging
the Gap: A Psycholinguistic and Sociolinguistic Approach,
ed. Judith A. Langer and M. Tricia Smith-Burke (Newark,
Del.: International Reading Association, 1982), pp.
222–232. For writing, see Patrick Hartwell, “Dialect
Interference in Writing: A Critical View,” RTE, 14 (1980),
101–118; and the anthology edited by Barry M. Kroll and
Roberta J. Vann, Exploring Speaking-Writing Relationships:
Connections and Contrasts (Urbana, Ill.: NCTE, 1981).

31 See, for example, Eric A. Havelock, The Literary

Revolution in Greece and its Cultural Consequences
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982); Lesley
Milroy on literacy in Dublin, Language and Social Networks
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980); Ron Scollon and Suzanne B.
K. Scollon on literacy in central Alaska, Interethnic
Communication: An Athabascan Case (Austin, Tex.: Southwest
Educational Development Laboratory Working Papers in
Sociolinguistics, No. 59, 1979) ERIC 175 276; and Scribner
and Cole on literacy in Liberia, Psychology of Literacy
(see footnote 24).

32 See, for example, the anthology edited by Deborah

Tannen, Spoken and Written Language: Exploring Orality and
Literacy (Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, 1982); and Shirley Brice
Heath’s continuing work: “Protean Shapes in Literacy
Events: Ever-Shifting Oral and Literate Traditions,” in
Spoken and Written Language, pp. 91–117; Ways with Words:
Language, Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1983); and “What No
Bedtime Story Means,” Language in Society, 11 (1982),
49–76.

33 For studies at the elementary level, see Dell H. Hymes,

et al., eds., Ethnographic Monitoring of Children’s
Acquisition of Reading/Language Arts Skills In and Out of
the Classroom (Washington, D.C.: National Institute of
Education Final Report, 1981) ERIC 208 096. For studies at
the secondary level, see James L. Collins and Michael M.
Williamson, “Spoken Language and Semantic Abbreviation in
Writing,” RTE, 15 (1981), 23–36. And for studies at the
college level, see Patrick Hartwell and Gene LoPresti,
“Sentence Combining as Kid-Watching,” in Sentence
Combining: Toward a Rhetorical Perspective, ed. Donald A.
Daiker, Andrew Kerek, and Max Morenberg (Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press, in press).

34 Lloyd-Jones, “Romantic Revels—I Am Not You,” CCC, 23

(1972), 251–271; and Young, “Concepts of Art and the
Teaching of Writing,” in The Rhetorical Tradition and
Modern Writing, ed. James J. Murphy (New York: Modern
Language Association, 1982), pp. 130–141.

35 For the romantic position, see Ann E. Berthoff,

“Tolstoy, Vygotsky, and the Making of Meaning,” CCC, 29
(1978), 249–255; Kenneth Dowst, “The Epistemic Approach,”
in Eight Approaches to Teaching Composition, ed. Timothy
Donovan and Ben G. McClellan (Urbana, Ill.: NCTE, 1980),
pp. 65–85; Peter Elbow, “The Challenge for Sentence
Combining”; and Donald Murray, “Following Language toward
Meaning,” both in Sentence Combining: Toward a Rhetorical
Perspective (in press; see footnote 33); and Ian Pringle,
“Why Teach Style? A Review-Essay,” CCC, 34 (1983), 91–98.
For the classic position, see Christensen’s “A Generative
Rhetoric of the Sentence”; and Joseph Williams’ “Defi ning
Complexity,” CE, 41 (1979), 595–609; and his Style: Ten
Lessons in Clarity and Grace (see footnote 9).

36 Courtney B. Cazden and David K. Dickinson, “Language and

Education: Standardization versus Cultural Pluralism,” in
Language in the USA, ed. Charles A. Ferguson and Shirley
Brice Health (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981),
pp. 446–468; and Carol Chomsky, “Developing Facility with
Language Structure,” in Discovering Language with
Children, ed. Gay Su Pinnell (Urbana, Ill.: NCTE, 1980),
pp. 56–59.

37 Boraas, “Formal English Grammar and the Practical

Mastery of English.” Diss. University of Illinois, 1917;
Asker, “Does Knowledge of Grammar Function?” School and
Society, 17 (27 January 1923), 109– 111; Ash, “An
Experimental Evaluation of the Stylistic Approach in
Teaching Composition in the Junior High School,” Journal
of Experimental Education, 4 (1935), 54–62; and Frogner, “A
Study of the Relative Effi cacy of a Grammatical and a
Thought Approach to the Improvement of Sentence Structure
in Grades Nine and Eleven,” School Review, 47 (1939),
663–675.

38 “Research on Grammar and Usage and Its Implications for

Teaching Writing,” Bulletin of the School of Education,
Indiana University, 36 (1960), pp. 13–14.

39 Meckel, “Research on Teaching Composition and

Literature,” in Handbook of Research on Teaching, ed. N.
L. Gage (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963), pp. 966–1006.

40 Bateman and Zidonis, The Effect of a Study of

Transformational Grammar on the Writing of Ninth and Tenth
Graders (Urbana, Ill.: NCTE, 1966); Mellon,
Transformational Sentence Combining: A Method for Enhancing
the Development of Fluency in English Composition (Urbana,
Ill.: NCTE, 1969); O’Hare, Sentence-Combining: Improving
Student Writing without Formal Grammar Instruction (Urbana,
Ill.: NCTE, 1971); Stotsky, “Sentence-Combining as a
Curricular Activity: Its Effect on Written Language
Development,” RTE, 9 (1975), 30–72; and Van de Veghe,
“Research in Written Composition: Fifteen Years of
Investigation,” ERIC 157 095.

41 Haynes, “Using Research in Preparing to Teach Writing,”

English Journal, 69, No. 1 (1978), 82–88; Holbrook,
“ERIC/RCS Report: Whither (Wither) Grammar,” Language Arts,
60 (1983), 259–263; Whiteman, “What We Can Learn from
Writing Research,” Theory into Practice, 19 (1980),
150–156; Bamberg, “Composition in the Secondary English
Curriculum: Some Current Trends and Directions for the
Eighties,” RTE, 15 (1981), 257–266; and “Composition
Instruction Does Make a Difference: A Comparison of the
High School Preparation of College Freshmen in Regular and
Remedial English Classes,” RTE, 12 (1978), 47–59.

42 Emig, “Inquiry Paradigms and Writing,” CCC, 33 (1982),

64–75; Carton and Castiglione, “Educational Linguistics:
Defi ning the Domain,” in Psycholinguistic Research:
Implications and Applications, ed. Doris Aaronson and
Robert W. Rieber (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1979),
pp. 497–520.

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Reading BROADENING THE PERSPECTIVE OF MAINSTREAM

COMPOSITION STUDIES: SOME THOUGHTS FROM THE DISCIPLINARY
MARGINS Tony Silva Purdue University Ilona Leki University
of Tennessee Joan Carson Georgia State University

In this article we (a) argue that mainstream composition

studies is at present too narrow in its scope

and limited in its perspective and (b) offer some thoughts,

from our unique interdisciplinary position,

that we feel could help mainstream composition

professionals improve this situation. In our article,

we fi rst provide evidence that we feel suggests an

unfortunate pattern of neglect in mainstream

composition studies of writing in English as a second

language (ESL) and writing in languages other

than English. We then introduce a number of concepts from

second language studies (primarily from

second language acquisition and second language writing

instruction) that we believe could help

mainstream composition studies address its limitations;

develop a more global and inclusive under

standing of writing; and thus avoid being seen as a

monolinguistic, monocultural, and ethnocentric

enterprise.

Native language teachers have much to learn from ESL

research and pedagogy. —Smith, 1992
We agree.

English as a Second Language (ESL) writing, or more

generally, second language writing is

uniquely situated at the intersection of second language

studies and composition studies. This posi

tion requires us as second language writing researchers and

teachers to keep up on scholarship in

two fairly distinct disciplines and invites us to compare

developments in each and to observe how

each infl uences the other. In our view, both disciplines

have a lot to offer each other. A number of

ideas and insights from composition studies have proved

quite valuable for second language studies

and have both broadened its perspectives and added depth to

its discussions. Unfortunately, the

transfer of knowledge between the fi elds has primarily

been a one way affair, from composition

studies to second language studies. 1

There is no disputing that in recent years mainstream

composition studies has been at great

pains to articulate and promote a multicultural perspective

that honors diversity. Composition

studies has gained a great deal from attention to feminist,

critical, postcolonial, and postmodernist

perspectives imported from literary and cultural studies. 2

Yet from our vantage point, mainstream

composition studies remains troublingly narrow in its

scope. Mainstream composition scholars

make what seem to us to be universalist claims about the

phenomenon of writing almost exclu

sively on the basis of Western (Greco-Roman and

Anglo-American) rhetorical traditions and/or

on the fi ndings of empirical research conducted primarily

on undergraduate college students in

North American colleges and universities. Muchiri, Mulamba,

Myers, and Ndoloi (1995) propose

a similar argument supported by compelling examples from

the perspective of African writing

researchers. They urge composition researchers to

see how much of [their] work is tied to the particular

context of the U.S. When composi

tion researchers make larger claims about academic

knowledge and language, it [sic] needs

to acknowledge these ties. The very diversity rightly

celebrated in the composition literature

may lead a teacher to forget that it is diversity joined in

a peculiarly American way, within

American institutions, in an American space. The teacher in

New York or Los Angeles may

look out over a classroom and think, “the whole world is

here.” It isn’t. (p. 195)

Canagarajah (1996) likewise provides a glimpse into the

material conditions of scholars in third

world countries, conditions so unlike those taken for

granted, for example, in North America. But

in mainstream composition studies little consideration has

been given to writing in languages other

than English—for example, there seems to be negligible

concern for Asian, African, or Middle East

ern writing or rhetorics—or to writing done by individuals

in a language that is not their mother

tongue. This limited perspective is troubling to us in that

we feel it could lead to inadequate theo

ries of composition and consequently to instructional

practices that are ineffective or even counter

productive. We believe that the attention to issues raised

by the examination of writers learning

and composing in a second language can result in a

broadening of perspectives that may enrich

mainstream composition studies in the same way as feminist,

critical, postcolonial, and postmod

ernist considerations have done.

Our discussion is in two parts. First, we offer evidence to

support our claim about the limita

tions of mainstream composition studies. Second, we

introduce and discuss some concepts from

second language studies that we believe could help

mainstream composition studies address these

limitations. 3

A Pattern of Neglect

The neglect of second and other language writing in

mainstream composition studies becomes

evident when some of the fi eld’s basic documents are

examined. For example, a perusal of the

program books for the Conference on College Composition and

Communication (CCCC) confer

ences will reveal a very small number of sessions devoted

to second and other language concerns,

and a substantial percentage of the sessions labeled as

such actually relate only marginally to second

subsection on ESL (placed under the heading of curriculum

and thus implicitly put on a par with

areas like research and study skills), devotes only a tiny

percentage of its entries to second and

other language matters. Furthermore, many of the relevant

entries do not deal with writing issues,

thus providing a partial and distorted picture of

scholarship in second and other language writing.
A look at almost any of the monographs of the most widely
known mainstream composition

scholars (for example, those of Berlin, Berthoff, Elbow,

Emig, Kinneavy, Flower) will turn up little if

anything regarding second or other language writing. This

also holds true for important collections

and reviews of research in the fi eld. For example, in

Bizzell and Herzberg’s (1990), The Rhetorical

Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present

(our bold), all of the selections are from the

Western (Greco-Roman and Anglo-American) rhetorical

tradition; we found no focus on Asian,

African, Middle Eastern, or other rhetorical traditions and

no mention of this exclusion in the

book’s preface or elsewhere. Given the contents of this

collection, its title is problematic; it is at

best misleading and at worst exclusionary in its

ethnocentricity.

With regard to reviews of empirical research, Braddock,

Lloyd-Jones, and Schoer (1963) note

as “unexplored territory” (p. 53) the effectiveness of “…

procedures of teaching and learning

composition … for pupils learning to write English as a

second language” (p. 54). Although none of

the studies considered for this report focused on second or

other language writing, the authors’

recognition of the need to look at ESL writing is

promising. Thus, it is disappointing and ironic to

fi nd in the introduction to Hillocks’ (1986) follow up

volume, Research on Written Composition: New

Directions for Teaching, that “… research dealing with

spelling, vocabulary, initial teaching alphabet,

or English as a second language was excluded” (p. xvii).

Hillocks goes on to say that “Research
written in languages other than English was not examined”
(p. xviii)—with the exception of one

review of research in Dutch—an exclusion that would

certainly seem to work against globalization

of the research base on writing.

An examination of scholarly journals in mainstream

composition over the last 10 years would

reveal a similar pattern. Although a few of these journals

( Journal of Basic Writing, Writing Center

Journal, and Written Communication) give what we would

consider a meaningful amount of space

to second and other language writing issues, in the

majority of mainstream composition journals

the treatment of second and other language writing concerns

seems to us to be largely absent or

negligible.

An examination of mainstream composition textbooks,

handbooks, and readers reveals a more

encouraging but not wholly satisfactory situation. Though

many of the newest composition text

books and handbooks include notes or sections to address

ESL writers, these treatments are often

limited to morphosyntactic considerations (for example,

verb use, articles, adjective/adverb posi

tion, present and past participles). Although this is a

step in the direction of inclusion, it implies a

simplistic view of ESL writers, that is, that their

differences from native English speaking writers

are merely a matter of a few morphosyntactic oddities and

that no consideration of discoursal,

rhetorical, or cultural differences is necessary. The case

with mainstream composition readers is
similar. Although many focus on cross-cultural or
multicultural issues, these issues are typically

addressed in the North American context, thus making them

somewhat culture bound and diffi cult

to use with those ESL writers who are new to this context.
That is, many of these readers assume

knowledge or experience that many ESL writers do not

possess.

On the basis of the foregoing, it is fair to suggest that,

overall, mainstream composition studies’

perspective on second and other language writing is indeed

limited. We believe that such a limited

perspective is problematic on both theoretical and

practical levels. A theory of writing based only

on one rhetorical tradition and one language can at best be

extremely tentative and at worst totally

invalid. Such a theory could easily become hegemonic and

exclusionary; that is, English/Western

writing behaviors could be privileged as somehow being

“standard,” thus stigmatizing other writing

behaviors as “substandard” or “deviant.” Such a theory

could be seen as monolingual, monocultural,

and ethnocentric. Pedagogical insights so based would seem

inadequate even for those whose con

cerns are limited to North America because the population

here is increasingly diverse and multicul

tural. For those with more global concerns, such narrowness

of scope is untenable and unacceptable.

Clearly composition studies needs a broader and more

inclusive view of writing, one that we

feel could profi t from the perspectives and insights of

second language studies. Therefore, we will

introduce and discuss insights from two wide domains of

second language studies: second language
acquisition (SLA) and ESL writing pedagogy. We believe
these insights could help mainstream com

position studies develop a more global and inclusive view

of writing. Here it is not our intention to

show explicitly how each issue we raise would play out in

mainstream composition classrooms or

research. We leave that to mainstream composition

instructors and researchers. Rather we seek

primarily to point to directions of potentially fruitful

inquiry and refl ection. Though we recognize

that some mainstream composition professionals may fi nd

some of these concepts familiar, we

expect that the second language spin provided here will be

less familiar. We also believe that the

examination of the large area of studies of writing in

languages other than English, though regret

fully beyond the scope of this article, would repay

consideration by adding a needed depth to

theories of rhetoric and writing.

Insights from Second Language Studies

Second Language Acquisition Research

The idea that inexperienced fi rst language writers are

like learners of a second language, most

often the language of the academy, has been suggested by

Horning (1987) whose central hypoth

esis is that “basic writers develop writing skills and

achieve profi ciency in the same way that other

adults develop second language skills, principally because,

for basic writers, academic, formal, writ

ten English is a new and distinct linguistic system” (p.

2). Although this hypothesis makes intuitive

sense, Horning’s account of SLA falls short in several

crucial respects. We mention Horning’s work

here because reviewers’ comments on previous drafts of this

article indicate that it is one of the

few sources of information about second language writing

known by mainstream compositionists,

and yet Horning’s account is at best incomplete. Horning

relies heavily on Krashen’s learning

acquisition distinction in which conscious (learned) and

unconscious (acquired) acquisition are

said to result in distinct and unrelated processing

mechanisms (see, for example, Krashen, 1981,

1982), a distinction that has been frequently and

convincingly challenged in second language acquisi

tion research. Furthermore, Horning’s work presents, at

best, an uneven explanation of concepts

in second language acquisition and, at worst, explanations

of complex phenomena (errors, for

example) that do not accord with the fi ndings of relevant

research. Finally, she does not address

some of the crucial aspects of second language acquisition

theory that would be most relevant to

an understanding of fi rst language writing development

(explanations of variability, for example).

Thus, whereas Horning’s initial analogy may be appealing,

we hope to supplement and modify this

account through a closer look at what second language

acquisition theory has to offer fi rst language

composition studies.

