Stages of Writing Process - Essay Example

The Writing Process The task of teaching at any age to write can be arduous, especially without the proper understanding of the stages of writing and different professional models that explain writing theory and instruction. The Writing Process includes the phases of planning, translation and reviewing. Each phase is crucial for the author to efficiently communicate his or her ideas from the mind to the written page for us all to see. In addition, writing involves several cognitive processes for the translation to be effective into written form. It is important for students to go through these processes for writing to be done effectively. This essay will explain the above processes and will draw from the Flower and Hayes model of writing to further examine the processes. Furthermore, this essay will attempt to discuss the instructional implications of the processes as they relate to teaching students the writing process. The first, most important step in the writing process for a writer is the complex step of planning out the written work so that it is logical and easy for the reader to understand the ideas or thoughts being presented. It has been proven that the planning step in the writing process is very essential in efficient writing. According to the Flower and Hayes model, the process of planning can be divided into three major sub-sections that include the author setting goals, organizing the thoughts in a clear order, and generating the written material (Bruning, Schraw, Norby & Ronning, 2003). Previous research has shown that students that take the time to plan out their work produce much better material that is both efficient and easier to follow for the reader because of its organization. Before the writer can begin to put words on a paper, he or she should take the time to think about the goals that they would like to accomplish and how to achieve the goals. Goal setting is a strategy that help the writer regular his or her own written work in the planning stage of the writing process. By setting goals, writers will be able to better prepare for the writing task and improve any previously work because this process can also be achieved during the reviewing stage of the writing process (Bruning et. al., 2003). The goals and the degree of their complexity can vary. The goals can be anything that the writer wants to accomplish within the writing of their work, or at times the goals may be assigned to the writer by the teacher. In either case, it is usually best for the writer to take time to write out the goals clearly on paper so that they have a general format to follow throughout the writing of their work. Goals can greatly change throughout the writing process as a writer begins to learn more about their work and prioritize the things they wish to accomplish through their writing. Flower and Hayes argued that all the other processes of writing are managed by the writer’s high, middle, and low-level goals. The researchers believe that good writers generate easily achievable mid-level goals, while poor writers can get caught up in the top and low-level goals that are much more difficult to achieve and make it hard for the writer to advance through the writing process (MacKay, par. 6). This makes it very important for the instructor to explain the concept of developing clear, achievable goals that are meant to keep the writer on track to writing a clearly organized piece of work that has a purpose. In essence, it can be argued that the goals can also be the motivation behind the author writing the work in the first place. As the goals are being established, the writer continues through the planning process into generating ideas and content that can be organized and written into the work. This stage of the planning process ultimately determines the actual content of the writing. When the writer is generating the ideas, he or she can draw from many different sources for the actual material that is to be written. For instance, the generation of ideas can come from the writer’s long term memory (Bruning et. al., 2003). For instance, any initial knowledge the writer has on the particular topic from previous life experiences to information they have studied in a text or classroom, would be considered a source for generating ideas. The writer can also draw from various external sources to help with generating ideas. This can come from resources such as academic journals, books, newspaper and even previous speeches given by professionals that are viewed as experts on the topic area. Teachers can help writers generate ideas in the development of ideas through the external environment. For example, in an essay about world hunger and methods to solve it, educators can encourage note-taking during classes which are relevant to the task, this can help writers generate ideas as information can be referred back to when needed. Educators can also expose writers to different types of information related to the topic, such as from the perspective of the government, large multinational companies, non-profit organizations, locals etc. As the writer finishes setting goals and generating ideas, Flower and Hayes state that the next stage in the planning process is organizing the information in a clear and logical order. Organizing the information is a typical procedure that takes a little bit of thought to make the outline of the work clear enough for the reader to be able to follow. As we learned in class, the ability to organize ideas into a coherent structure often requires the writer to develop a clear outline of the ideas. The outline can assist the writer in following a clear line of thought and ensuring that the work flows as smoothly as possible. As previously explained, a written work that neglects this stage of the planning process does not have a clear line of thought and can appear as an illogical jumble of words on paper. However, a clearly organized work is ready to begin the next step in the writing process, which involves translating the ideas from their planned state into the written work. While the model proposed by Flower and Hayes is very well explained, not every scholar of their time was in favor of their ideas. Following the published research of Flower and Hayes, Robert Zoellner argued that Flower and Hayes were mistaken in believing that the writing process was a cognitive experience and involved problem-solving thought in order to perform. Furthermore, he argued that their research should be rejected because the model is not useful in conducting research, because it defied observation; and “treating writing as a type of thinking encourages a simplistic view of signification” (Hatch, 1991). While Zoellner was not in favor of combining multiple disciplines toward the goal of understanding the writing process, simple logic can tell us that the Flower and Hayes model has merit. It is extremely important for a writer to plan his or her writing during the writing process so that the goals of the writer can be met, the ideas can be organized, and the translation and reviewing can be efficient as well. Taking the thinking out of the writing process would be similar to taking the thinking out of this paper, which would result in no clear definition of ideas and organization, leading the reader faced with