Cognitive Development

Key Readings on Cognitivism

• “Writing as a Mode of Learning” by Janet Emig: College Composition and Communication, Vol. 28, No. 2. (May, 1977), pp. 122-128.
• “The Composing Processes of Unskilled College Writers” by Sondra Perl: Research in the Teaching of English, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Dec., 1979), pp. 317-336
• “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers” by Nancy Sommers: College Composition and Communication, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Dec., 1980), pp. 378-388
• “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing” by Linda Flower and John R. Hayes: College Composition and Communication 32.4 (Dec., 1981) pp. 365-387.

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Cognitive Theory

• Janet Emig
  • Harvard doctoral student
  • Writes the first dissertation on composition
  • Emig, Janet. (1971). The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders. NCTE.
  • Voss, R. (1983). Janet Emig’s The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders: A Reassessment. College Composition and Communication, 34(3), 278-283. doi:10.2307/358258
  • “Writing as a Mode of Learning” by Janet Emig: College Composition and Communication, Vol. 28, No. 2. (May, 1977), pp. 122-128.
• Linda Flower and John Hayes
  • Flower–Composition scholar at Carnegie Mellon University
  • Hayes–Cognitive psychologist
  • The Flower and Hayes Model of Composing
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  • Overview: Flower and Hayes’ Cognitive Model of the Composing Process
• “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing” by Linda Flower and John R. Hayes
  • College Composition and Communication 32.4 (Dec., 1981) pp. 365-387.
  • p. 365: “How do writers actually go about choosing diction, syntactic and organizational patterns, and content? Kinneavy claims that one’s purpose in forming, persuading, expressing, or manipulating language for its own
    sake-guides these choices. Moffett and Gibson contend that these choices are determined by one’s sense of the relation of speaker, subject, and audience. Is either of these two claims borne out by the actual practice of writers engaged in drafting or revising? Does either premise account adequately for the choices writers make?” (p. 365).
  • “1. The process of writing is best understood as a set of distinctive thinking processes which writers orchestrate or organize during the act of composing.
    2. These processes have a hierarchical, highly embedded organization in which any given 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 supporting sub-goals which embody the writer’s developing sense of purpose, and then, at times, by changing major goals or even establishing entirely new ones based on what has been learned in the act of writing” (p. 366).
• Sondra Perl
  • “The Composing Processes of Unskilled College Writers” by Sondra Perl
    • Research in the Teaching of English, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Dec., 1979), pp. 317-336
• Nancy Sommers
  • “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers” by Nancy Sommers
    • College Composition and Communication, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Dec., 1980), pp. 378-388
• Mike Rose
  • When a Writer Can’t Write: Studies in Writer’s Block and Other Composing Problems (1985)
  • Writers Block: The Cognitive Dimension (2009)
  • Later writes the seminal book Lives on the Boundary (2005)
• James Kinneavy: A Theory of Discourse (1980)
• James Moffett: Teaching the Universe of Discourse (1983)

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Contemporary Cognitivism

• Stormer, Kimberly J. (2017) “Why Can’t Tyrone Write: Reconceptualizing Flower and Hayes for African-American Adolescent Male Writers,” Middle Grades Review: Vol. 3: Iss. 3, Article 5.
  • An contemporary application of Flower and Hayes’ work

From Cognitivism to Social Constructionism

• “Cognition, Convention, and Certainty: What We Need to Know about Writing” by Patricia Bizzell
  • Pre/Text: A Journal of Rhetorical Theory 3:3 (Fall 1982): 213-43.