Those who are developing expertise in writing already

command a fi rst—oral—language and

through exposure to and practice with writing are expected

to move progressively closer to the

language norms of those in the community of writers they

seek to join. However, this perspective

describes developing writers primarily in terms of profi

ciency, or lack thereof. For example, in his

review of 1,557 composition studies from 1984–1989, Durst

(1990) notes that the most infl uen

tial composition research has been with English speaking

high school students (Emig, 1971); high

school, college, and more experienced writers (Bridwell,

1980; Faigley & Witte, 1981; Sommers,

1980); expert and novice writers (Flower & Hayes, 1981);

basic college writers (Perl, 1979); and

early elementary students (Graves, 1978). This literature

on composing processes provides a pic

ture of writers arrayed on a developmental continuum from

less to more profi cient. Profi ciency

has been portrayed in mainstream composition research as an

issue of development and as the

primary factor distinguishing among fi rst language

writers. Research in second language studies, on

the other hand, has been more concerned with explaining

differential profi ciency. In general, second

language acquisition research seeks to answer four

fundamental questions:

1. What does learner language look like? (This description

needs to account for both synchronic and diachronic
aspects of learner language.)

2. How do learners acquire a second language? (This

explanation needs to include both internal and external
factors.)

3. What accounts for the differences in learners’

achievements? (This explanation attends to the fact that
second language learners as a rule experience differential
success.)

4. What are the effects of formal instruction? (This

question investigates the extent to which instruction
plays a role in the acquisition process.)

In the following section, we will review some of the major

fi ndings in each of these areas.

Question #1. What does learner language look like? In

general, learner language can be character

ized as having three dimensions: (a) it has errors; (b) it

exhibits developmental pat terns; and (c)

it is variable.

Perspectives on error in second language acquisition are

similar to those of Shaughnessy (1977)

in that they are seen as windows on the acquisition

process. Errors, however, are diffi cult to defi ne

and identify for several reasons. First, it is not always

clear whether a learner is producing an

error (generated by the learner’s linguistic competence) or

a mistake (generated by the learner’s

linguistic performance). Second, the variety of language

that the learner has chosen to acquire is

an intervening factor: what might be an error in one

variety is not necessarily so in another. Finally,

because learners’ intended utterances are not always clear

to native speakers, what constitutes

the specifi c error in an utterance is not always

immediately obvious. These issues of error defi ni

tion and identifi cation are undoubtedly applicable, as

well, to the development of written language

profi ciency by providing different ways of interpreting

possible errors in students’ work.

Because error analysis does not provide a complete picture

of learner language (a focus on

errors fails to provide information about what learners are

doing correctly, for example), errors

are only a preliminary source of information about learner

language. The recognition of devel

opmental patterns allows a clearer picture of the general

regularities that characterize second

language acquisition. Typically, in the early stages of

acquisition, learners use formulaic speech that

consists of memorized language formulas or routines. This

strategy allows learners to produce

whole “chunks” of language, reducing the learning burden

while maximizing communicative abil

ity. These chunks are available later for analysis as

learners fi gure out the items and rules used in

creative speech. Do we see similar processes among

inexperienced writers who try on the written

language forms of the academy, for example, in chunks of

overly academic phrasings? Borrow

ing unanalyzed chunks of such written language can be seen

not negatively as indicating a lack of

profi ciency but rather positively as moving the learner

forward toward target and fl exible use of

written forms.

The development of second language profi ciency is

understood as occurring on what Selinker

(1972) calls the interlanguage continuum, in which the

learner moves successively toward closer

and closer approximations of the target language. This

continuum is characterized by the acquisi

tion of general patterns of language in a relatively

predictable order, and this order does not vary

regardless of the learner’s fi rst language background. In

other words, all learners will develop

linguistically along the same general route of acquisition.

But a learner’s interlanguage rules are not

necessarily the rules of the target language; rather, they

represent the learner’s hypotheses at a

single point in time about the target language.

Although the interlanguage continuum provides a perspective

on the regularities in second lan

guage learners’ acquisition patterns, there is an apparent

contradiction between this systematicity

and the variation that is evident in, and characteristic

of, learner language. Variation is exhibited

when learners apply a rule in one context but not in

another. For example, a learner who writes

“You depend on other people and they depend of you” has

produced the target language rule in

the fi rst clause but not in the second.

What accounts for this variability? Variability of this

type is described as occurring in three con

texts: linguistic, situational, and psycholinguistic.

Linguistic context refers to the language elements

that precede and/or follow the variable in question. For

example, a second language learner might

easily produce subject-verb agreement in simple sentences

(My sister lives in Washington), but

might not in complex sentences (My sister, who live in

Washington, is older than me.)

Situational context refers to many factors including speech

styles (style shifting in socially appro

priate ways), social factors (such as age, gender, class,

ethnicity), and stylistic factors (situation and

topic, for example). Each of these factors can result in

the differential application of interlanguage

rules. For example, producing an essay on a topic related

to the learner’s experiences in their

native country might result in more fi rst language

interference (see discussion of Friedlander, 1990,
below) than would an essay based on experiences in the
learner’s second language. This might be

the case, too, with writers who speak a non-standard

dialect, where certain topics might elicit

more non-standard forms. Social Accommodation Theory

(Beebe, 1988) can help explain some of

the variability as well, to the extent that writers seek to

converge with, diverge from, or maintain

a social connection to the reader. (See issues of

motivation and social distance below.)

Psycholinguistic context refers to the cognitive processing

constraints imposed by the task in

question. Learners must balance the demands of language

production with the cognitive demands

inherent in producing the text (oral or written). Speaking

on a complex or abstract topic or under

time constraints means that the language learner must focus

not only on the diffi culty of what s/he

is trying to say, but also on the language that is needed

to express her/his ideas. When attention is

divided in this way, the speaker often attends primarily to

the content of the utterance rather than

to its form, resulting in language that is less native-like

than would be the case if the speaker were

talking about familiar, more concrete topics. With less

complex tasks, in terms of topic or lack of

time constraints or as the result of a process approach in

which the writer focuses on language

issues only in later drafts, a writer is likely to have

time to employ a careful style, which is the most

attended form. However, the attended style does not

necessarily result in the most correct form.

Monitoring in the careful style allows the learner/writer

the time to consider competing hypothe

ses about language forms. Because writing eventually

requires the selection of a single form—even

when more than one possibility exists for the writer—the

text may not only exhibit variability

(when the writer in one place chooses one form and in

another place the competing form) but may

also give the reader an inaccurate perspective on the

writer’s developing competence.

Most adult second language learners never reach target

language profi ciency (this is commonly

seen in the persistence of non-native pronunciation—foreign

accents), and this failure to move

toward native speaker norms is called “fossilization”

(Selinker, 1972). Cognitive and social forces

appear to intersect in the phenomenon of fossilization, in

which a second language learner stops

progressing toward profi ciency in the second language

despite continuing access to target or “cor

rect” forms. Second language learners reach a level of

competence in the target language that

allows them to accomplish their communication tasks to

their own satisfaction, and though they

may assert that they want to continue to move toward target

forms, they do not move farther. In

fact, they may no longer even perceive the difference

between their own production and target

forms.

The construct of fossilization might apply to novices

writing in their fi rst language and help

explain lack of progress toward target goals of

institutionally accepted writing. It is possible that,

despite conscious belief that they want to produce a change

in their writing, novice writers consid

ered unsuccessful are in fact satisfi ed with the

communicativeness of what they produce and have

no profound motivation to unfossilize. In the complex

interaction between social and cognitive fac

tors, an exploration of the implications of fossilization

for mainstream composition studies might

yield new insights.

Given this complex picture of learner language, it become

clear that writers’ errors are a win

dow on the acquisition process. Errors exhibit the

variability inherent in the acquisition process,

and as such can be interpreted as evidence of the writer’s

potential (not unlike Vygotsky’s (1978)

zone of proximal development), rather than as a lack of

profi ciency.

Question #2. How do learners acquire a second language?

Explaining second language acquisition

requires a consideration of both external and internal

factors. (Although linguistic universals are

an important part of second language acquisition theory,

they are probably not of relevance to

composition studies and will not be discussed here.)

Signifi cant external factors are primarily social

in nature; internal factors involve issues of language

transfer and cognition.

External factors. Social factors play a major but indirect

role in second language acquisition,

insofar as acquisition is mediated by learner attitudes as

well as by the nature and extent of input

(as determined by learning opportunities related to such

things as ethnic background and socio

economic class). Learner attitudes are both cognitive and

affective, and they tend to be learned

and persistent, but modifi able. Learner attitudes toward

the acquisition of the target language are

related to learner attitudes toward target language

speakers, the target language culture, the social

value of learning the target language, the particular uses

that the target language might serve, and

the learners’ perceptions of themselves as members of their

own culture.

Social factors related to second language acquisition

include sociolinguistic aspects of age

(younger learners between the ages of 10 and 19 are more

infl uenced by their peer group whereas

middle aged learners from 30 to 60 are more infl uenced by

mainstream social values, including

standard language norms), sex (women tend to have more

positive attitudes and to use more

standard forms than men), and social class. In particular,

social class is related to the role of socio

psychological attitudes, to the extent that second language

acquisition implies the loss of the fi rst

language (referred to as subtractive bilingualism) or the

maintenance of the fi rst language as the

second language is acquired (referred to as additive

bilingualism). Subtractive bilingualism is typical

of what happens in this country to immigrants and refugees

who are expected to become “Ameri

canized” linguistically by giving up their fi rst language

and adopting English. In this perspective, the

fi rst language is perceived as a problem that language

learners must overcome. Additive bilingual

ism, on the other hand, is typical of middle- and

upper-class bilinguals for whom knowing more
than one language is seen as an advantage. In this view,
bilingualism is seen as a resource that can

be used for social, political, and economic gain.

The social context of subtractive bilingualism infl uences

learners’ attitudes and language acquisi

tion in subtle but profound ways, having to do with the

learner’s identifi cation with the fi rst lan

guage social group. A parallel can be drawn here for

middle- and upper-class writers who typically

control a more or less standard variety of English (given

regional variation). These writers are given

the opportunity in school to develop the type of writing

profi ciency used in academic contexts,

with no expectation that they will need to

abandon/“correct” their oral language or their writ

ten language in nonacademic contexts. In other words, their

writing development is more nearly

like additive bilingualism. However, students who speak a

nonstandard variety of English, typically

associated with working-class writers, are most often

taught that their oral and written language

is “incorrect” and they are put in the position of

subtractive bilinguals who feel that they must give

up their fi rst language to acquire the standard forms.

Related to this notion of ethnolinguistic vitality,

Schumann’s (1977) Acculturation Model of

second language acquisition sees language as one aspect of

becoming acculturated to the second

language cultural context. According to Schumann,

successful language acquisition depends on the

learner’s perceived social and psychological distance from

the target language group. When the

learner maintains this distance, pidginization is likely to

occur in which the learner fossilizes on a

relatively nonprofi cient point on the interlanguage

continuum, resulting in the ability to produce

limited language functions. (See Peirce, 1995 for a cogent

critique of Schumann and others who

appear to make language acquisition contingent on giving up

fi rst language social identities.)

This perspective on fossilization evokes issues of learner

motivation, central to studies of

second language acquisition. A widely used distinction in

second language acquisition work that

might be useful to mainstream writing research is the

distinction between integrative motivation

and instrumental motivation, originally proposed by Gardner

and Lambert (1972). A learner who

shows integrative motivation wants to become like the

people who speak the target language. (See

Alice Kaplan’s [1993] autobiography of a French major for a

striking example of this concept.) The

target culture is admired and its representatives are

sought out and imitated. A learner who shows

instrumental motivation, on the other hand, is less

interested in the target language, culture, and

people for their inherent qualities, but more interested in

developing skilled use of the target lan

guage for particular purposes. This might be the type of

motivation of, for example, Chinese gradu

ate students in physics studying in the United States for

an advanced degree making some English

speaking friends, but primarily interested in English to

participate in, perhaps, the international

dialogue in professional journals in physics.

Neither type of motivation is necessarily superior to the

other; both have been shown to

correlate with success in language learning. But the

discussion in mainstream writing literature

has implicitly focused almost exclusively on integrative

motivation, urging an integrative desire on

writing students. If we think of, for instance, the

teachers of writing as the “native speakers” of the

target culture, fi rst language students with integrative

motivation would want to become like those

native speakers, to imitate their behavior and attitudes.

Bartholomae (1985) speaks of students

having to invent the university; more dramatically,

students are required to re-invent themselves,

ideally to see themselves as indistinguishable from the

people already there, already a part of the

university culture. Although there has been recognition in

the mainstream writing literature of the

fact that students may not want to bring their image of

themselves in line with the image projected

by the “natives” of the university culture, second language

writing research explicitly acknowledges

the legitimacy and effi cacy of instrumental, not just

integrative, motivation in the pursuit of the

second language, including writing.

The issue of social context for learning a second language

that predominates in Schumann’s

work focuses on the importance of the social distance

between the native and the target culture. A

few of the conditions favorable to the acquisition of the

second language that might be considered

in thinking about mainstream writing instruction include

the following: The learner’s culture and

the target culture admire each other and see each other as
equals; both the learner’s culture and

the target culture expect the learner to succeed; the

learner and the target culture share social

environments; the learner plans to spend a great deal of

time in the target culture. If we look at the

fi rst language learners’ task in developing into profi

cient writers, we must question whether the

optimal conditions laid out here for second language

acquisition are met for fi rst language writing

students. When viewed from this perspective, we might feel

humbled by the enormity of the social

barriers faced especially by writing students from minority

cultures not admired by the target cul

ture, not seen as equal, not expected to succeed, and not

socialized with. These barriers may be

insurmountable for fi rst language students from poor,

rural, or minority cultures or backgrounds

whose relationship to the majority culture is not optimal

for acquisition of majority norms, even

when such acquisition is desired.

Internal factors. The question of how the learner’s fi rst

language knowledge infl uences the acqui

sition of the second language has long been an issue for

second language theory. Second language

acquisition researchers see a complex role for the fi rst

language in the acquisition of the second:

sometimes negative, when reliance on fi rst language

intuitions causes errors in the second lan

guage; sometimes positive, when taking a chance using a fi

rst language form succeeds and results

in appropriate use of the second language. This work has

implications for mainstream writing

research if extended to include attempts to understand, for

example, the relationship between

a student’s oral language and that student’s acquisition of

written language. What features of the

target language are diffi cult for writing students to

acquire and which come easily? Which features

of a student’s oral language help in the acquisition of the

written language and which do not? With

a better sense of the answers to these questions, teachers

might be more sensitive to the efforts

students are required to make in order to function in

written language and might have more real

istic expectations of individual students and of writing

curriculums.

The role of consciousness is also of interest to second

language theorists. Bialystok (1978)

claims that conscious and unconscious knowledge interact in

second language acquisition.

Explicit knowledge arises when there is a focus on the

language code, and the acquisition of

explicit knowledge is facilitated by formal practice.

Implicit knowledge is developed through expo

sure to communicative language use that is facilitated by

functional practice. Bialystock’s perspec

tive is one that is relevant to composition theory to the

extent that it can account for the fact

that techniques such as explicit grammar teaching have been

shown to be ineffective in improving

writing profi ciency. Functional practice, resulting in

implicit knowledge, highlights the importance

of audience and purpose in writing and suggests why a focus

on these aspects of the writing process

is more likely to lead to the development of writing

ability.
Such internal factors interact with the external linguistic
environment, a feature of the acqui

sition context stressed in second language research but

perhaps underplayed in fi rst language

contexts. Target language input is presumed to be data that

the learner must use to develop and

adjust an internal picture (the interlanguage system) of

how the target language is constructed. It is

thought that interactive input focused on communicating

comprehensible messages of importance

to both partners in a communicative event (rather than

corrective feedback) is what helps learners

most to progress in their second language.

In terms of mainstream writing instruction, the question

then would be: What kind of input are

the learners getting? Are they aware of what the target

language looks like? Do they get repeated

samples of what they are expected to produce? Research in

Canada shows high school writers able

to adapt their writing for sixth graders but not for adult
newspaper readers (Lusignan & Fortier,

1992). Is this perhaps because these young writers know

from personal experience what sixth

grade texts look like, but have no real internalized sense

of what the other target language, here,

the written language of newspaper readers, looks like? If

this is the case, how can they be expected

to produce similar language or rhetorical forms? Do fi rst

language writing students read material

that they can realistically be expected to produce, or is

it far too complicated, too far beyond their

reach for them to be able to produce similar types of

writing within the short amount of time
designated as appropriate for learning to write, for
example, during a fi rst-year composition class?

Clearly the role of input is as signifi cant in composition

studies as it is in second language acquisi

tion research.

Question #3. What accounts for the differences in learners’

achievements? It is a fact that few adult

second language learners (perhaps only 5%) will acquire

native-like profi ciency in the target lan

guage, although many if not most learners will attain the

ability to communicate relative to their

needs. This fact of differential success requires

explanation in second language acquisition theory

and has resulted in many studies of learner differences.

In the context of writing, the recognition of learner

differences and of differential success can

lead to a deeper institutional acceptance of the idea that

different students have differing goals and

agendas in their study of writing. Second language research

explicitly recognizes that because of

differing motivations or differing amounts of contact with

speakers of the target language some

learners will become more profi cient than others. Teachers

and researchers in second language

writing also acknowledge that those who are learning to

write in a second language in an institu

tional setting may be doing so only to satisfy the

requirements of the institutional setting and may

never again need to write, or perhaps even to read, a

single word in their second language in the

rest of their lifetimes, particularly if these learners

return to their native countries. These acknowl

edgments help to discourage an inappropriately infl ated

view of the importance of learning to write

and a concomitant inappropriate negative evaluation of

those who do not become particularly

profi cient. Although little attention is given in

mainstream composition studies to gaining a sense

of native English speaking students’ goals and agendas in

learning to write, such a focus might be

revealing and might lead to a reconsideration of why

students should necessarily learn to write for

higher educational settings at all. (See discussion below

on functions of writing.) Or, perhaps such

a focus might lead to a refi nement of notions of “profi

ciency” to include the recognition of student

goals and agendas—that is, that students may be profi cient

when they have achieved what they

want to achieve and not when they achieve what the academy
wants them to. Profi ciency might be

seen as an individual concept rather than an institutional

one.