the task of traveling through a disorganized cluster of words. Following the next stage in the writing process involves translating the organized ideas into the written format that the reader will be able to view. As we learned in class translating involves carrying out the written plan by actually generating the written text. It is clear that this stage in the writing process works interactively with the planning stage because without one, you cannot have the other. Also in class, we discussed that research makes three important points on the problems associated with the translation process. First of all, the writer is constrained by many factors. Nystrand identified that there are several constraints that can interfere with the translation process, namely graphic, syntactic, semantic, textual and contextual constraint (Idol L., Jones B., North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (U.S.), 1991). Next, we also learned that the mechanics of proper sentence structure can overload the writer’s attention capacity and will actually take away from the quality of the written work and the writer’s ability to follow high-level planning and organization. These problems are important to understand so that the teacher can help guide the writer through the writing process and achieve most of his or her written goals. Frustration can lead to a young writer giving up on the written work or submitting a work that is far below the writer’s capability due to the restraints of translation. The ability to move beyond these restraints and persevering through to the final stage of the writing process can be the moment that defines the writer as a good writer or a poor writer. The final stage of the writing process involves reviewing the actual written work to ensure that the goals set forth have been followed in an organized format and is logical for the reader to follow. The actual review of the written work can take place by the writer himself or from the assistance of peer-review or by review of the educator. Through the reviewing process, it is important to look for clarity of thought throughout the work, proper sentence structure, and eliminating the presence of grammar and spelling mistakes within the work that can distract the reader from the content in the work. In a recent lecture, we learned that research makes three important points on the reviewing stage of the writing process. First of all, most writers often do not review what they have written. When writers are encouraged to review, they fail to detect most of the errors or they fail to correct them properly. Finally, older and more experienced writers detect and actually correct more errors, use more sophisticated review strategies on their written work, and engage in more review than younger or less-skilled writers. For these reasons, it is important that the educator teach students to review their own work, but also to have someone else assist the writer in the review process so that errors can be found and then corrected. It should be the responsibility of the writer and the educator to understand the importance of the reviewing stage of the writing process and taking the errors that are found and actually applying them to the final work. When the teacher understands the complexity of the writing process and the number of stages within it, the teacher must then take this knowledge and implement it into the classroom. According to Alice Trupe (2001), “teaching the writing process requires a clear sense of what the writing process is; a clear sense of when and how much to intervene in the student writers process; and a repertoire of practices to use to intervene for specific needs in working with individual students” (par. 1). For instance, the teacher should explain to the students that planning can be a rather lengthy, time-consuming process because of the need to set goals, generate ideas and organize them into a logical order. With the need of goal setting, generation and organization of ideas, the whole planning process takes up a lot of time. As a result, educators should encourage that the planning process is started early in order to ensure that there is a reasonable about of time available for the actual translation of writing and reviewing stages. In addition to the planning stage, the instructor must be able to teach sentence structure and the ability to write the organized ideas into a piece of work. Most young writers of all ages, do not have the ability to be told to plan and then to begin writing the next version of Shakespeare. Perfecting the writer’s ability takes time and practice as well as the use of the final stage of the writing process, review. Another take on the reviewing stage of the process comes from Claudia Keh (1990), where she explains that “feedback is the drive which steers the writer through the process of writing on to the product. She continues to describe three types of options for feedback that are called peer feedback, conferencing, and written comments (p. 294). Each educator is responsible for knowing these different concepts within the writing process and being able to adequately apply them to the instruction of their classroom and students. An interesting article written by Donald Murray (Teach Writing as a Process), described a trend among educators to take great written works from previous students and writers like Shakespeare or Kant, and teaching them to the students as a writing product. Therefore, the student produces a written product similar in form, tone, and material to that of what the educator has given them to read (p. 1). For this reason, it is important the educators understand the crucial need to teach the writing process as exactly what it is, a process, instead of the recycling of old ideas and concepts onto a new piece of paper with a different author’s name on it. Bibliography Berlin, James. "Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class." College English 50.5 (1988): 477-94. JSTOR. Web. 18 Sept. 2009. . Bruning, R. H., Schraw, G.J., Norby, M.M., & Ronning, R.R. (2003). Chapter 9: Classroom Contexts for Cognitive Growth in Cognitive Psychology and Instruction . New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall. Faigley, Lester. "Competing Theories of Process: A Critique and a Proposal." College English 48.6 (1986): 527-42. JSTOR. Web. 18 Sept. 2009. . Gillespie, Marilyn K. "Using Research on Writing." Focus on Basics: Connecting Research & Practice 3.D (1999). NCSALL: Using Research on Writing. National Center for the Study of Learning and Adult Literacy. Web. 19 Sept. 2009. . Hatch, Gary. "Reviving the Rodential Model for Composition: Robert Zoellners Alternative to Flower and Hayes." Speech. Annual Meeting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication. Boston, MA. 21-23 Mar. 1991. ERIC. Web. 19 Sept. 2009. . Keh, Claudia L. "Feedback in the writing process: a model and methods for implementation." ELT Journal 44.4 (1990): 294-304. MacKay, Leigh. "A Summary of Flower and Hayes". LDM Communications: Writing and Editing. 18 Sept. 2009 . Murray, Donald. "Teach Writing as a Process Not Product." Hawaii.edu. University of Hawaii. Web. 19 Sept. 2009. . Trupe, Alice L. "The Writing Process." Teaching Writing: The Writing Process. Bridgewater College, 7 Sept. 2001. Web. 19 Sept. 2009. . Read More