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English 830: Teaching Writing — Writing Process Pedagogy

In Class Activities for Week 1 – Writing Process Pedagogy

Overview

This is a course about how to teach writing. Today, virtually all approaches to teaching college composition are grounded in one way or another on teaching writing as a process. I am, personally, a firm advocate and believer in the value of Writing Process Pedagogy. But we can’t teach the writing process to students if we don’t understand what the composing process looks like. It is, as it turns out, quite challenging to learn how people turn ideas in their heads into words on paper/screen. So, we will begin our work together by trying to create a map of the composing process.

Guiding Question

  • What does the process of writing look like?

Part 1. Course Overview (10 minutes)

  • Dr. Pagnucci will discuss the design of ENGL 830 and review syllabus policies

Part 2. Introductions (10 minutes)

  • Each student will say who they are, where they are located, where they are teaching (if applicable), and their current dissertation ideas

Part 3. Freewriting Task: On Teachers (10 minutes)

  • Think of a great teacher you have had in the past.
  • Describe this person.
  • What were they like?
  • What were their methods for teaching?
  • What made the person a great teacher?
  • What do you think were the most important things you learned from this teacher?

Part 4. Reflection Task (10 minutes)

  • Dr. Pagnucci will describe this task for you

Part 5. Full Class Discussion (10 minutes)

  • What have we learned so far about the composing process?

Part 6. Break (10 minutes)

  • We will take a short break to re-energize everyone

Part 7. Writing Protocol Activity: Important Writing (15 minutes)

  • Dr. Pagnucci will provide directions for how to do this task
  • Do not click on the task link until instructed to do so (I know it’s sooo tempting, but you need to be patient so you don’t spoil our experiment)
  • Task Link

Part 8. Full Class Discussion (15 minutes)

  • Discuss what you learned from the protocol activity

Part 9. Small Group Activity: Composing Process Mapping (10 minutes)

  • In a small breakout group, create a map of the composing process as you understand it so far

Part 10. Full Class Discussion (10 minutes)

  • Share your group’s map with the class

Part 11. The Flower and Hayes Writing Process Model (5 minutes)

  • Linda Flower and John Hayes
  • “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).

Part 10. Writing Process Pedagogy (5 minutes)

  • Flower and Hayes’ work helped ground the Writing Process approach for teaching composition
  • Teaching writing as a process has become one of the foundations of composition instruction in the United States
  • Murray, Donald (Nov., 1972). Teach writing as a process not product. The Leaflet, 11-14.
    • Core Implications of Teaching Writing Process:
      • The text of the course is the student’s own writing.
      • The students finds his [or her] own subject.
      • The student uses [her or] his own language.
      • The student may write as many drafts as necessary.
      • The student may write in any form.
      • Mechanics come last.
      • The writer needs both unpressured time and a deadline.
      • A grade finishes a paper the way publication does.
      • Each student write must explore the writing process individually.
      • “There are no rules…All writing is experimental” (p. 5).
    • “What is the process we should teach? It is the process of discovery through language. It is the process of exploration of what we know and what we feel about what we know through language. It is the process of using language to learn about our world, to evaluate what we learn about our world, to communicate what we learn about our world” (p. 4).
    • “Instead of teaching finished writing, we should teach unfinished writing, and glory in its unfinishedness.” (p.4)
    • “The writing process itself can be divided into three stages: prewriting, writing, and rewriting” (p. 4).
    • As the teacher, “we have to be quiet, to listen, to respond. We are not the initiator or the motivator; we are the reader, the recipient” (p. 5).
    • “We must listen carefully for those words that may reveal a truth, that may reveal a voice” (p. 5).

Part 12. Assignments Overview (10 minutes)

  • Dr. Pagnucci will take time to go over the weeks assignments and answer any questions