Characterizations of good language learners parallel those

of profi cient writers: These learners

are typically said to show a concern for form, concern for

meaning/communication, an active task

approach, an awareness of the learning process, and the

capacity to use strategies fl exibly vis-à-vis

task requirements. Second language acquisition researchers

distinguish between learning styles,

understood as a consistent way of functioning, and learning

strategies, assumed to be modifi able.

(In mainstream composition studies, much of the work

leading to the process paradigm in com

position focuses on writer’s strategies, e.g., Emig, 1971.)

However, although open to modifi cation
and conscious manipulation, according to research by
Bialystock (1985), learning strategies must

be internally governed. That is, teaching the strategies of

good learners to poor learners and urging

the struggling learners to adopt them will not result in

improvement. Such a claim has clear implica

tions for composition instruction that is based on the

notion that struggling writers are best served

by being taught the composing strategies of successful

writers. SLA research suggests that requisite

internal government may not develop through instruction on

composing processes.

Recognition in mainstream composition studies of

differences in learner styles and strategies

has not seemed to move far beyond noting that certain

minority students are more orally or visu

ally oriented than traditional, majority-culture students.

Mainstream composition research may

need to examine these preference among individuals (in

either the majority or minority cultures)

and propose alternative teaching methods to accommodate

them. (See Carson & Nelson, 1996 for

a second language perspective on culture-related problems

of peer review in an ESL composition

class, for example.) Such a focus seems particularly

desirable in light of recent challenges to pro

gressive and expressivist forms of writing instruction that

assert that expressivist forms of instruc

tion are effective primarily for White middle-class

students and not for less advantaged writers

(Cope & Kalantzis, 1993; Graff, 1996; Gore, 1993; Stotsky,

1995).

Question #4. What are the effects of formal instruction?

One of the surprising fi ndings of second
language acquisition research is that there has been no
convincing evidence for method superiority.

Several explanations have been offered for this fi nding.

First, lessons of any type often result in rela

tively little progress in language acquisition. Second,

individual learners benefi t from different types

of instruction. Finally, language classes tend to offer

similar opportunities for learning irrespective

of method. The most important question about formal

classroom instruction, though, is whether

learners learn what they are taught. The answer to this

question may lie with what is referred to

as the Teachability Hypothesis (Pienemann, 1984). According

to this hypothesis, learners will learn

what they are taught only if they are developmentally ready.

This perspective calls into question the role of error

correction. Although many second lan

guage learners believe in the importance of correction,

there is little evidence that correction has

much effect on developing profi ciency, although it may

lead to undesirable types of communica

tion. Chaudron’s (1988) review of research on teachers’

error correction behaviors concludes that

many errors are not treated and that the more often an
error is made, the less likely a teacher

is to correct it. This may be due to teachers’ tacit

understanding that error treatment should be

conducted in a manner compatible with general interlanguage

development; that is, teachers may

correct only errors that learners are ready to eliminate.

In mainstream composition pedagogy,

errors appear to be regarded somewhat monolithically

(either we should pay attention to them or
not), with seemingly little attention given to the
relationship between error production/correction

and learner development.

One hypothesis about the effects of formal instruction is

that negotiation may be the most

crucial aspect of classroom interaction. In this respect,

closed task tend to produce more negotia

tion and more useful negotiation work than open tasks

(where there is no predetermined solu

tion). This would be analogous to the difference between

(a) writing an essay exam in a history

class (a closed tasks in which content is either correct or

not and, thus, discussable/explainable/

negotiable) and (b) writing an expressive essay in a

composition class (an open task in which there

is no one predetermined correct response). Furthermore,

teachers play a central role in formal

acquisition because language learners need grammatical

input that is unavailable in suffi cient quan

tity from peers. This may explain recent fi ndings (e.g.,

Zhang, 1995) in second language composition

research that nonnative English speaking writers much

prefer teacher feedback to peer response

group input.

Second Language Writing Instruction

Second language writing research takes place against a

background of insights developed from sec

ond language acquisition research. Taking into

consideration what is known about second language

acquisition and about composition theory and pedagogy,

second language writing instruction has

developed perspectives that are in some respects different

from fi rst language writing instruction

but that may provide insights for mainstream composition

studies.

Epistemological Issues In second language writing

instruction, cultural context is understood

as a signifi cant determinant of writers’ purposes. Ballard

and Clanchy (1991) argue that cultural

attitudes toward knowledge range on a continuum from

valuing the conservation of knowledge

to valuing the extension of knowledge. “These different

epistemologies are the bedrock of differ

ent cultures, yet they are so taken for granted, each so

assumed to be ‘universal,’ that neither the

teachers nor the students can recognize that they are

standing on different ground” (p. 21). Ballard

and Clanchy suggest that many Asian cultures favor

conserving knowledge, with an emphasis on

reproduction of information, and strategies such as

memorizing and imitating. This is quite a differ

ent approach from the mainstream composition perspective of

Scardamalia and Bereiter (1987),

which highlights Western values of extending knowledge.

Scardamalia and Bereiter characterize

knowledge telling in writing as “immature” writing, and

knowledge transforming as characteristic of

“mature” writers. “What we see in the performance of expert

writers is the execution of powerful

procedures that enable them to draw on, elaborate, and refi

ne available knowledge. For novices,

however, writing serves more to reproduce than to refi ne

knowledge” (p. 171). Asian writers who

value the conservation of knowledge might be classifi ed as

“immature” knowledge tellers in the
dichotomy Scardamalia and Bereiter present, although within
their own cultural framework they

would be “mature” writers. What would appear to be a

developmental continuum, then, from

immature to mature writing in a knowledge extending

culture, is recast as an issue of social context

when viewed from the larger crosscultural perspective.

Function of Writing Mainstream composition research,

beginning with Emig’s (1971) ground

breaking study, turned away from a conventional focus on

the message or text toward an inves

tigation of the writer or encoder, highlighting writers’

composing processes. This perspective

emphasizes the importance of writing as a way of knowing,

as well as the place of writing in the

writer’s mental development. For example, Freedman,

Pringle, and Yalden (1979) note that Britton

and the British educationists talk about the value of

writing in acquiring knowledge and in allow

ing writers to come to terms with their lives. In this

view, “writing is seen ultimately as the great

humanizing force; it is not the practical, mundane,

communicative advantages of writing that are

celebrated but rather its power to give form and signifi

cance to our lives” (p. 9).

The mainstream composition literature very much gives the

sense that writing experiences

have the potential for producing thoughtful,

critical-thinking citizens, and the development of such

citizens has appeared an important goal in mainstream

writing instruction. Also, the idea of using

writing to learn has been a strong theme, particularly in

the Writing Across the Curriculum Move
ment. But these views seem to assume that all writers will
have the same priorities—an assumption

that is not validated by the experience of second language

writers. For many second language writ

ers, for example, writing in a nonnative language will

never have a function beyond the “practical,

mundane, and communicative,” as may well be the case for

some fi rst language writers. Clearly an

adequate theory must acknowledge more pointedly that in a

multicultural society, as in the world,

the role of writing in writers’ lives has varying functions

and even for fi rst language writers may

legitimately remain limited, never becoming an instrument

for life changing experiences.

Writing Topics Teachers of second language writing try to

be sensitive to a given writing topic’s

potential for being culture bound and not addressable by or

appropriate for all cultural groups.

Although some groups have no problem with writing on

personal topics that require a great deal

of personal disclosure, other groups fi nd topics like

these invasive and are not comfortable writing

on them. Some groups may be reluctant to take issue with

what they read; others may take an

automatically contestatory stance in relation to what they

read.

writers in any culture, including native English speaking

writers. Although a given topic may be

inappropriate for some native English speaking writers,

they may nevertheless feel compelled to

address some topics without protest when assigned because

they fi nd no cultural support for

rejecting them. In thinking about what is appropriate for a

native English speaking population,
mainstream writing professionals might consider taking into
account the kinds of differences in

preference and comfort levels that are displayed in an

international population.

Knowledge Storage The issue of appropriateness arises from

another angle in research (Fried

lander, 1990) that suggests that experiences committed to

memory in one language and written

about in another are more diffi cult to write about than

experiences committed to memory and

written about in the same language. It is then also

possible that native English speaking students may

have particular diffi culty using written (or academic)

language to relate an experience stored in oral

language. They not only need to access the memory but also,
in effect, translate the experience from

one language (oral) to another (written). Yet assignments

that ask for this very translation are not

unusual and in fact are considered especially easy because

they only call upon writers to recount

what they have experienced, with perhaps a “what I learned

from this experience” tacked on. Fried

lander’s research suggests that such assignments may be

more diffi cult than teachers realize.

Writing from Reading Although writing from reading is

common in mainstream composition

studies, what is less typical is recognition of the diffi

culty fi rst language student writers have read

ing. For second language readers it is assumed that texts

may be opaque and that, therefore,

learners may need help with reading, but it is not clear

that such consideration is granted to native

English speaking readers who appear to be expected to

understand college level reading without

help. The mainstream composition literature has carefully

and repeatedly considered the reciproc

ity of reading and writing, and many mainstream writing

classes use readings to stimulate writing,

yet there is little evidence that actual instruction in

reading has played much of a role in writing

instruction in mainstream classrooms. Discussions of how to

teach fi rst language reading at the col

lege level appear to be limited to teaching students how to

read literary texts. Might native English

speaking students perhaps also benefi t from help in

constructing meaning not only from literary

texts, but also from texts from other genres?

Audience Awareness Another dimension of composition studies

that seems somewhat limited is

that of the writer’s awareness of the reader or audience

and the role that such awareness plays in

composing. Flower’s (1979) distinction between reader- and

writer-based prose, for example, has

been extremely infl uential in mainstream composition

studies. In this view, writer-based prose is

the result of the writer’s lack of cognitive awareness of

the reader; the resultant text is insuffi cient

for readers who lack the writer’s ability to “fi ll in the

gaps” with necessary information that the

writer has in her or his mind but that does not appear in
the text. Mature writers are able to move

beyond writer-based prose and can develop a text that is

reader-sensitive.

This “cognitive problem,” as Flower described it, receives

a different interpretation when we

consider Japanese writers, who, according to Hinds (1987),

are socialized in their literacy develop

ment (a) to read between the lines to interpret a writer’s

intention, and (b) to assume that readers

will be able to “fi ll in the gaps” of the texts writers

produce. It is asserted that Japanese writers

believe that readers have a signifi cant responsibility for

understanding text, and comprehensible

texts are more the result of “reader responsible” prose

than they are of typical Western “writer

responsible” texts wherein the writer’s obligation is to

clarify for the reader’s understanding. Thus,

what the prevailing paradigm sees as an issue of cognitive

development is understood from a larger

multicultural perspective as an issue of social context. It

is not always clear in developmental stud

ies which aspects of development should be attributed to

cognition and which to social forces,

but unqualifi ed valuing of reader-based over writer-based

prose points to a culture-specifi c view

of this distinction. A broader perspective would look for

common features in cognitive processes,

recognizing that cognitive performance is inevitably shaped

by social forces.

Textual Issues One area of study completely indigenous to

second language research has

emerged in the large body of work examining cross-cultural

discourse patterns, or contrastive

rhetoric. Although initial fi ndings (Kaplan, 1966) have

been criticized (see Connor, 1996, for a

thorough discussion of contrastive rhetoric), there is

general recognition that rhetorical form is a

product of a culture’s world view and social conventions,

and that the degree to which texts are
logical, well-formed, and successful depends on their
sociocultural context.

The fi ndings of contrastive rhetoric research are unique

within second language research

because they are the only elements of second language

research that have piqued the interest of

mainstream writing studies to any noticeable degree.

Unfortunately, that interest has been limited

primarily to a focus on the varying patterns of

organization that have been said to prevail in dif

ferent cultures (e.g., English is direct; Romance

languages, digressive; Asian languages, indirect).

Other contrastive rhetoric areas of potential interest to

mainstream composition studies might

include the exploration of varieties of text-types written

within and across cultures; in genre stud

ies, for example, culture-based expectations for such

genres as grant writing; types of appeals

that are persuasive across cultures; citation patterns that

point to different ways of belonging to a

scholarly tradition; appropriate tone to adopt in writing

that will signal one’s right to speak; cross

cultural perspectives on various rhetorical devices (for

example, the importance and value placed

on ornateness, beauty of language, or moral exhortations);

the role of literacy and the methods of

literacy training across cultures. Even as brief a listing

as this indicates something of the enormous

variety and richness available in studies of writing that

go beyond concerns with writing in English

by North American college students.

Within second language composition studies contrastive

rhetoric research has helped us to
view variations from the text structure expected in the
culture of the U.S. university not as exam

ples of failure to think logically or failure to learn to

write. Instead they are viewed from the

broader perspective contrastive rhetoric provides as

examples of alternative rhetorics. The idea is

not to eliminate their traces and replace them with the

correct rhetoric, but rather to add English

rhetoric to the second language student’s repertoire of

possible rhetorical solutions. Difference,

then, is regarded as explanation, not as defi cit.

Mainstream composition studies might consider pursuing

answers to the question contrastive

rhetoric poses: What assumptions do native English speaking

learners already have about writing

that might not match those of their academic audience? In

terms of pedagogy, mainstream writing

classes might do as second language writing classes do and

make part of the instructional strategy to

discuss with students in class and individually their

assumptions about writing and the assumptions

of the academy. Addressing differences in assumptions

explicitly validates the students’ background

and acknowledges that college students do not come to fi

rst-year writing classes as blank slates

but with a culturally developed image of what good writing

is and of how to go about producing it.

The study of contrastive rhetoric suggests that these

images have a place in writing classrooms. It

is clear, in any case, that text cannot be defi ned from a

monocultural perspective and that the infl u

ence of culturally-preferred text structures must be

considered as one of the factors that affect
writers’ composing processes.

Plagiarism Mainstream views of plagiarism provide a further

example of the limitations of con

ceptions that grow out of monocultural models of writing.

The issue of plagiarism becomes more

complex than the standard view allows for with a look at

other cultures that view intellectual

heritage differently. In cultures beyond the borders of

North America the use of another’s words

or ideas can have the function of demonstrating the

writer’s familiarity with those words and

ideas and of honoring historically important writers by fi

nding them pertinent again. It is a mark

of intellectual accomplishment to be able to select and use

these words and ideas, an attitude that

we have vestigially as well when we quote Shakespeare or

Plato. If we cite a line from, say, Emma

Goldman, and give its source, we interpret that as

intellectual honesty. Another culture interprets

the lack of need to cite Lao Tzu as the source of a

quotation as a sign of respect for the reader of

the line, an acknowledgment of the reader’s scholarly

achievement, the ability to recognize the line

without the need for a gloss. (See Pennycook, 1996, for an

extensive discussion of plagiarism and

cross-cultural contexts.)

Memorization, Imitation, Quotation Another angle to

consider in thinking about plagiarism is

from the point of view of the learner of any new language,

including the language of the academy.

In effect, all the language that the second language

student uses is a borrowing without credit.

Imitation, necessary in all language learning, is a way of

trying on the target language and gradu

ally transforming the internal representation of that

language until the target language and the

learner’s internal representation of it, or the learner’s

interlanguage, coincide. This imitation may

take the form of memorization of poems, facts, or chunks of

language, a form of learning valued

in many cultures. Western culture’s argument for dismissing

both memorization and extensive

direct quotation rest on the opinion that when a learner

does this, the learner is not learning, only

repeating mindlessly what someone else has said. Yet other

cultures view these as valid forms of

learning. How can they reasonably be simply dismissed as

mindless in this culture? In what sense

can Western culture make the claim that those trained by

its methods are better educated than

those trained using other methods? (See also Sampson, 1984,

who questions the importance of

“superior” North American teaching methods in China.) Thus,

other cultural practices call into

question our confi dence that learning is not accomplished

by having the exact phrasings rolling

around in the learner’s head in all their complexity

instead of in simplifi ed versions translated into

teenage language and understanding. The experiences of

other cultures complexify our own under

standings and must be accounted for in any legitimate

theory of writing or learning. These examples

clearly demonstrate the importance of broadening the

dimensions of context-specifi c categories.

Students’ Right to Their Own Language The notion of

students having a right to their own lan
guages has been an issue of concern to fi rst language
writing researchers. The issue has usually

been examined essentially as a question of additive or

subtractive bidialectalism, similar to addi

tive or subtractive bilingualism, with discussion nearly

always centered around the status of the

students’ home, usually oral, dialect and the role this

home dialect can take in academic writing

instruction. The Conference of College Composition and

Communication long ago moved to offi

cially support the idea of students’ right to their own

language, although critics like Delpit (1988)

have wondered whether this “right” in fact denies access to

powerful academic languages to the

students whose home dialects are most dissimilar from

academic language.

For years, the picture in second language writing

instruction was different. Students’ right to

their own language was, in one sense, a non-issue. It

seemed obvious that Chinese international

students had a right to Chinese and, perhaps more

pertinently, French students a right to French. 4

These languages and cultures are admired. Speakers of these

languages are proud of their languages

and cultures, and their pride is supported by our

admiration of their ability to speak, read, and

write in another language. But the picture has become more

complicated as second language writ

ing researchers have begun questioning the role of English,

particularly internationally, as the gate

keeper to power and wealth. Those with access to English

could expect to accrue to themselves

that power and wealth; those without, often could not. And
those who could not afford English
lessons that would allow them to obtain a high enough score
on the TOEFL to be admitted to, for

example, a North American university would perhaps never

study abroad.

