Psych 303
Goldman, Spring 2002
Notes for Class 2/13/02

The Writing Process
        Reading Assignment in SWM, pp. 14-30.
Lays out brief sketches of elements of the writing process.

Planning (Generating and Organizing Ideas; Setting Goals for the piece)
    Generating: Identifying Your Message
            Selecting a topic
            Narrowing a topic
            Finding a thesis
    Organizing the Content
            Identifying what you want to say to support the thesis (content) – what evidence to use; order in which to present it.
    Goal Setting: Defining your audience – who are you writing for and what will be effective ways to communicate with them.

Drafting (Translating the Plan into actual Written Text)
Writing a first draft

Revising successive drafts (fixing content) Reviewing the text – reading and editing.
    Revising thinking - Reorganizing the ideas as the process of translating plan into text actually changes the ideas and your conception of what you want to say.
    Editing the writing (fixing sentence structure, spelling, punctuation, word choice, etc.)
    Proofreading
    (Similar to editing but this is done on the final version to make sure there are no careless errors (typos, remaining misspellings, etc.)

These elements of the process do NOT operate sequentially. Writing is NOT a stage model.
    Some accounts of writing lead you to believe that it is a sequential, stage model.
            e.g. Pre-Write, Write, Re-Write - so first you think of what to say. Once you have thought of that you write it. Then you look back and see if you want to rewrite it.

    Sequential stage models ignore the knowledge creation, the learning that comes through writing. Writing involves thinking; you don’t leave it behind when you go to put words on paper.

    Research on the composing process using think-aloud protocols shows that in actuality, the elements of the writing process are interactive and dynamic. See Figure adapted from Flower and Hayes (1980).

Structure of the Writing Model (adapted from Hayes and Flower, 1980)

(see diagram in pdf )

Planning –
    Writing requires a plan for what you want to say and how you will say it. But the plan may change as you write. You may find a better way to make your point. You need to plan more in writing than in conversation because you aren’t there to clarify and make sure your message is understood.
    Research on the characteristics of experts versus novice writers shows that planning distinguishes experts from novices (Flower & Hayes, 1980). Using think-aloud methodology where writers talked about the process they were using to write an essay, Flower and Hayes found that expert writers spent 10 to 15% more time than novices in an explicit planning phase before they began to actually write. Novices and younger children (between ages 10 and 12) tended to jump into writing with little or no planning. They do not separate planning from production of text.

    Bereiter & Scardamalia report that thinking-aloud transcripts of people writing to the prompt “Should students be allowed to choose what they study in school?” show differences between more and less expert writers.

1. More expert writers used five or six times as many words in thinking through the task that they use in the actual essay. So they are generating a lot of “text” that doesn’t make it’s way into the essay. Less expert writers think of the words they put in the text. So what their planning and actual text generation are isomorphic – the same.

2. For those whose essays were rated as having the most fully developed main points – their think alouds showed that they engaged in lots of searching for ideas, evaluating the ideas and the text they were generating, and going back and reconsidering what their points were – in order to arrive at their main ideas.

For those whose essays were rated as having less well developed main points – their think alouds showed that they decided on their main points in less than a minute of thought.

    But plans are just that – plans. In the course of actually drafting experts may return to the planning phase, reorganizing and rethinking the concepts to be included, the organization of the elements of the argument, etc. Iterative process. But there is a phase devoted to planning the whole PRIOR to production of actual text.

    The most useful plans are sketchy and flexible. Sets priorities and lays out the writer’s main goals.

    The Text talks about ways to selecting and narrowing a topic and find a thesis. In the feedback you received on your lit searches, there were suggestions as to next steps in a search process and some suggestions for defining your thesis.
            Student generated ideas on defining a thesis – How might you do it?

Some examples of Working Hypotheses generated were:
Treatment 1 is more effective than others for condition x.

Stating an expected relationship.

A working thesis is a starting point for looking at information on the topic. Comments on the feedback provided for literature search and process write – often were explicit about suggesting a thesis or way to proceed with your search.