About Writing

Note: unless otherwise noted, the ideas summarized here have been drawn from Hyland, 2003, Second Language Writing.

Writing is a complex process that can be approached through different orientations (or, more often, a combination of different orientations):

Focus on LANGUAGE STRUCTURES (STRUCTURALIST approach)

  • Writing as product - coherent arrangement of words, clauses and sentences, structured according to a system of rules
  • Accuracy and clear exposition are considered the main criteria of good writing
  • Learning to write mainly involves
    • Learning linguistic knowledge, vocabulary choices, syntactic patterns and cohesive devices, i.e. grammar
    • Imitating and manipulating models provided by the teacher
    • A four stage process
      • Familiarization - learners are taught grammar and vocabulary
      • Controlled writing - learners manipulate fixed patterns
      • Guided writing - learners imitate model texts
      • Free writing - learners use the patterns they have developed to write a composition
  • Teaching writing mainly involves identifying and correcting problems in students' control of the language system

Focus on TEXT FUNCTIONS (FUNCTIONAL approach)

  • Writing as product - particular language forms perform certain communicative functions
  • Ability to reproduce particular patterns to match communicative functions is the main criteria of good writing
  • Learning to write mainly involves
    • Learning to produce connected sentences according to prescribed formulas (e.g. narration, description, exposition, etc)
    • Form-focused tasks that reinforce model writing patterns
    • Three stage process
      • Comprehension checks on a model text
      • Exercises that draw attention to language used to express particular functions
      • Exercises that develop students' abilities to use language forms
    • Sample activities:
      • reordering sentences in scrambled paragraphs
      • selecting appropriate sentences to complete gapped paragraphs
      • writing paragraphs from provided information

Focus on CREATIVE EXPRESSION (EXPRESSIVIST approach)

  • Writing as process - a creative act of self-discovery, generating awareness of writer's social position and literate possibilities (Friere, 1974); writing is a way of sharing personal meaning
  • Freshness, spontaneity, having an individual voice and independent views on topics are main criteria of good writing
  • Learning to write mainly involves
    • Tasks organized around students' personal experiences and opinions
    • Pre-writing tasks (e.g journal writing and parallel texts) that stimulate ideas
    • Exercises that focus on style, wordiness, cliches, active vs passive voice
  • Teaching to write involves
    • Providing space for students to make their own meanings within a positive and cooperative environment
    • Avoidance of models, suggested responses to topics, imposition of views
    • Responding to students' ideas as a central means to initiate and guide ideas (rather than focus on formal errors [Murray, 1985])
    • Encouraging students to be creative and to take chances through free writing
  • Drawbacks
    • Assumes that all writers have similar innate creative potential and that they can express themselves if their originality and spontaneity are allowed to flourish
    • Needs teachers to have experience and insight in the writing process
    • Neglects cultural backgrounds of learners
    • Neglects purposes of communication in the real world

Focus on COMPOSING PROCESSES (COGNITIVIST approach)

  • Writing as a cognitive process - emphasis on developing students' abilities to plan, define rhetorical problems, and to propose and evaluate solutions
  • main criteria of good writing
  • Learning to write involves
    • Planning-writing-reviewing framework (Flower and Hayes, 1981)
    • A process with recursive, interactive, potential simultaneous stages (at any stage, the writer can jump backward or forward to any stage)
      • Selection of topic
      • Pre-writing (e.g. brainstorming, data collection, note-taking, outlining)
      • Composing
      • Response to draft (by teachers/peers)
      • Revising
      • Response to revisions (by teachers/ peers)
      • Proofreading and editing (May lead back to COMPOSING)
      • Evaluation (by teacher - evaluates progress over the process)
      • Publishing
      • Follow-up tasks to address weaknesses
    • Skilled vs novice writers (Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1987)
      • Novice writers: Knowledge-telling
        • Plan less often and less extensively
        • Have limited goals
        • Mainly concerned with generating content
      • Skilled writers: Knowledge-transforming
        • Use writing task to analyze problems
        • Reflect on writing task
        • Set goals to actively rework thoughts to change both their text and ideas
    • A variety of cognitvely challenging tasks are needed to help learners develop their skills
    • Sample activities
      • Student-teacher conferences
      • Problem-based assignments
      • Journal writing
      • Group discussions
      • Portfolio assessments
  • Teaching writing involves
    • Guiding students through the writing process to help the develop metacognitive awareness of the strategies they can use when writing
    • Providing feedback so that students can revise their writing, transforming both content and expression
    • Avoiding emphasis on form to help students develop strategies for generating, drafting and refining ideas (surface corrections are delayed until the final editing)
  • Drawbacks
    • Overemphasis on the cognitive relationship between the writer and the writer's internal world
    • Forces outside the individual that help guide the writer to define problems, frame solutions and shape the text also need to be considered
    • Lack of clear guidelines on how to construct different kinds of texts

Focus on GENRE (SOCIOLINGUISTIC approach) [Rose and Martin, 2012]

  • Writing as a social process - genre is a "staged goal-oriented social process" and genre pedagogy grew out of systemic functional linguistic theory (Halliday, 1994), which introduces concepts for understanding how language works in social life:
    • Language has two functions: interpersonal (to interact with others), and ideational (to represent our experiences to others)
    • Language is organized at three levels: text (discourse), clause (grammar), word (graphology and phonology)
    • Language is used across three dimensions of social context: TENOR of the relationship (who is involved), FIELD of experience (what they are talking or writing about), MODE of communication (speaking or writing)
    • Language is comprised of SYSTEMS, sets of options that speakers and writers select from as a text unfolds
  • Ability to participate as main criteria of good writing
  • Learning to write involves
    • developing control of and a critical orientation to texts and genres
    • a three stage process (a cycle which can be entered at different points and re-cycled depending on learners' needs):
      • DECONSTRUCTION, where learners analyze ...
        • the CONTEXT OF CULTURE: What is the social purpose of this genre? Who uses it? Why?
        • the CONTEXT OF SITUATION: What is the register (i.e. field, tenor, mode)?
        • the TEXT: What are the functions of the stages? What are some of the language features? How do we know what the text is about? What is the relationship between the writer and the reader?
      • JOINT CONSTRUCTION, where learners
        • PREPARE to write by building up FIELD information through research, and using GUIDELINE QUESTIONS to scaffold their reading, viewing and listening; and
        • CONSTRUCT a text collaboratively under a teacher's guidance
      • INDEPENDENT CONSTRUCTION, where learners indivividually ...
        • PREPARE
        • DRAFT
        • CONSULT teachers and peers
        • EDIT
        • EVALUATE
  • Teaching writing involves
    • DIALOGUE, in which teachers prepare learners for tasks and follow up with elaborations
    • striking a balance between active teaching and facilitating learning
    • leading discussions about language use in real social settings
    • responding to student work
    • organising structures and activities that allow learners to collaborate
  • Drawbacks
    • Requires considerable investment of time and effort in acquiring an understanding of systemic functional linguistics
    • Requires clear alignment between teaching approach and syllabus

Additional notes on writing to demonstrate learning

  • The Lit essay. The “literature essay” is a genre, a “staged, goal-oriented, social process” (Rose & Martin, 2012); it may be characterized as an exposition whose purpose is to argue for a point of view, with a thesis-argument-reiteration structure. Awareness of this structure is shared among Literature teachers and students, who are an example of discourse communities, “groups that have goals or purposes, and use communication to achieve these goals” (Swales, 1990)