Further complicating the picture is the question: Whose

English? That is, ESL professionals have

come to recognize the importance of the many varieties of

world English, such as those spoken in

India, Singapore, Nigeria–Englishes whose structures and

vocabulary vary from those of speakers

from the monolingual English speaking countries like the

United States, Great Britain, and Austra

lia. Indeed, scholars from multilingual Third World

countries have helped those from monolingual

English speaking countries to see the anomaly of our

monolingualism in a world where most humans

negotiate in more than one language.

With the many challenges to the status of English coming

from second language researchers,

particularly from the “outer circle” (Kachru, 1985), those

teaching ESL are thus being required

to develop a more humble conception of the place of “our”

English in the world. Can this more

humble view also challenge the hegemony of academic English

as taught, for example, in fi rst-year

composition classes? And for those who disdain the supposed

stodginess of academic English and

look instead for authenticity and voice, can this more

humble sense of ourselves, combined with a

more sophisticated knowledge of conditions in which English

is used world wide, shake our faith in

the notion that fi nding one’s voice is a preeminent

concern in learning to write? Ramanathan and
Kaplan (1996) raise these very questions for ESL writing
instruction. Should they also be consid

ered in mainstream composition?

Conclusion

As ESL researchers, in reading and listening to the

discourse of mainstream composition research,

we often fi nd ourselves in the same kind of awkward

position as women sometimes experience

when someone refers to “mankind” or uses “he” to refer to

mixed genders. We want to add the

equivalent of “or she”; we want to say “look at our

research.” Our voices here come from the

margins of U.S. academic life but we nevertheless have

something to contribute. First language

writing researchers and practitioners lose by remaining

unaware of fi ndings and thinking in second

language research.

Limited perspectives are likely to cause problems not only

for writing teachers with ESL stu

dents in their classes but also for teachers of other

ethnic minorities, including African, Asian, His

panic, and Native Americans who might have native English

profi ciency but different sociocultural

and sociocognitive contexts for writing. The attitudes and

practices of second language writing

classrooms challenge assumptions underlying fi rst language

writing pedagogy by taking for granted

such notions as: Writers are heterogeneous; they have

differing agendas in learning the second

language and learning to write in that language; they are

all developmental in that their tackling

of academic writing will be a new experience; they will

achieve differing ultimate success in their

second language; they bring to the classroom specifi c

culturally determined educational, social, and

linguistic characteristics to which they claim an

undisputed right and to which academic English is

merely one addition. When second language writing

classrooms refuse to regard ESL writers as

simply writers who are defi cient in English language, this

perspective specifi cally acknowledges the

importance of their contexts for writing, including

writers’ goals (conserving or extending knowl

edge), their perceptions of audience (text as

reader-responsible or writer-responsible), and the

infl uence of culturally-specifi ed rhetorical forms on

their writing processes and products. These

views of the second language writer are supported by

instructional practices that regard difference

as an explanation rather than as a defi cit; that

acknowledge and openly address different learn

ing (and teaching) styles and strategies; that assume and

often openly address students’ previous

writing experiences and the way they contrast with

rhetorical expectations in English; and that

recognize that instruction is only one of many variables in

writing development. These are all areas

that might be considered in an attempt to broaden

perspectives on teaching writing to native Eng

lish speakers as well. Beyond classroom practices, a theory

of composition that looks only at Eng

lish writers, readers, texts, and contexts is an extremely

narrow one. What can we know from a

perspective limited to monolingual, monocultural writers

and writing? Is the question really how a
monolingual community learns culture-specifi c forms? Or is
it the wider question of how different

writers learn to deal with variable demands in various

situations? Second language writers present

the clearest picture of linguistic and cultural

differences, yet they tend to be ignored by mainstream

composition studies. Multilingualism and multiculturalism

cannot be explored only from within

the political borders of North America. Mainstream

composition studies has given a great deal to

second language writing research and teaching; it is time

to take something in return. We feel that

this something should be a larger, more inclusive, more

global perspective on writers and writing,

a perspective that can only enhance the validity and

viability of mainstream composition theory.

Notes

1 In this article, we would like to begin to make this

transfer a bit more balanced, and in doing so we will say

some things about mainstream composition studies that may

strike the reader as negative or uncompli

mentary. However, we would like to make it clear up front

that our purpose is not to chastise or impugn

the motives of mainstream composition scholars or denigrate

their work in any way. We respect these

individuals and greatly value their efforts, which, we

feel, are typically of the highest quality. Rather, our

aim is to draw attention to what we see as a pattern of

neglect of second and other language writing

issues in the discipline today and to explore the potential

consequences of that neglect.

2 We are also forced to recognize that second language

composition studies has only just begun similar self
examinations, having for many years operated under an
applied linguistics paradigm that viewed research

into language learning, and by extension second language

writing, as a question of science somehow free

of ideological, social, and political constraints (see

Santos, 1992). Given the highly charged nature of

English teaching both in North America and around the

world, such a parochial perspective seems quite

astonishing. For discussions of the political, social, and

ideological dimensions of teaching English, particu

larly worldwide, see work by, among others, Pennycook

(1994, 1995, 1996), Phillipson (1988, 1991, 1992),

and Tollefson (1989, 1995).

3 Second language studies in general and second language

acquisition theory in particular have been accused

of having a monolingual, ethnocentric bias (Kachru, 1994;

Sridhar, 1994). The validity of this position is

being discussed by second language researchers and

theorists in professional forums and our goal in

this article is to initiate the same type of discussion

among mainstream composition researchers and

theorists.

4 The picture has obviously never been as rosy for

immigrants to this country who have always experi

enced strong pressure to assimilate and to suppress their

connections to their native languages.

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Readings DEALING WITH BAD IDEAS: TWICE IS LESS Wayne O’Neil

It is an unfortunate fact about intellectual life in the

United States, and certainly in other places as
well, that bad and discredited ideas from the past keep
reappearing. Particularly vulnerable to their

reappearance are the “softer” areas of inquiry and work:

the study of mind and of education and

teaching. For there seems always to be the hope that human

nature is less interesting and complex

than it is; that there is somewhere to be found a quick

educational fi x for the overwhelming social

problems of the day; that there is a science and technology

that will solve all. From my particular

vantage point, nowhere do these bad ideas roll so badly

back, penny-like, than in discussions that

link language with this or that aspect of education. These

general remarks and the detailed ones

that follow are largely motivated by the recent

reappearance of many such bad ideas in the form of

Eleanor Wilson Orr’s Twice as Less: Black English and the

Performance of Black Students in Mathemat

ics and Science (1987). Whatever her concerns, Orr’s Twice

as Less falls exactly into this category of research and
band

aiding, with its attendant simplistic and wishful thinking.

For her work sustains the fantasy of the

intellectual that the basic injustices of society are

subject to relatively simple technical correction.

Thus—in education, for example—armed with the proper

science and a derivative technology,

the “experts” lead teachers to expect to fi nd solutions to

their problems close and easily at hand.

In Orr’s case, her goal is to explain the failure of urban,

poor African American students to sur

vive educationally in school, in particular in mathematics

and science. Linguistics is then brought
to bear on these problems. This brings Orr to an Ann
Arbor-type solution (for more about this

matter, see below, “Some Further Points”), according to

which educators are enjoined to “seek

out the knowledge of linguists” so that they can understand

what their African American students

to Orr’s book unless otherwise noted). (The wavering mark

[–] between saying and thinking is to

indicate that Orr does not distinguish between language and

thought very carefully, if at all: see

the following section for further discussion.) African

American students then need only get “in the

habit of … using the conventions of standard [ =

international] English” (48) and “to gain control

over the construction of complex sentences that depend on

relative pronouns and conjunctions

and contain many prepositional phrases” (212) in order to

get on with an understanding of science

and mathematics.

The nature of the educator’s task is then clear

enough—though the job is not an easy or pleas

ant one, as it never seems to be in these “hard” cases:

some basic concepts supposedly have to be

drummed or built into the minds of African American

students. Allegedly great diffi culty is experi

enced due to the underlap between two varieties of a

language. For by proclamation it is supposed

to be easier for a speaker of a foreign language to get

international English down perfectly than it

is for a speaker of a nonstandard form of the language

(125–26, citing several such unsupported

assertions). This is a familiar enough truth about language

learning, and thus, like all such “truths”
held to be true without examination, should be considered
suspect.

Scientific Critique: Language and Thought

However, as with any scientifi c-technical solution to a

problem, we need to evaluate its intellectual

foundations. In this case, an evaluation requires that we

look not only at linguistic theory but at

the cognitive sciences more generally. To her credit, Orr

has a sense that she is treading on some

pretty unsteady ground: Harvard’s Roger Brown has warned

her about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

(11), that rather vague notion that “one’s cognitive

structure is largely determined by the struc

ture (including the vocabulary) of the language one speaks”

(Fodor, Bever, and Garrett 1974, 384).

Unfortunately, however, Brown has misinformed Orr about the

status of this hypothesis (which,

indeed, we dignify by so labeling it). For the Sapir-Whorf

hypothesis has just the standing and just

the persistency as, for example, the notion that the earth
is fl at: it conforms to our common-sense

view of things in nature, but it is dead wrong and is not a

serious candidate for the explanation of

the things in nature. Thus misinformed and misled, Orr is

encouraged to march into the swamp, with predictable and

disastrous results. For, like a lot of people, Whorf

included, Orr has great diffi culty distinguishing

concepts from their labels in language (words, more or

less). Thus, she (half-)believes that in giving

her students the words, she is giving them the concepts

involved. In her discussion of location and

distance, for example, Orr concludes that the fundamental

question is, Does Jane think in terms of two distinct
entities—location and distance—even though she uses the
same symbol for both? Or does she think in terms of only
one entity, which she accordingly represents by a single
symbol? And if she does think in terms of only one entity,
is it some kind of hybrid of the conventional notions of
location and distance? (25)

Moreover, Orr adds a curious wrinkle of her own to

Sapir-Whorf by expressing the nonstan

dard belief that “in the case of the three modes of

expressing comparisons [the noun mode, the

than mode, and the as mode], the grammar of Standard

English has been shaped by what is true

mathematically” (158), a remarkable observation, if true.

For her observation here is rather like

assuming that in language as in logic, two negatives make a

positive. But we know that, in fact, two

negatives in natural language make an emphatic negative, as

distinct from their canceling effect in

the artifi cial language of logic. Indeed, my co-worker

Morris Halle (1988, personal communication) has carried out
a small

and contrary experiment on this point with fl uent MIT

graduate-student speakers of international

English in connection with Orr’s statement (192) that the

synonymity of “John does not have as

much money as Sam” with “John has less money than Sam” is
paralleled by the synonymity of “John

does not have as little money as Sam” and “John has more
money than Sam.” All of the students

agreed that the members of the fi rst pair were clearly

synonymous but disagreed widely about the

second pair. One person said that “only logical

consistency” convinced him that the second set of

sentences contained synonymous members. Thus, it seems

obvious that it is the requirements of

scientifi c discourse that ensure synonymity in the second

pair, not the language of everyday use. In thinking this
way, Orr fails to notice that the mathematical and
scientifi c education of us all

involves our learning narrow and fi xed defi nitions of the

words of ordinary language. These new

defi nitions correspond only partially, if at all, to those

of ordinary language. Take the word hypothesis,

for example, or nearly any word from among those that Orr
fi nds her students having diffi culty with.

Each of them has a meaning, indeed several meanings in the

language of everyday speech, different

from its narrower technical or scientifi c one(s). The word

distance, for example, has several abstract

nominal meanings (“the fact or condition of being apart in

space or time”; “the interval separating

any two specifi ed instants in time”; “a point removed in

space or time”; “chilliness of manner, aloof

ness”; and the like.) In addition, the word distance has

three meanings special to geometry—not to

mention the fact that it functions as a verb as well with

its particular, nontechnical defi nitions. More

over, some terms of science (quantum potential, for

example) and of even quite ordinary discourse

have no sense outside of scientifi c or technical

discourse. The label live oak, for example, refers to a

tree of the sort that an expert tells me is a live oak;

indeed I may always need an expert to tell me

or point out to me which are the live oaks as distinct from

the other trees in the world. Moving beyond mere matters of
vocabulary, we know that great numbers of students, both

younger and older than Orr’s, as well as at the same age,

have diffi culty with mathematical and

arithmetical problems. The extent of this diffi culty in

the United States is urgently reported to us
from time to time, recently, for example, in “The
Mathematics Report Card: Are We Measuring

Up,” from the National Assessment of Educational Progress

(NAEP, see Fiske 1988), in which it is

revealed that only 6.4% of the tested seventeen-year-olds

(down from 7.4% in 1978) could handle

multistep problems and algebra, problems far simpler than

those administered by Orr. Given the

general scope of the diffi culties reported, clearly

something here runs far deeper than the specifi cs

of the grammar of Black English. What is it?

Language and Thought: An Alternative View

However, more reasonable assumptions about human nature

exist than the ones Orr unquestion

ingly adopts: namely, that on the basis of their

species-specifi c genetic endowment, human beings

are equipped as a matter of course with all the natural

concepts there are. The maturation of a

child in this respect is then simply the child’s learning

which labels (words, crudely speaking) go

with the concepts that receive expression in its language

and world. (For some discussion, see

Noam Chomsky 1988 passim.) Among languages and among

varieties of what we loosely call a lan

guage, differences as to how the concepts are labeled will

occur. There will also be minor variation

over which concepts are labeled and about whether the

mapping between concepts and labels is

many-to-one, one-to-many, one-to-one, and the like. Most

obvious and trivial is the fact that different languages
will label the same concept in pho

nologically very different ways: thus, the notion “refl

exive” is generally (but not only) labeled with
some form of -self in English, with a form of -ziji
(including the “plain” form, without a personal pro

noun attached) in Chinese, and the like. More

interestingly, for example, many languages label the

number concepts beyond “two” with only two additional terms

roughly equivalent to “few” and

“many.” Moreover, in some varieties of English (in the

Creole English of Nicaragua, for example),

the concepts that many of us separate with the labels learn

and teach are covered with the single

label learn—a concept-to-label mapping that is common in

the languages of the world. This offers

no diffi culties of communication apart from those that

arise from the sort of elitism recently exhib

ited by the English Prince Charles. Closer to Orr’s

concerns are the many varieties of English marked by subtle
differences in

the way the prepositional labels are tied up with the

relational concepts involved. In Appalachian

speech, for example, at labels the directional concept to;

in other varieties at labels the locational

in, and the like. The varieties of American English exhibit

fi ne differences in the exact forms that

comparative constructions take, with the label as doing the

work of the standard than in some

varieties, for example. (See Cassidy 1985 for details.) In

this view, we do not expect to fi nd that a person or a
group of people will lack certain concepts.

Nor are we surprised to fi nd languages that lack labels

for particular concepts. (See Hale 1975 for

discussion.) Presumably, if nothing in the culture focuses

attention on particular concepts, then there

is no reason to label them. For example, in English (as

distinct from many other languages of the
world) a rudimentary set of labels for kinship relations
exists. From this observation, we conclude

nothing about the human mind, however much we may want to

conclude about the culture to which

the language gives partial expression. For under the normal

notions of translatability, where there

is a mind and time there is a way to go from one language

to another, in principle. That is, all the

mind’s concepts are hypothesized to be available for

labeling in language—any language. Thus, when

it became crucial for the Walpiri (an aboriginal people of

Australia) to have mathematics, words

for the number concepts involved became easily available to

their language, which had previously

lacked labels for the distinct number concepts beyond “two”

(having cover terms roughly equivalent

to “few” and “many” for larger sets). Indeed, it is an

interesting fact about human beings that they

continue to learn new labels (i.e., words) throughout their

lives, whether in their native language or

in a second, third, or nth language, this being a major

insight of work on second language acquisition

about the difference between the acquisition of grammar and

of the lexicon (or mental dictionary).

Orr’s Problem

In this light, consider again Orr’s concern with the

notions “location” and “distance,” which the

African American students she works with seem to confuse so

badly as to lead her to wonder

whether they have the two distinct concepts at all. Yet

these particular concepts are so fundamen

tal to human nature as to be necessarily labeled in all

languages. Indeed, in one widely respected
view, they are at the foundation of the interplay between
language and conceptual structure. (See

Jackendoff 1983.) If this view is accepted, then how are we

to explain the behavior typical of Orr’s students with

respect to such problems as those in Figure 1? Instead of a

standard diagram of the sort shown in

square brackets, the students drew diagrams in which the

various cities were expressed as lines

and in which the lines were connected in various relational

ways refl ecting the notion “distance” in

the statement of the problem. 12 The distance from

Washington, DC, to New York City is equal to the distance
from Washington to Cleveland. Ohio Johnstown, Ohio, is fi
fty miles further from Washington than Cleveland is
Springsville. New York, is fi fty miles further from
Washington than New York City is. a) In the space below
draw a labeled diagram that depicts the distance from
Washington to New York City and the distance from
Washington to Cleveland (E.g.
0___________x___________0___________y___________0 DC NYC
Springsville NY
0___________x___________0___________y___________0 DC
Cleveland Johnstown OH) b) To the diagram you drew for 12a,
add whatever is necessary in order to also show the
locations of Springsville, New York, and Johnstown, Ohio.
Label these locations. FIG. R10.1. How, then, do we
explain their behavior? As I read Orr’s distance and
location problems, I was

struck by how much their proper expression, which

absolutely requires that cities be represented

by points and the distances between them by connecting

lines, depends on a familiarity with the

conventions of maps. In fact, if you are too familiar with

maps and with the geography of the

United States, you will be astounded by some of the

assertions made in the problems—the relative

location of Cleveland and New York City with respect to

Washington, DC, for example. Thus,

without an acceptance of or familiarity with the

abstraction from reality that mapping conventions

demand—not to mention the suspension of beliefs that is

required by the problems themselves—

it is diffi cult to see why anyone should imagine

Washington, DC, Cleveland, and New York City

to be points: that is, to have no extension—especially if

one travels each day from some point in

DC to another and back again. Now since it is unbelievable

that the students lack the concepts

or the language required to solve these problems, it is

quite likely that Orr’s problems simply lack

any semblance of reality of interest for the students.

Indeed, from the NAEP report cited above,

we learn that “most students see mathematics as having

little use in their future work life” (Fiske

A28), that is that they fi nd it irrelevant. Thus, from

this behavior, it is wrong to conclude that the

students lack the relevant concepts, however much we might

want to conclude about the limited

imagination of those who would try to delve into their

minds.

Science Education

In fact, the problems cited throughout Orr’s book bear

little relation to anything in the real world,

and they often involve so many unknowns that they are

unsolvable, emphasizing the form of a solu

tion rather than the satisfaction of a solution itself. In

this connection, it is worth examining Orr’s

notion that it was “more effective to have these students

not take any science until they had suc

cessfully completed algebra and geometry” (211). The

misconception here is to believe that science

is principally formalism, when, in fact, modern science

arose out of the realization that it was the

simplest things in the physical world that defi ed our

understanding, and that our common-sense

misunderstanding of them (that the earth is fl at, for

example) could give way to widely appreciated

explanations through the careful exercise of the human

science-forming capacity (Noam Chomsky

156–59). As Randolph Bourne somewhere wrote, “Scientifi c

method is simply a sublimely well

ordered copy of our own best and most fruitful habits of

thought.” And as we go about trying to

understand “our own best and most fruitful habits of

thought,” formalism will play little role, as it

plays only a small role in science itself except at its

most advanced and technical levels. Orr’s book, however, is
subtitled in such a way as to make the reader think that
Orr is going

to deal with science education in some serious way as well

as with mathematics (severely limited

in her case to algebra and geometry), but in fact, what

little attention she does pay to science is

disappointingly devoted to following one of her students

through a logical maze of someone else’s

making (211–14), working out a rather sophisticated problem

little different in structure from her

usual type that involves “two people start[ing] from the

same place at the same time and travel[ing]

in opposite directions. One of these travels twenty mph

faster …” (67). Our own work in science education, at the
middle- and high-school levels, derives from a

view of science as cooperative intellectual interplay

between the human, science-forming capac

ity and things in nature. From this point of view, we have

developed an introduction to the style
and activity of modern scientifi c thinking based on very
simple things: on the careful observation

and explanation of simple linguistic phenomena, the

behavior of fl oating and sinking objects, and

the properties of dry yeast, for example. (See Carol

Chomsky et al.; Carey et al. 1986, A Progress

Report; Carey et al. 1988, A Technical Report; Bemis et al.

1988.)

Setting these important considerations about the general

nature of scientifi c inquiry and sci

ence education aside, we conclude that Orr is naive about

the relationships between language and

thought. And it is this naiveté that simply cuts the

scientifi c ground out from under her technical

solution to the problems of education on which she fi xes

her attention.

Linguistic Critique: Black English

I turn now to other, increasingly more serious matters that

Orr has gotten wrong: On the dust

jacket of Orr’s book, Roger Brown is quoted as saying that

“this book is not naive about the Black

English Vernacular and it is untainted by racism”—basic

prerequisites, one would hope, given the

topics that Orr addresses. However, neither of these

judgments is true. First about Black English. Although Orr
writes as if there is little controversy over the origins

and development of Black English and of the so-called

creole languages generally, she has come to

this conclusion by walking lightly past the incompatible

views that she cites of Derek Bickerton

and Joe Dillard (in Newmeyer 1988, 268–84), among others.

The former claims that creoles are

what they are because of the human bioprogram; the latter,

that creolized European languages have
become what they are through the intermixture of the
lexicon of the European language and the

syntax of African languages. (See Newmeyer 268–84; 285–301;

302–06; Holm 1988.) A third view, one that I share, is that
the so-called creole languages are largely varieties of the

European languages from which they principally derive—on a

par with the Englishes, the Spanishes,

and the like found many places in the world (O’Neil,

Joiner, and Taylor 1987; O’Neil and Honda

1987). It should be clear, then, that a great deal of

controversy about these matters is now the basis

of much lively and interesting linguistic research. Thus,

what is known about creoles and about

the creole basis for Black English cannot be assumed to be

fi xed. The answers to these interesting

questions are, indeed, wide open, as is the formulation of

the questions themselves. Thus, some of

the conclusions that Orr reaches about, say, the

differences between the ways prepositions work

in Black English and in international English are easily

challenged. Moreover, Orr’s discussion of several aspects
of the grammar and the history of Black English

is quite misleading. For example, she misunderstands the

double-negative construction in Black

English as somehow a hybrid of the international English “I

don’t know/anything about it” plus “I

know/nothing about it” equaling “I don’t know nothing about

it” (148) and thoroughly neglects the

thousand-year history of the double-negative construction

in the English language. She also fails to

see that an African American child’s repetition of the

sentence “he’s not as smart as he thinks he

is” as “he ain’t as … he not so smart as what he thinks he

be” (186) shows a perfect perception of
the international English sentence through an exact
translation of it into Black English. The transla

tion even contains the relative pronoun what, clearly

indicating the relative-clause structure of the

comparative construction characteristic of all varieties of

English at a suffi cient level of abstraction. As this last
observation suggests, the linguistic goals for the study of
Black English ought to be

the same as for any language or language variety: linguists

are concerned to understand the variety

of human linguistic expression as well as its underlying

and universal sameness. They pursue their

studies in order to try to understand one aspect of human

knowledge. It is then intriguing to ask why so much
emphasis has been put on the study of Black English in

the recent history of dialect studies in the United States

and not on its other varieties? In part, the

answer to this question goes back to my opening (and what

will be part of my closing) remarks:

intellectuals want narrow, technical solutions to broad,

nontechnical social problems. So funds get

directed toward research on and dissection of the perceived

sources of the problems, in this case

the African American community. Whether such research is

done in Vietnam, in Central America,

or in the cities of the United States, the underlying goal

of this sort of anthropological and socio

logical research, though not necessarily of the researchers

themselves, is for the ruling class to

seek to understand potential enemies in all ways so as to

try to control and contain them. On the

domestic side, such work serves to convince people that

something important is being done for

them, but in the end, the work is directed against them,

toward preventing redistribution of the

present imbalance of economic and cultural capital. It is

for this reason that we know as much as we

do about urban African American society and its varieties

of English but so little about the Englishes

and other languages of the many economically impoverished

people of the United States: the urban

rebellions of twenty or so years ago, which threaten always

to recur, were rebellions of African

American people, not rural rebellions of the farmers of

Iowa, say, about whose language and social

structure we know very little, consequently. It is in this

way that the social sciences in general have

served (since their birth in the United States) and

continue to serve the interests of the state. In

China, the government keeps its people down by shooting

them: in the United States, the people

are kept down by social science and propaganda, with

shooting reserved for special occasions only.

Political Critique: Racism and Other Issues

Racism

As far as the question of racism is concerned, it is a

matter of considerable insensitivity and

extremely condescending—to say the least—for Orr to deny

“these students” fundamental con

cepts of human mind: to suggest, for example, that they do

not have the perceptions and the

language to distinguish between where they are and where

they would like to be and what it takes

to get from here to there. In the literature of racism as

well as that of sexism and classism, typically

the racists (and other -ists) dehumanize the object of

their attacks. (For discussion, see among
many others, Gould 1981; Lewontin et al. 1984.) Orr’s
approach here may be gentler, superfi cially

more understanding, and more nicely packaged than those

discussed by Stephen J. Gould and R. C.

Lewontin, Steven Rose, and Leon J. Kamin, but it is no less

dehumanizing.

Some Further Points

Turning to other large political issues, which Orr neglects

almost entirely, I began by saying that

whatever her intentions, Orr’s book falls into a category

of research that comforts and sustains

certain fantasies of the intelligentsia—two very favorable

reviews in the New York Times (1 and 19

November 1987) exhibiting this perception of her work. Her

study presents the calming view that

there is a more or less simple answer to one of the many

trying problems of our time—that in

this case the answer lies in education, the last refuge of

the intellectual being an unwarranted faith

in education, a retreat from the political center and

struggles of society into one of its marginal

institutions. Finally, by her silence, Orr appears to show

no understanding of or concern for what I will refer

to (in paraphrase of Jesse Jackson) as the social and

economic violence of poverty and, in this case,

its educational consequences. Return for a moment to the

Ann Arbor case: the central legal question there was
whether Black

English was a separate language or “just a dialect,” a

variety of English—an unanswerable question

from a scientifi c point of view, although clearly

answerable from, say, a political point of view. (See,

for example, James Baldwin’s “If Black English Isn’t a

Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” 1985.) If

the former, then its speakers were protected under the body
of law supporting bilingual educa

tion. Not so if Black English was “merely” a variety of

English. With the help of a battery of expert

linguistic witnesses, the judge decided that Black English

was not a separate language, but since the

educators at the King school were not suffi ciently

sensitive to the language variety and culture of

their African American students, he sentenced the teachers

to inservice instruction about these

matters. However, few people remember, or even know, that

the Ann Arbor case was originally more

than a legal action about language, that it was a

broad-based suit against the Ann Arbor school

system, a suit demanding social and economic justice. It

was the court that narrowed the case to a

trial about the sociolinguistic status of Black English

because, in the United States, the poor are not

legally protected from the social and economic violence

which they must endure, however mar

ginally protected they may be by the various languages they

speak. (See Perry 1980; Perry 1982.)

Conclusion

As far as I can see, technical answers of the type that

Orr, the Ann Arbor judge, and others give us

offer no way out of the present situation in which the gap

between the educational achievements

of the African American poor and other poor minority groups

and those of the white majority

correlates so strongly with other gaps: IQ and SAT scores,

dropout rates, illiteracy rates, wage and

salary ratios, unemployment rates, malnutrition rates,

infant mortality rates, serious illness and

longevity rates, violent-death rates, and so on. An

understanding of the grammar of Black English

will explain none of this. Perhaps the recent work that

sees these differences to be the result of

the caste-liké structure of our society will lead to an

explanation of its present disgraceful state.

But still better explanations will not eliminate the Third

World conditions that characterize much

of urban existence in the United States: for to change the

world in a nonviolent way requires that

those with social, political, and economic privilege and

power give up much of what they have and

work together with those without privilege and power in

order to eliminate the economic and

social violence of poverty and to participate in the

building of a just society in which human dif

ferences are celebrated, human dignity restored, one in

which material and cultural resources are

shared equally and not hoarded through privilege.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge,
Massachusetts 02139

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Baldwin, James. 1979. “If Black English Isn’t a Language,

Then Tell Me, What Is?” New York Times 29 July: Op Ed
Page. (Rpt. in James Baldwin. 1985. The Price of the
Ticket: Collected Nonfi ction 1948–1985. New York: St.
Martin’s. 649–52.)

Bemis, Diane, et al. 1988. Nature of Science: Lesson Plans.

Cambridge, MA: Educational Technology Center.

Carey, Susan, et al. 1986. What Junior High School Students

Do, Can, and Should Know about the Nature of Science: A
Progress Report. Cambridge, MA: Educational Technology
Center.

—— 1988. What Junior High School Students Do, Can, and

Should Know about the Nature of Science and Scientifi c
Inquiry: A Technical Report. Cambridge, MA: Educational
Technology Center.

Cassidy, Frederic G., chief ed. 1985. Dictionary of

American Regional English. Vol. 1: Introduction and A-C.
Cambridge: Harvard UP.

Chomsky, Carol, et al. 1985. Doing Science: Constructing

Scientifi c Theories as an Introduction to Scientifi c
Method: A Technical Report. Cambridge, MA: Educational
Technology Center.

Chomsky, Noam. 1988. Language and Problems of Knowledge:

The Managua Lectures. Cambridge: MITP.

Fiske, Edward B. 1988. “Back-to-Basics in Education

Produces Gains in Arithmetic.” New York Times 8 June: A1,
A28.

Fodor, Jerry A., Thomas G. Bever, and Merrill F. Garrett.

1974. The Psychology of Language: An Introduction to
Psycholinguistics and Generative Grammar. New York: McGraw.

Gould, Stephen J. 1981. The Mismeasure of Man. New York:

Norton.

Hale, Ken. 1975. “Gaps in Grammars and Cultures.”

Linguistics and Anthropology: In Honor of C. F. Voegelin.
Ed. M. Dale Kinkade, Ken Hale, and O. Werner. Lisse: Peter
de Ridder, 295–315.

Holm, John. 1988–89. Pidgins and Creoles. 2 vols.

Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

Jackendoff, Rav. 1983. Semantics and Cognition. Cambridge:

MIT P.

Lewontin, R. C., Steven Rose, and Leon J. Kamin. 1984. Not

in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature. New
York: Pantheon.

Newmeyer, Frederick J., ed. 1988. Linguistics: The

Cambridge Survey: Volume II. Linguistic Theory: Extensions
and Implications. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

O’Neil, Wayne, Dora Joiner, and Shirley Taylor. 1987.

“Notes on NP Pluralization in Nicaraguan English.”
Historical Studies in Honour of Taizo Hirose. Tokyo:
Kenkyusha. 81–91.
O’Neil, Wayne, and Maya Honda. 1987. “Nicaraguan English/El
Inglés Nicaraguense.” Wani: Revista sobre la Costa
Atlantica 6: 49–60.

Orr, Eleanor Wilson. 1987. Twice as Less: Black English and

the Performance of Black Students in Mathematics and
Science. New York: Norton.

Perry, Theresa. 1980. “Towards an Interpretative Analysis

of the Martin Luther King Jr., v. Ann Arbor School
District Board Case.” Harvard Graduate School of Education
Qualifying Paper.

—— 1982. An Interpretative Analysis of the Martin Luther

King Jr. v. Ann Arbor School District Board Case. Diss.,
Harvard.

Author’s note: These comments constitute an extensively

revised and expanded version of remarks presented

at a 1988 Harvard Graduate School of Education panel

discussion with Orr about her research. Thanks to

Carol Chomsky, Morris Halle, Maya Honda, Ben Nelms, and to

Don M. Lance for reading earlier drafts of

these comments and for their own helpful comments.

Reprinted from Wayne O’ Neil. “Dealing With Bad Ideas:

Twice is Less.” English Journal, Vol. 79, No. 4, April

1990: 80–88. Copyright 1990 by the National Council of

Teachers of English. Reprinted with permission. THE MYTH
OF LINGUISTIC HOMOGENEITY IN U.S. COLLEGE COMPOSITION Paul
Kei Matsuda

In “English Only and U.S. College Composition,” Bruce

Horner and John Trimbur identify the tacit

policy of unidirectional English monolingualism, which

makes moving students toward the dominant

variety of English the only conceivable way of dealing with

language issues in composition instruc

tion. This policy of unidirectional monolingualism is an

important concept to critique because it

accounts for the relative lack of attention to

multilingualism in the composition scholarship. Yet

it does not seem to explain why second language issues have

not become a central concern in

composition studies. After all, if U.S. composition had

accepted the policy of unidirectional mono

lingualism, all composition teachers would have been

expected to learn how to teach the dominant

variety of English to students who come from different

language backgrounds. This has not been

the case. While Geneva Smitherman and Victor Villanueva

argue that coursework on language

issues should be part of every English teachers’

professional preparation (4), relatively few gradu

ate programs in composition studies offer courses on those

issues, and even fewer require such

courses. As a result, the vast majority of U.S. college

composition programs remain unprepared

for second language writers who enroll in the mainstream

composition courses. To account for this

situation, I want to take Horner and Trimbur’s argument a

step further and suggest that the domi

nant discourse of U.S. college composition not only has

accepted “English Only” as an ideal but

already assumes the state of English Only, in which

students are native English speakers by default. That
second language writing has not yet become a central
concern in composition studies

seems paradoxical given the historical origin of U.S.

college composition as a way of “containing”

language differences from the rest of U.S. higher

education. Robert J. Connors has suggested that

U.S. composition arose in response to perceived language

differences—texts written by ostensi

bly some of the brightest native English speakers that

included numerous errors in “punctuation,

capitalization, spelling, [and] syntax” (Composition 128).

Susan Miller also points out that college

composition “has provided a continuing way to separate the

unpredestined from those who belong

… by encouraging them to leave school, or more vaguely, by

convincing large numbers of native

speakers and otherwise accomplished citizens that they are

‘not good at English’” (Miller 74; empha

sis added). To a large extent, however, issues that

prompted the rise of the composition require

ment are weak forms of language differences that affect

native speakers of English—matters of

convention and style as well as performance errors that

arise from factors such as unfamiliar tasks,

topics, audiences, or genres. While U.S. composition has

maintained its ambivalent relationship

with those weak forms of language differences, it has been

responding to the presence of stronger

forms of language differences—differences that affect

students who did not grow up speaking

privileged varieties of English—not by adjusting its

pedagogical practices systematically at the level

of the entire fi eld but by relegating the responsibility

of working with those differences to second

language specialists (Matsuda, “Composition”; Shuck).

I am not trying to imply that there has not been any effort
to address second language issues in

composition studies. I recognize that a growing number of

writing teachers who face those issues

in their classes on a daily basis have developed, often on

their own initiative, additional expertise in

issues related to language differences. What I want to call

into question is why the issue of language

difference has not become a central concern for everyone

who is involved in composition instruc

tion, research, assessment, and administration. I argue

that the lack of “a professionwide response”

(Valdés 128) to the presence of strong forms of language

differences in U.S. composition stems

from what I call the myth of linguistic homogeneity—the

tacit and widespread acceptance of the

dominant image, of composition students as native speakers

of a privileged variety of English. To

show how the myth of linguistic homogeneity came into

being, I examine here the early history of

various attempts at linguistic containment, which created a

condition that makes it seem accept

able to dismiss language differences. My intention is not

to argue against all forms of linguistic

containment. Rather, I want to problematize its long-term

implication—the perpetuation of the

myth of linguistic homogeneity—that has in turn kept U.S.

composition from fully recognizing the

presence of second language writers who do not fi t the

dominant image of college students.

The Image of College Students and the Myth of Linguistic

Homogeneity

Behind any pedagogy is an image of prototypical

students—the teacher’s imagined audience. This

image embodies a set of assumptions about who the students

are, where they come from, where

they are going, what they already know, what they need to
know, and how best to teach them. It

is not necessarily the concrete image of any individual

student but an abstraction that comes from
continual encounters with the dominant student population
in local institutional settings as well as

from the dominant disciplinary discourses. Images of

students are not monolithic; just as teachers

incorporate pedagogical practices from various and even

confl icting perspectives, student images

are multiple and complex, refl ecting local institutional

arrangements as well as teaching philoso

phies and worldviews of individual teachers. Although there

is no such thing as a generalized col

lege composition student, overlaps in various teachers’

images of students constitute a dominant

image—a set of socially shared generalizations. Those

generalizations in turn warrant the link

between abstract disciplinary practices and concrete

classroom practices. Having a certain image of students is
not problematic in itself; images of students are
inevitable

and even necessary. Without those images, discussing

pedagogical issues across institutions would

be impossible. An image of students becomes problematic

when it inaccurately represents the

actual student population in the classroom to the extent

that it inhibits the teacher’s ability to rec

ognize and address the presence of differences. Just as the

assumption of whiteness as the colorless

norm has rendered some students of color invisible in the

discourse of composition studies (Pren

dergast 51), theoretical practices that do not recognize

and challenge inaccurate images reinforce

the marginal status of those students by rendering them

invisible in the professional discourse. By

the same token, pedagogical practices based on an

inaccurate image of students continue to alien
ate students who do not fi t the image. One of the
persisting elements of the dominant image of students in
English studies is the

assumption that students are by default native speakers of

a privileged variety of English from the

United States. Although the image of students as native

speakers of privileged varieties of English

is seldom articulated or defended—an indication that

English Only is already taken for granted—it

does surface from time to time in the work of those who are
otherwise knowledgeable about

issues of language and difference. A prime example is

Patrick Hartwell’s “Grammar, Grammars,

and the Teaching of Grammar,” a widely known critique of

grammar instruction in the composition

classroom. In his analysis of a grammar exercise, he writes

that “the rule, however valuable it may

be for non-native speakers, is, for the most part, simply

unusable for native speakers of the lan

guage” (116). While this is a reasonable claim, to argue

against certain pedagogical strategies based

on their relevance to native speakers seems to imply the

assumption of the native-English-speaker

norm. Hartwell also claims that “native speakers of

English, regardless of dialect, show tacit mas

tery of the conventions of Standard English” (123), which

seems to trivialize important structural

differences between privileged varieties of U.S. English

and many other domestic and international

varieties of English. Language issues are also inextricably

tied to the goal of college composition, which is to help

students become “better writers.” Although defi nitions of

what constitutes a better writer may

vary, implicit in most teachers’ defi nitions of “writing

well” is the ability to produce English that

is unmarked in the eyes of teachers who are custodians of

privileged varieties of English or, in

more socially situated pedagogies, of an audience of native

English speakers who would judge the

writer’s credibility or even intelligence on the basis of

grammaticality. (As a practicing writing

teacher, I do not claim myself to be immune to this

charge.) Since any form of writing assess

ment—holistic, multiple-trait, or portfolio

assessment—explicitly or implicitly includes language

as part of the criteria, writing teachers regularly and

inevitably engage in what Bonny Norton and

Sue Starfi eld have termed “the covert language assessment”

(292). As they point out, this practice

is not problematic in itself, especially if language issues

are deliberately and explicitly included in the

assessment criteria and if students are receiving adequate

instruction on language issues. In many

composition classrooms, however, language issues beyond

simple “grammar” correction are not

addressed extensively, even when the assessment of student

texts is based at least partly on stu

dents’ profi ciency in the privileged variety of English.

As Connors has pointed out, “the sentence

… as an element of composition pedagogy is hardly mentioned

today outside of textbooks” and

has become a “half-hidden and seldom-discussed classroom

practice on the level of, say, vocabulary

quizzes” (“Erasure” 97, 120). It is not unusual for

teachers who are overwhelmed by the presence

of language differences to tell students simply to

“proofread more carefully” or to “go to the writ
ing center”; in the same classrooms, non-native speakers of
dominant varieties of English are being

held accountable for what is not being taught. The current

practice might be appropriate if all students can
reasonably be expected to come

to the composition classroom having already internalized a

privileged variety of English—its gram

mar and rhetorical practices associated with it. Such an

expectation, however, does not accurately

refl ect the student population in today’s college

composition classrooms. In the 2003/2004 aca

demic year, there were 572,509 international students in

the United States (Institute of Inter

national Education, Open Doors 2004), most of whom came

from countries where English is not

the dominant language. Although the number has declined

slightly in recent years, international

students are not likely to disappear from U.S. higher

education any time soon. In fact, many institu

tions continue to recruit international students—because

they bring foreign capital (at an out-of

state rate), increase visible ethnic diversity (which,

unlike linguistic diversity, is highly valued), and

enhance the international reputation of the

institutions—even as they reduce or eliminate instruc

tional support programs designed to help those students

succeed (Dadak; Kubota and Abels).

In addition, there is a growing number of resident second

language writers who are permanent

residents or citizens of the United States. Linda Harklau,

Meryl Siegal, and Kay M. Losey estimate

that there are at least 150,000–225,000 active learners of

English graduating from U.S. high schools

each year (2–3). These fi gures do not include an

overwhelmingly large number of functional bilin

guals—students who have a high level of profi ciency in

both English and another language spoken

at home (Valdés)—or native speakers of traditionally

underprivileged varieties of English, including

what has come to be known as world Englishes. The myth of

linguistic homogeneity—the assump

tion that college students are by default native speakers

of a privileged variety of English—is seri

ously out of sync with the sociolinguistic reality of

today’s U.S. higher education as well as the

U.S. society at large. This discrepancy is especially

problematic considering the status of fi rst-year

composition as the only course that is required of

virtually all college students in a country where,

according to a 2000 U.S. census, “more than one in six

people fi ve years of age and older reported

speaking a language other than English at home” (Bayley

269).

The Policy of Linguistic Containment in U.S. College

Composition

The perpetuation of the myth of linguistic homogeneity in

U.S. college composition has been facili

tated by the concomitant policy of linguistic containment

that has kept language differences invisible

in the required composition course and in the discourse of

composition studies. Since its begin

ning in the late nineteenth century at Harvard and

elsewhere, the fi rst-year composition course

has been a site of linguistic containment, quarantining

from the rest of higher education students

who have not yet been socialized into the dominant

linguistic practices (Miller 74). While using the
composition course as a site of linguistic containment for
native speakers of privileged varieties of

English, institutions have found ways to exclude more

substantive forms of language differences

even from the composition course by enacting several

strategies for linguistic containment. The

fi rst and most obvious strategy is to exclude language

differences from entering higher education

altogether by fi ltering them out in the admission process.

Another common strategy, especially

when the number of students from unprivileged language

backgrounds is relatively small, is to ignore

language issues, attributing any diffi culties to

individual students’ inadequate academic preparation.

Even when language differences are recognized by the

teacher, those differences are often contained

by sending students to the writing center, where students

encounter peer tutors who are even less

likely to be prepared to work with language differences

than composition teachers (Trimbur 27–28). The policy of
containment is enacted most strongly through the placement
procedure, which

is unique to composition programs in the sense that

students do not normally have the option

of choosing a second language section—perhaps with the

exception of speech communication

courses. The all-too-common practice of using language

profi ciency tests for composition place

ment (Crusan 20) is a clear indication that the policy of

linguistic containment is at work. Even when

direct assessment of writing is used for placement, the use

of holistic scoring may lead raters to

give disproportionate weight to language differences

because “a text is so internally complex (e.g.,
highly developed but fraught with grammatical errors) that
it requires more than a single number

to capture its strengths and weaknesses” (Hamp-Lyons 760).

Based on the placement test results,

many students are placed in non-credit “remedial” courses

where they are expected to erase the

traces of their language differences before they are

allowed to enroll in the required composition

course. In other cases, students are placed—sometimes after

their initial placement in mainstream

composition courses—in a separate track of composition

courses for non-native English speakers

that can satisfy the composition, requirement. These

courses, though sometimes costly to students,

provide useful language support for students and are

necessary for many who will be entering the

composition course as well as courses in other disciplines

where the myth of linguistic homogene

ity prevails. At the same time, these placement practices

also reify the myth by making it seem as if

language differences can be effectively removed from

mainstream composition courses. In the remainder of this
chapter, I examine the emergence of the myth of linguistic
homogene

ity and the concomitant policy of linguistic containment in

the late nineteenth and early twenti

eth centuries—the formative years of U.S. college

composition. U.S. higher education during this

period is marked by several infl uxes of international

students, many of whom came from countries

where English was not the dominant language. Each of these

infl uxes was met not by attempts to

reform composition pedagogy but by efforts to contain

language differences—efforts that continue
even today. I focus on developments before the 1960s
because it was the period when a number

of signifi cant changes took place. Although English had

long been part of U.S. higher education,

the English language began to take center stage in the late

nineteenth century through the use of

English composition as part of the college entrance exam

(Brereton 9) and through the creation of

the English composition course that tacitly endorsed the

policy of unidirectional monolingualism

(Horner and Trimbur 596–97). It was also during this period

that language differences in the com

position classroom became an issue because of the presence

of a growing number of international

students, and many of the placement options for second

language writers were created (Matsuda

and Silva; Silva). My focus is on international students

because, until the latter half of the twen

tieth century, resident students from underprivileged

language backgrounds were systematically

excluded from higher education altogether (Matsuda, “Basic”

69–72).

Waves of International Students and the Policy of

Containment

The image of U.S. college students as native speakers of

more or less similar, privileged varieties of

English had already been fi rmly established by the

mid-nineteenth century. Although the larger U.S.

society had always been multilingual (Bayley 269), language

differences were generally excluded

from English-dominated higher education of the nineteenth

century. The assumption of the native

English-speaker norm was, at least on the surface, more or

less accurate in the mid-nineteenth
century, when access to college education was restricted to
students from certain ethnic, gender,

religious, socioeconomic, and linguistic backgrounds. As

David Russell notes, U.S. colleges before

the end of the Civil War were “by modern standards

extraordinarily homogeneous, guarantee

ing a linguistic common ground” (35). While U.S. higher

education began to shift from exclusive,

elitist establishment to a more inclusive vehicle for mass

education during the latter half of the

nineteenth century, the traditional image of college

students remained unchallenged for the most

part. Although the creation of what have come to be known

as Historically Black Universities and

Colleges provided African American students access to

higher education since the early nineteenth

century, they did not affect the dominant image because

they were physically segregated from the

rest of the college student population. In fact, those

colleges served as sites of containment—eth

nic as well as linguistic. The Morrill Act, fi rst passed

in 1862 and then extended in 1890, gave rise

to land-grant institutions across the nation that made

college education open to women as well

as students from a wider variety of socioeconomic groups.

Yet, non-native speakers of privileged

varieties of English did not enter higher education in

large numbers because the ability to speak

privileged varieties of English was often equated with the

speaker’s race and intelligence. One of the major
institutional initiatives that contributed to the exclusion
of language differ

ences was the creation of the entrance exam—fi rst

instituted at Harvard in 1874 and then quickly
and widely adopted by other institutions. The entrance exam
at Harvard was motivated in part

by “a growing awareness of the importance of linguistic

class distinctions in the United States”

(Connors, Composition 128). Harvard course catalogs during

this period indicate that the entrance

exam included “reading English aloud” or writing with

“correct spelling, punctuation, grammar,

and expression” (quoted in Brereton 34). Miller also points

out that “forms of this examination

became the most powerful instrument for discriminating

among students in higher education” (63),

effectively excluding students who did not fi t the

dominant linguistic profi le. Even in the nineteenth

century, however, the assumption of linguistic homogeneity

in higher education was not entirely

accurate, and it moved farther and farther away from the

sociolinguistic reality of U.S. higher

education. One group of students who brought signifi cant

language differences was made up of

international students who entered U.S. higher education

through different admission processes;

they therefore were not subject to linguistic fi ltering

(Matsuda, “Basic” 71–72).

The history of international ESL students in U.S. higher

education goes at least as far back as

1784, when Yale hosted a student from Latin America; in the

mid-1800s, students from China and

Japan also attended Yale and Amherst College (King 11). The
fi rst infl ux of international students

came in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when

U.S. higher education began to attract an

increasing number of students from other countries as it

developed research universities modeled

after German institutions. Most of these international

students were from Asian countries that

were “undergoing modernization with the help of knowledge

acquired from Western countries”

(Bennett, Passin, and McKnight 26). During the late

nineteenth century, European students also

came to U.S. higher education “not so much seeking an

education that was not available to them

at home, as out of a desire to see America, the ‘country of

the future’” (Institute of International

Education, Handbook [1955] 6).

In the late nineteenth century, when many of the

international students were sponsored by their

governments, language preparation was generally considered

to be the responsibility of individual

students or their sponsoring governments, and U.S. colleges

and universities usually provided lit

tle or no institutional support for international students’

cultural and linguistic adjustments. For

instance, students from China and Japan, most of whom were

sponsored by their respective gov

ernments, usually received language instruction before

coming to the United States. In many cases,

however, their language preparation was less than adequate

by the standard of U.S. institutions,

and they were sent to preparatory schools, where they were

“placed in classes with the youngest

children” (Schwantes 194). The Japanese government

continued to send students to U.S. colleges;

however, they were selected by a rigid examination, and

their progress was monitored by a supervi

sor sent by the Japanese government (Institute of

International Education, Handbook [l955] 4). By

the 1880s, the practice of holding the sponsoring

government responsible for providing language

preparation became diffi cult to sustain as the number of

government-sponsored students declined,

giving way to an increasing number of privately funded

students (Bennett, Passin, and McKnight 32).

The second infl ux came in the early part of the twentieth

century, when internationally known

research institutions began to attract a growing number of

international students, most from coun

tries where English was not the dominant language. Although

there were only 3,645 international

students in U.S. higher education in 1911, the number began

to grow rapidly after the conclusion

of World War I (1914–18). This change was due partly to

European students’ dissatisfaction “with

their own traditions of education” as well as Asian

students’ need for “new foundations for mod

ern systems of education” (Kandel 39). Another factor that

contributed to the growth was the

national interest of the United States. The U.S.

government’s growing concern with post-World

War I international relations—especially with European

nations—prompted the establishment

in 1919 of the Institute of International Education (IIE)

with support from the Carnegie Endow

ment for International Peace. The IIE was successful in

“stimulat[ing] interest in student exchange,

encouraging public and private groups to sponsor

international students” (Institute of international

Education, Handbook [1955] 7). By 1920, the number of

international students had reached 6,163
and was continuing to increase (Institute of International
Education, Handbook [1961] 230). In 1930,

U.S. colleges and universities reported the presence of

9,961 international students (Darian 105).

The growing presence of international students from

non-English-dominant countries became

an issue among hosting institutions. Some educators

recognized the problem of the traditional

pedagogy based on the dominant image of students. Isaac

Leon Kandel, for example, wrote that

international students did not benefi t as much from the

instruction, not because of their lack of

ability but because “courses were organized primarily with

the American student, familiar with

American ideals, aims, history, and social and political

background, in mind” (50). The solution,

however, was not to challenge the dominant image but to

contain issues of linguistic and cultural

differences by providing additional instruction—an approach

that might have seemed reasonable

when the number of international students was relatively

small. To provide linguistic support for

those who did not fi t the traditional image of college

students, institutions began to develop spe

cial English language courses. According to a 1923 survey

of four hundred institutions, all but two

stated that they had “provision for special language help

by offi cial courses or by voluntary con

versation classes” (Parson 155). Although it continued to

be “a common rule to refuse admission

to students who are unable to speak and read English,”

about 50 percent of institutions offered

“special courses for backward students” (155).

In 1911, Joseph Raleigh Nelson in the Engineering College
at the University of Michigan created

the fi rst English courses specifi cally designed for

international students (Klinger 1845–47), fol

lowed by Teachers College of Columbia University, which

created special courses for matriculated

international students in 1923 (Kandel 54). Harvard

University created its fi rst English courses for

international students in 1927, and George Washington

University and Cornell University followed

suit in 1931 (Allen 307; Darian 77). While there were some
exceptions—such as the program at

Michigan, which continued for several decades—many of these

early programs were ad hoc in

nature. The initial innovation at Harvard ceased to exist

after a while, and by the 1940s, second

language writers at Harvard had come to be mainstreamed

into “regular” sections of composition

courses with additional help from individual tutoring

services (Gibian 157). At George Washington,

the separate section of composition used “the same

materials as the sections for Americans and . .

. was conducted by the same teacher”; however, “none of the

English instructors really desired to

teach that group,” and this program was later found to be

unsuccessful (Rogers 394). The courses

at Columbia, which allowed students to enroll

simultaneously in college-level courses, were also

found to be ineffective in containing language differences

(Kandel 54). Other institutions, especially

where the number of international students was relatively

small, dealt with language differences

“by a process of scattering foreigners through different

courses, so that they must mingle freely
with others, rather than segregating them for group study
in classes where they may persist in

using their own language” (Parson 155). Following the

announcement of the Good Neighbor Policy in 1933, the State
Department began

to bring international students from Latin America to

provide scientifi c and technical training. This

development led to the creation, in 1941, of the English

Language Institute (ELI) at the University

of Michigan. As an intensive program, it separated students

from the college-level courses for a

period of several months while students focused on

developing their English language profi ciency.

Although the program was initially intended for

Spanish-speaking graduate students from Latin

America, it later broadened its scope to include

undergraduate students and students from other

language backgrounds. The Michigan ELI provided a model for

intensive English programs through

out the United States and in many other countries, paving

the way for the next wave of ESL courses

that were created in response to the post-World War II infl

ux of international students (Matsuda,

“Composition” 701–6). Although the number of international

students declined somewhat during the Depression and

World War II, the conclusion of the war brought another

infl ux of international students. The

international student population surged from less than

8,000 in 1945 to 10,341 in 1946 (Darian

105), when the United States replaced Germany as the most

popular destination for international

students. The number doubled in the next two years, and by

1949, there were 26,759 international
students (Institute of International Education, Open Doors
7, 14). To contain the language differ

ences these students brought with them, an increasing,

number of institutions—including those

that had relatively small but steady enrollments of

international students—began to create sepa

rate English courses and programs on a permanent basis

(Schueler 309). In 1949, Harvard once

again created a special non-credit course for small groups

of students from Europe, providing a

preparation for the required composition course (Gibian

157). At about the same time, Queens

College developed a multilevel intensive English language

program with its own teaching and testing

materials (Schueler 312–14). Tulane University also created

a non-credit English course for sec

ond language writers. Sumner Ives reported that all

non-native English speakers at Tulane, unless

“individually excused,” were required to enroll in a

special English course for non-native speakers

before taking the required English course. This program was

unique in that the status of the course

was determined after the beginning of the semester. Based

on a reading test during the orienta

tion, the teacher would decide whether each student should

move to a “regular section” or remain

in the remedial course. When most of the remaining students

had limited English profi ciency, the

course was taught as a remedial English language course,

using the materials developed by the

ELI at Michigan. The course became credit-bearing when a

large number of students had reached

advanced English profi ciency and the textbooks for regular

sections of composition courses were
used (Ives 142–43). The number of ESL writing courses
continued to grow. In 1953, according to Harold B. Allen,

about 150 institutions reported the existence of ESL

programs for international students; by 1969,

the number had nearly doubled. In addition, 114

institutions reported that they offered summer

programs for international students (308). Initially, many

of those courses were offered on a non

credit basis as preparation for a regular English

requirement. These courses focused not only on

writing but also on reading and oral communication skills.

Non-credit English courses for non

native speakers offered at many institutions adopted the

textbook series developed by the ELI

at Michigan. Intensive language courses modeled after the

Michigan ELI also became widespread,

providing systematic instruction before second language

writers were allowed to enroll in regular

college-level courses. Yet, a semester or two of extra

language instruction was often not enough to help students

fi t the dominant image of students—after all, learning a

second language is a time-consuming pro

cess, especially for adult learners—and they continued to

bring language differences to college

composition courses. For this reason, institutions began to

develop a separate track of required

composition courses for second language writers—courses

that were designed to keep language

differences out of the required composition course. In

1954, Michigan’s Department of English Lan

guage and Literature in the College of Literature, Science

and Art created one of the fi rst credit

bearing ESL composition courses that paralleled the

sections of English courses for native speakers

of English (Klinger 1849). University of Washington

followed suit with a three-credit composition

course for second language writers, which emphasized

purposeful cross-cultural communication

with an audience rather than the language drills or

linguistic analyses commonly used in intensive

language programs at the time (Marquardt 31).

Embracing Language Differences as the New Norm

The assumption of linguistic homogeneity, which was more or

less accurate in U.S. higher educa

tion institutions of the mid-nineteenth century, became

increasingly inaccurate as linguistic diver

sity grew over the last two centuries. Yet, the growing
presence of international students did

not lead to a fundamental reconsideration of the dominant

image of students in the composition

classroom. It was not because the separate placement

practices were able to eliminate language

differences. For a number of reasons, none of these

programs was able to contain language differ

ences completely: because language learning is a

time-consuming process, because students often

come with a wide range of English language profi ciency

levels, and because developing placement

procedures that can account for language differences is not

an easy task. As Ives wrote, “Neither a

frankly non-credit course for all, nor their [non-native

English speaking students’] segregation into

separate but parallel courses, nor their distribution

throughout the regular courses is completely

satisfactory” (142). Instead, the dominant image of

students remained unchallenged because the
policy of containment kept language differences in the
composition classroom from reaching a

critical mass, thus creating the false impression that all

language differences could and should be

addressed elsewhere. In other words, the policy of

unidirectional monolingualism was enacted not

so much through pedagogical practices in the mainstream

composition course but through delega

tion of students to remedial or parallel courses that

attempted to keep language differences from

entering the composition course. The policy of containment

and the continuing dominance of the myth of linguistic
homogeneity

have serious implications not only for international second

language writers but also for resident

second language writers as well as for native speakers of

unprivileged varieties of English. Many

institutions place students into basic writing classes

without distinguishing writing issues and lan

guage issues partly because underlying language differences

are not easily discernible by observing

student texts that seem, at least on the surface,

strikingly similar to one another (Matsuda, “Basic”

74). As a result, basic writing courses often enroll many

second language writers—both inter

national and resident—although many basic writing courses,

like the credit-bearing composition

courses, are often designed for U.S. citizens who are

native speakers of a variety of English (68). By pointing
out the problem of the policy of containment, however, I do
not mean to suggest

that these placement practices should be abandoned. On the

contrary, many students do need

and even prefer these placement options. As George Braine

suggests, many—though certainly

not all—second language writers prefer second-language

sections of composition, where they feel

more comfortable and where they are more likely to succeed.

To deny these support programs

would be to further marginalize non-native speakers of

English in institutions of higher education

where the myth of linguistic homogeneity will likely

continue to inform the curriculum as well

as many teachers’ attitude toward language differences.

Instead, composition teachers need to

resist the popular conclusion that follows the policy of

containment—that the college composi

tion classroom can be a monolingual space. To work

effectively with the student population in the

twenty-fi rst century, all composition teachers need to

reimagine the composition classroom as the

multilingual space that it is, where the presence of

language differences is the default.

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Reading BETWEEN MODES: ASSESSING STUDENT NEW MEDIA

COMPOSITIONS Madeleine Sorapure

The Problem of Assessment If we agree that computers can

challenge and thus change not only pedagogies but also
writing and reading processes, then it follows that these
changes necessitate a transition from assessment practices
based in theories about print literacy to assessment
practices based in computer-assisted composition theory.
Pamela Takayoshi, “The shape of electronic writing” (1996)
We attribute the gap between the quality of our online
assignments and our ability to assess them largely to the
mismatch between our assessment criteria and digital
environments. Meredith Zoetewey & Julie Staggers, “Beyond
‘current-traditional’ design” (2003) …we seem comfortable
with intertextual composing [in which print and digital
literacies overlap], even with the composed products. But
we seem decidedly discomforted when it comes time to
assess such processes and products. Kathleen Yancey,
“Looking for sources of coherence in a fragmented world”
(2004)

In three of the very few articles to focus on the

assessment of writing in new media, the authors—

Pamela Takayoshi, Meredith Zoetewey and Julie Staggers, and

Kathleen Yancey—ask how the strat

egies and criteria that we use to assess students’ print

writing apply to our assessment of their

digital writing. How do we evaluate the coherence of a

hypertextual essay, for example, or the

clarity of a visual argument? Or do familiar assessment

criteria such as coherence and clarity need
to be substantially revised or even rejected when we are
evaluating work in new media? In all three articles, we see
something of a balancing act between old and new, as the
authors

detail suggestions for adapting current approaches and

inventing new ones to help us assess writ

ing in new media. For instance, Zoetewey and Staggers

(2003) provided a sample rubric with

familiar categories (e.g., narrative structure, point of

view) containing new questions designed to

assess the visual and hypertextual elements of a Web-based

personal writing assignment. Yancey

(2004) focused on how the specifi c criterion of coherence

shifts as we move from print to digital

compositions. On the one hand, we need to attend to the

differences between digital and print compositions

in order to be able to see accurately and respond

effectively to the kind of work our students

create in new media. Yancey warned against using the

“frameworks and processes of one medium

to assign value and to interpret work in a different

medium” (90) because by doing so we lose the

chance to see new values emerging in the new medium. On the

other hand, we need to work from

what we know and to see computers as, in Takayoshi’s (1996)

words, “new lenses through which

to look at the central issues of writing instruction”

(247). My own suggestion in this webtext involves another
adaptation of familiar practices to the new

situation of student new media production. Rather than

assessing individual modes in a multimodal

work, I suggest an assessment strategy that focuses on the

effectiveness with which modes such as

image, text, and sound are brought together or, literally,

composed. Moreover, I propose that we
draw on our familiarity with rhetorical tropes—and specifi
cally with the tropes of metaphor and

metonymy—to provide us with a language with which to talk

to our students about the effective

ness of their work. Although few publications have focused

on the assessment of students’ new media composi

tions, there may be something of a turn toward assessment

evident in Yancey’s (2004) recent

article on this subject in Computers and Composition as

well as in some of the discussions of assess

ment at the 2005 Computers and Writing conference. Prior to

the conference, Victoria Szabo and

Jeremy Sabol of Stanford University conducted a half-day

workshop on “Design and Assessment of

Digital Media Assignments”

(http://cw2005.stanford.edu/workshopshtm.htm). In
presentations at the conference, Marcia Hansen discussed
“good, better, and best” assign

ments and assessment strategies for weblogs; Krista Homicz

Millar presented results from an

empirical study of how teachers and students assessed the

effectiveness of new media arguments;

Anthony Ellerston described an eportfolio assessment system

in use at Iowa State that allows stu

dents to display their work in new media. Even in this

small sampling, we can see the lively diversity

of approaches that discussions of assessment elicit. I

think that underlying this interest in assessment is the
recognition of its importance in con

necting new media assignments to broader curricular goals.

As with print assignments, when we

grade students’ work we are assessing their success in

achieving goals that we value and that, ide

ally, are made explicit to our students. How we evaluate

and grade student work is—or should

be—connected to everything else in the course, from the

assignments themselves to the readings,

the class activities, and the software we use. Discussions

of new media assessment should therefore help us articulate
why new media mat

ters and should help us in establishing, for ourselves and

for our students, the key continuities and

differences between composing in print and composing in new

media. Examining how student work in new media is currently
assessed, it is clear that we are at a tran

sitional stage in the process of incorporating new media

into our composition courses. As Yancey

(2004) noted, we give multimodal assignments but often draw

on what we are far more familiar

with—that is, print—to assess student work. For instance, a

common assessment strategy is to ask students to write an
essay or a report to

accompany a new media project—and to then derive the grade

for the project wholly or mostly

from the print part of the assignment. To be sure, pairing

a paper with a new media composition

is a useful strategy: it gives students a clear comparison

between these modes and media, and it

gives teachers insight into students’ composing processes.

However, this practice can also allow

us to avoid assessing the new media work on its own, and in

general it refl ects an uneasiness with

assessing something other than a written text. Another

common strategy is to draw on rules and models developed
other areas (most notably,

graphic design) to determine how to teach and assess

specifi c features of new media production.

But as Zoetewey and Staggers (2003) pointed out, “By

relying on the rules as indices of successful
execution of new media composition, we run the risk of
decontextualizing graphic design guidelines

from the theory that informs them. Even more problematic,

we run the risk of deprivileging rheto

ric” (145). While we should certainly consider

incorporating guidelines from other disciplines into

our assessment of new media, we should not expect these

guidelines to function as our only evalu

ative measures. Indeed, by defi ning our approaches to

assessment, compositionists can articulate

our own disciplinary perspectives on new media production.

Complicating discussions of new media assessment is the
fact that there are so many different

types of projects being assigned: websites, images,

image/text combinations, videos, audio projects,

Flash projects, and others. With each type, somewhat

different considerations come into play. A broadly
rhetorical approach can accommodate these differences—that
is, an approach that

focuses assessment on how effectively the project addresses

a specifi c audience to achieve a spe

cifi c purpose. The weakness of a broad rhetorical approach

is that it doesn’t in itself offer any

specifi c guidance or criteria for handling the multimodal

aspects of the composition. Moreover, assessment is very
much about context and needs to take into account the
particular

circumstances of the course, the students, and the teacher,

as well as the possibilities afforded by

the assignment, the modes, and the medium. Even if it were

possible, then, it would be unwise to

apply a set of assessment criteria to all types of

assignments at all places. The approach I suggest in this
webtext is, I hope, fl exible enough to be useful in a
variety of
contexts.

Looking between Modes We have defi ned multimodality as the

use of several semiotic modes in the design of a semiotic
product or event, together with the particular way in which
these modes are combined. Kress & Van Leeuwen (2001),
Multimodal discourse In using the term “new media texts,” I
mean to refer to texts created primarily in digital
environments, composed in multiple media (e.g., fi lm,
video, audio, among others), and designed for presentation
and exchange in digital venues. Cynthia Selfe (2004),
“Students who teach us” I offer a focused defi nition of
new media as texts that juxtapose semiotic modes in new and
aesthetically pleasing ways and, in doing so, break away
from print traditions so that written text is not the
primary rhetorical means. Cheryl Ball (2004), “Show, not
tell”

As the citations from Kress and van Leeuwen, Selfe, and

Ball make clear, composing in new media

usually involves bringing together multiple modes—text,

image, sound, animation, and/or video—

in order to convey a meaning or create an effect. The

question for assessment is how this bringing

together or composing of modes can be described and then

evaluated. Bringing together multiple modes in a single
composition is often a diffi cult task. After all, in

writing essays students have to worry only about working

with text, and this is challenging enough.

In new media compositions, students are being asked not

only to use several different individual

modes, but also to bring these modes together in space and

time. In essence, they are orchestrating

or directing these different resources. This focus on the

relations between modes in a multimodal composition fi ts
into Yancey’s

(2004) broader discussion of coherence in digital texts.

She noted that “Digital compositions

weave words and context and images: They are exercises in

ordered complexity—and complex in
some different ways than print precisely because they
include more kinds of threads” (95). Though

Yancey offered a broad heuristic for assessing digital

texts—one that includes the text’s multiple

arrangements, its reception, and the intent of its

author—the narrow question of the relations

between modes is, I believe, essential in understanding not

only how a multimedia text coheres but

also how it creates meaning. Focusing assessment on the

relations of modes might alleviate part of what Yancey
described

as the “discomfort” of assessment: that part that comes

from our sense that we are not the most

qualifi ed people on campus to judge the effectiveness of

the individual modes of image, audio, or

video in a multimodal composition. But I think that we are

indeed qualifi ed to look at the relations

between modes and to assess how effectively students have

combined different resources in their

compositions. Assessing how students design relations

between modes appeals to me on practical grounds

because it addresses of the two most common problems I’ve

seen in the new media compositions

my students have done. First, some students seem inclined

to match modes, so that, for instance,

a Flash project will have a song playing in the background

while on the screen the lyrics to the song

appear along with images depicting exactly what the lyrics

say. While some repetition across modes

may be useful in focusing attention or highlighting key

ideas, too much mode matching diminishes

the potential of multimedia composing by, in essence,

leveling the modes so that they each express

something more or less equivalent. Productive tension

between modes here is at a minimum. The opposite sort of
problem occurs when students include an element in a
project simply

because it looks good or because it is a cool effect,

despite the fact that the element adds noth

ing to the meaning of the project and bears little, if any,

relation to the other components of the

project. For instance, text may be put in motion in a Flash

animation for no reason other than that

it is possible to do so; the animation in this instance is

a distraction in reading the text rather than

an element that enhances or expands its meaning. Here the

potential of multimedia composing is

diminished because the different modes are brought together

more or less arbitrarily. In talking with my students about
their work, I warn against these extremes of pure
repetition or

pure arbitrariness, of course. But I also search for ways

to describe more positively the kinds of rela

tions that can apply between modes. Here the concepts of

metaphor and metonymy can be useful. Metaphor and metonymy,
broadly understood, can designate two primary ways in which
mean

ing emerges from the bringing together of modes in a

multimodal work. Metaphor designates a relation based on
substitution; in a multimodal work, one mode can

metaphorically represent or stand in for another, as when

an animation of a word dynamically

represents its meaning. It is a relation based on

similarity between elements in different modes. Metonymy
designates a relation based on combination; modes can be
metonymically related

when they are linked by an association, as when lines from

a poem are combined with a melody

from a song. It is a relation based on contiguity between

elements in different modes. Using metaphor and metonymy in
this way gives us a language for talking to students about
the

relations they are composing between modes and a way of

explaining where a multimodal project

is effective or weak. While we typically think of metaphor

and metonymy as verbal tropes, a broader understanding

of these terms can be derived from Roman Jakobson’s (1956)

infl uential essay, “Two Aspects of

Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances.” Jakobson

posited that two basic types of aphasia

correspond to impairments either in the faculty for

selection and substitution or in the faculty for

combination and contexture. Selection is equated with the

metaphoric use of language and combina

tion with the metonymic use of language. Further, Jakobson

argued that the metaphoric and met

onymic processes are not confi ned to language but occur in

other art forms such as painting and fi lm. Metaphor and
metonymy, in the broader sense proposed by Jakobson, name
two different

forces at work in the production of meaning. Metaphor

exploits similarity and substitution, while

metonymy exploits contiguity and association. Because

metaphor and metonymy designate rela

tions between two or more entities, they can be used to

describe the relations between modes.

Between Verbal and Visual Whoever controls the media—the

images—controls the culture. Allen Ginsberg

Students in my Winter 2004 “Writing in New Media” course

were asked to use Photoshop to cre

ate a collage that interpreted the previous quotation by

Allen Ginsberg. I present several student

projects here in order to demonstrate how the concepts of

metaphor and metonymy can be used

to describe and assess the relations between verbal and

visual modes. I should note that the assignment lends
itself to an assessment strategy focused on the relations

between modes since it explicitly asks students to work

back and forth across modes by creating

an image that interprets a text. Leading up to the collage

assignment were several shorter exercises that invited
students to

explore relations between text and image. First, students

added some text to a digital image of a

coastal scene that they had all downloaded. This exercise

allowed students to experiment with the

color, font, and placement of the text but also with the
creation of meaning(s) from juxtaposition

of text and image. The second exercise asked students to

create an image out of the text of a word;

in other words, the word itself functioned as the image,

and the visual qualities students gave to the

word/image were intended to convey the meaning of the word.

Feedback on these exercises was intended to help students
discover areas for exploration

between modes. They saw, I hope, that the modes should not
simply repeat each other. For exam

ple, adding the words “a coastal scene” to the image of a

coastal scene is less interesting than, for

instance, adding lines from a poem or statistics about

ocean pollution. The choices students made

in these exercises showed that meaning emerges in part from

the interplay of word and image. Comparing these collages,
it is possible to say that one of them is better than the
others, and

that as a writing teacher I can make that determination.

All of the collages are visually pleasing and

are well executed in Photoshop, so an assessment of them as

purely visual compositions would be

quite positive. But Gabe’s is clearly the most effective

multimodal composition, and this is because the relation

between the written mode and the visual mode is richer and
more productive than in the other

collages. In particular, as I explain, Gabe’s collage

activates both metaphor and metonymy to create

meaning whereas the other collages are weak in one or both

areas.

Student Work

Gabe Mann

In interpreting the fi rst part of the quotation—“Whoever

controls the media”—Gabe’s collage

points the fi nger at Bush and the White House. The collage
interprets the word “control” with the

image of Bush as a puppeteer, and this image elaborates on

and refi nes an understanding of “con

trol” by suggesting that the control in question has

certain qualities: for instance, that the entity

in control is behind the scenes and is completely

manipulative of characters who only seem to be

independent and to act on their own. This is a strong

metaphor, in which Bush-as-puppeteer stands in or
substitutes for the control

ling force to which Ginsberg’s words refer. The reference

to the “media” in Ginsberg’s quotation elicits a series of
metonymic connections.

Gabe personifi es the “media” in the images of Sean

Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh—

conservative TV and radio hosts who, the collage suggests,

are merely puppets of the Bush admin

istration. This is metonymic rather than metaphoric because

the three commentators are part of

the larger group of conservative media (and perhaps all

media) that Bush manipulates. The fact that Bush is holding
crucifi xes to join together the puppet strings evokes
another met

onymic association, bringing the particular manipulations

of religion into this dynamic. Finally, the background
images are metonymically related to the “images” mentioned
in Gins

berg’s quotation; photographs taken from the war in

Afghanistan and the collapse of the World

Trade Center are among the many images that, the collage
suggests, are controlled by Bush and

the conservative media. By activating both metaphorical and

metonymic relations between the visual and verbal modes

in this collage, Gabe creates a work rich in meaning and

allusion. Through a strong central meta

phor, Gabe’s collage offers a straightforward

interpretation of Ginsberg’s quotation, and through

the metonymic associations of media and images, the

interpretation gains a certain breadth.

Stacy Johnson

In Stacy’s collage, Ginsberg’s quotation fi gures

prominently, but there is much less of a connection

between the images and the text here than there is in

Gabe’s collage. Most notably, Stacy’s collage

doesn’t comment on or interpret what “control” means or who

is in control. Although several

elements in the collage interact, there is no sense that

one character or element in the collage

controls another. In addition, there is no indication of

the repercussions of this control or of the

ways in which control of the media effectively controls the

culture. Stacy’s collage is highly metonymic; it activates
a series of associations between pop culture

icons (Madonna, Ben Affl eck, Jennifer Lopez), a

television, a small child, and a psychedelic 1960’s

background pattern. These associations are evocative but

also quite diffi cult to interpret, in part

because the collage lacks a controlling metaphor. In

particular, it is diffi cult to identify how text

and image are related since there seem to be no direct,

metaphorical substitutions for any of the

key terms in the quotation— “control,” “media,”

“images”—but rather just a series of associations

around these terms.

Kelley Kaufmann

Unlike Gabe and Stacy, Kelley focuses her collage almost

exclusively on the second part of the quo

tation: “controls the culture.” Kelley’s collage shows a TV

with an image of Britney Spears smoking,

and then a magazine with a model smoking on the back, and

fi nally the girl reading the magazine is

smoking. There is a clear cause and effect being suggested

here. We can say that Kelley’s collage is highly
metaphorical. It offers a series of direct substitutions:

Britney smokes, the model smokes, the reader smokes. These

three elements are made equivalent,

and taken together they provide a visual representation of

the word “control.” The collage lacks

the kind of broader metonymic associations that would

establish context or suggest the implica

tions of these metaphoric substitutions.

Behzad Khorsand

Like Kelley’s collage, this one by Behzad provides a fairly

simplistic interpretation of the quota

tion. MTV has “caught” the world and holds the world on a
fi shhook. For the fi rst part of the

quotation—“Whoever controls the media”—the collage points

to MTV, and perhaps by extension
to the kind of media that MTV stands for. But the
characteristics of that control are not explained visually,
nor are its consequences.

Gabe’s puppet show image—with the puppeteer and puppets

clearly identifi ed—offers a richer

interpretation of the way the word “control” is used in the

quotation than does Behzad’s more

vague world-on-a-fi shhook image. In addition to a vague

central metaphor, Behzad’s collage offers relatively weak
metonymic asso

ciations. The background of the image is a black outer

space and so it provides no clues as to the

context in which MTV operates or the images it controls.

Assessment of this collage in terms of

metaphor and metonymy, then, would highlight the relatively

weak and simplistic relations between

the visual and verbal modes.

Modes and Models The alternative predominance of one or the

other of these two processes [of metaphor and metonymy] is
by no means confi ned to verbal art. The same oscillation
occurs in sign systems other than language. Roman Jakobson
(1956), “Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic
Disturbances”

In my “Writing in New Media” course, a multimodal project

in Flash follows the static verbal/visual

assignments discussed in the “between verbal and visual”

section of this webtext. Ideally students

will have had experience and success in combining text and

image, and so will be better prepared

to bring additional modes into a composition. In this

section, I discuss a student project—“Starry Night” by
Casey Curtis—that adds sound

and motion into the mix. I also briefl y discuss two

“professional” new media projects—both pub

lished at Poems That Go (http://www.poemsthatgo.com)—that

can serve as models for students
as they create their compositions and that establish clear
and rich relations between modes.

Casey Curtis, “Starry Night”

(starrynite.swf)

Casey Curtis’s project, “Starry Night,” brings together

word, image, and sound in a way that is

mostly metonymic; however, elements from the project,

particularly the animation, operate meta

phorically and help give the project coherence. “Starry

Night” combines the lyrics from Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine
Man,” paintings by Vin

cent Van Gogh, and the jazz piece “In a Sentimental Mood”
by Duke Ellington and John Coltrane.

These three diverse elements are composed in an evocative

way and create associations through

their juxtaposition. It is at fi rst a bit disconcerting to

see the lyrics of one song on the screen as another song
plays

in the background; adding to the oddness is the visual

experience of seeing very famous paintings

fading in and out on the screen with words superimposed on

them. The three basic elements of

word, image, and sound all come from very well known
sources. Casey’s project takes these ele

ments out of their context—for instance, presenting the

lyrics of the song without its melody—

and puts them in a new context with new associations. In

addition to the metonymic associations generated by the
word, image, and sound combina

tions, other elements of the project use more of a

metaphoric relation between modes. For instance, the title
“Starry Night” appears at fi rst on the screen as small
yellow dots; the

dots converge to form the words of the title, and then they
dissolve again into the small yellow dots

before disappearing entirely. Against a dark blue

background, this animation has the effect of mak

ing the title seem composed of twinkling stars; here the

animation repeats or visually represents

the words of the title. Other text animations in the

project also evoke the meaning of the text being animated.
For

instance, the words “but still not sleeping” throb, and the
words “my weariness amazes me” gradu

ally stretch out across the screen. These animations aren’t

exact replications of the meanings of the

words, since we don’t directly associate throbbing with

sleepiness or stretching with weariness. In

these cases, the animations expand on the meanings of the

words they represent. There are also metaphoric relations
between text and image in some scenes, bringing Dylan’s

words and Van Gogh’s images more closely together. For

instance, the words “take me, yes, to

dance beneath the diamond sky / silhouetted by the sea”

appear against a backdrop of VanGogh’s

painting “Starry Night Over the Rhone,” which shows lights

refl ecting on the water. In her report that accompanied
this project, Casey wrote that she wanted to “create an
experi

ence for the audience”: “I wanted the combination [of text,

image, and sound] to give the audience

the impression of being lonely and in a daze.” Placing well

known text, images, and sounds together

in a new context evokes new connections between these

elements, creating something like an

environment of associations that the audience can

experience. The associative logic of metonymy is
appropriate here. However, without the metaphoric reso

nances and substitutions that offer connections between

elements at various points in the project,

the different modes might seem too disconnected and the

associations too loose or random.

Mitchell Kimbrough, “Sky”

(http://www.poemsthatgo.com/gallery/summer2002/sky/launch.htm)

“Sky,” by Mitchell Kimbrough, brings together the words of

a poem he wrote (entitled “Sky”) with

Norah Jones’s song “Don’t Know Why.” Two animated images

make up the visual component of

the project: fi rst, a forest scene as evening turns to

night, and second, a fl ower that grows and then

dies. In addition, the words of the poem are animated,

appearing and disappearing from the screen. The modes in
this project are related to each other mostly in a
metaphorical way. That is, the

song and the animated images metaphorically represent the

poem, substituting for elements of the

poem by conveying its meaning in terms and with techniques

specifi c to each mode. The poem seems to be about an
opportunity that the speaker failed to take up. Although it
is

written in fragments of sentences, the verbs—“didn’t,”

“might have,” “could’ve,” “didn’t,” “won’t,”

“might have”—all express negation and point to the

possibility of something that ultimately didn’t

occur. The repetition of the words “little,” “almost,” and

“next time” suggest that this missed

opportunity isn’t tragic but is more like something upon

which the speaker muses, perhaps with

just a bit of longing or regret. The images and sound point

to some of the same meanings as the poem does. Visually,
the two

animated images of “Sky” convey a mild sense of loss. In

the animated images of nightfall and in a
fl ower’s growth and death we see the passage of time and
the end of something, but in a way that

is natural, inevitable, perhaps sad but not tragic. The use

of these two images evokes the cycles

of nature, and this represents or stands in for phrases in

the poem like “next time” and “always

tomorrow though.” The audio component of “Sky” similarly

represents some elements of the poem and the images.

The lyrics and melody of Norah Jones’s song suggest a mild,

somewhat bewildered sense of melan

choly and regret. There is a sense of longing for something

that might have been, but also a certain

acceptance conveyed both by the lyrics and by the smooth

and calm style of the song. In “Sky,” then, all three modes
work toward expressing more or less the same meaning; they

substitute or stand-in for each other, though in a way that

isn’t simple repetition. The text, sound,

and images each add their own part to the meaning, drawing
of course on the resources of each

mode.

Ingrid Ankerson, “Murmuring Insects”

(http://www.poemsthatgo.com/gallery/fall2001/murmuring/launch.htm)

“Murmuring Insects,” by Ingrid Ankerson, was published at

Poems That Go, shortly after 9/11. The

text in the project comes from a poem entitled “Murmuring

Insects,” written by Otagaki Rengetsu,

an 18th century Japanese poet. There are several still

images (the twin towers of the World Trade

Center after having been hit by airplanes, the exhaust

trails of an airplane, a photograph of an eye)

and several animated images (geese fl ying, words forming

into a tear which then becomes a cres

cent moon). Finally, the audio element of the project

includes sound clips of crickets chirping and a

violin playing, along with sound clips taken from

broadcasts on or shortly after 9/11. As Ankerson (2001)
commented in her brief description of the project at
Rhizome.org, “This

piece uses Rengetsu’s language combined with simple imagery

in the spirit of her words, but is

starkly contrasted with the media sound bytes the American

nation would hear for days in a row”

following the events of 9/11. In the terms I’ve been using

here, the text and images metaphorically substitute for
each other,

whereas the sound (the sound clips related to 9/11, though

not the crickets or violin sound clips)

introduces a metonymic element. For the most part, the

images and text in “Murmuring Insects” express a similar
meaning. For

instance, in the “sky” scene, the animation of geese fl

ying repeats a phrase in the poem (“fl ocks of

departing geese”). In the water scene, the words “tears

like dew / well up in my eyes” are animated

so as to appear to well up and then drop from the eye of

the photograph in the background. But the sounds in
“Murmuring Insects” bring a new dimension to the project
and interact dif

ferently with the images and the text. In fact, audio is

the mode that brings the events of 9/11 most

clearly into the body of the project and places this

reference next to the images and words. This is

a metonymic relation because the sounds are not meant to

translate or substitute for the words or

images, but rather to extend their meaning by

association—that is, to bring the words and images

voiceovers that are part of the sound clips introduce the

terror and fear and great sorrow of 9/11.
This juxtaposition may, as Cheryl Ball (under review) noted
in her insightful interpretation of “Mur

muring Insects,” allow readers to memorialize 9/11 in a

“more productive and peaceful way than

simply by reacting with fear.” As I have suggested, looking

at the relations between modes helps us focus assessment on

a unique and challenging element of multimodal composing.

Metaphor and metonymy provide a

language with which to talk to our students about how the

different modes in their projects come

together to make meaning. This approach certainly doesn’t

offer a quantitative assessment measure, and it doesn’t
address

the technical or aesthetic challenges of new media

composition. Rather, the approach I have

described here is one element—though I believe an essential

element—in our assessment of stu

dent work in new media.

Citations

Text

Ankerson, Ingrid. (2001). Introduction to “Murmuring

insects.” Available: http://www.rhizome.com/object.
rhiz?2865.

Ball, Cheryl E. (under review). Not just visual: Reading

“Murmuring insects” as a new media text. Computers and
Composition [Special issue: Multimedia composition].

Ball, Cheryl E. (2004). Show, not tell: The value of new

media scholarship. Computers and Composition, 21 (4),
403–425.

Kress, Gunther & Van Leeuwen, Theo. (2001). Multimodal

discourse: The modes and media of contemporary
communication. London: Arnold.

Jakobson, Roman. (1956). Two aspects of language and two

types of aphasic disturbances. In Jakobson, Roman & Halle,
Morris, Fundamentals of language (115–133). The Hague:
Mouton.

Selfe, Cindy. (2004). Students who teach us. In Wysocki,

Anne et. al. (Eds.), Writing new media (pp. 43–66). Logan,
UT: Utah State University Press.

Takayoshi, Pamela (1996). The shape of electronic writing:

Evaluating and assessing computer-assisted writing
processes and products. Computers and Composition, 13 (2),
245–257.

Yancey, Kathleen Blake. (2004). Looking for sources of

coherence in a fragmented world: Notes toward a new
assessment design. Computers and Composition, 21 (1) ,
89–102.

Zoetewey, Meredith W. & Staggers, Julie. (2003). Beyond

“current-traditional” design: Assessing rhetoric in new
media. Issues in Writing, 13, 133–157.

Image

Photograph of Stanford’s Memorial Court and the “Burghers

of Calais” sculptures by Bipin Rajendran. Used

with permission.

Audio

Sounds from The Freesound Project:

http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/.

Design & Code

Design concept from The ABC: http://www.the-abc.org/. Code

help from ActionScript.org: http://action

script.org.

Thanks

I benefi tted greatly from the feedback offered by the

Kairos editorial team. Many thanks to Cheryl Ball, Beth

Hewett, Leah Cassorla, and the two anonymous Editorial

Board reviewers. Their insightful comments helped

me to improve substantially on the earlier version of this

webtext. And many thanks also to Bob Samuels, who gave me
help and support at all stages of this project.
Reprinted from Madeleine Sorapure. “Between Modes:
Assessing Student New Media Compositions.” Kai

ros. Vol. 10, No. 2, Winter 2006. Reprinted by permission

of the author.