Eureka, I Have Found It: Writing Teachers as Enablers of Discovery

In the process of writing there is not one sure fire method that will work for every writer. Some writers need to plan and organize their thoughts while other writers don’t plan; they simply write…this isn’t true. All writers organize their thoughts in order to produce a written word, but each writer accomplishes the organization in a different way…this isn’t true either (I am modeling the internal dialogue writers use when they write- what Flower and Hayes call “regeneration”). During the process of researching a topic the writer “learns” something about the subject they are writing about. It is this “learning” or, as the authors say “schema,” that will allow the writer to regenerate their writing (text).

The authors of this article (Flower and Hayes, “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing”) are saying that the writing process is not linear. As the writing process progresses, after the initial topic has been established, the product is produced in a series of revisions. These revisions take place as a result of the writing and the learning that accompanies that writing. I also see a connection with what Joseph Harris has to say about rewriting in his book, “Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts” (2006).

When a writer gets to the point where they can diagnose their own “problems” with a written text then that writer will be able to not only express themselves, but also add something to the world. At this point in the semester after reading the ancients; Aristotle, Quintilian, Cicero, Plato, and Isocrates and the more modern thinkers; Burke, Vico, Bain, Elbow, Berlin, Matsuda, and hooks it is time to meld all of this collective wisdom into a statement about the teaching of writing. My interpretation of what we have read and discussed is that writing is not a static process: writing is a dynamic and living process. There are fundamentals of writing that I will call the “given”: grammar, syntax, semantics, and understandability. But the “given” in a piece of writing is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to conveying information or the sharing of ideas.

Flower and Hayes, in the article “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing,” put together a structure for the process of writing. This is a good article to read at this point in the semester as we try to bring together all of the ideas and thoughts that we have been reading about “writing.” I have to admit that sometimes during this semester I have lost the focus about what we are learning: how to teach writing. I think what Flower and Hayes provide is a template for us, as future writing teachers, to guide our work in assisting our students become better writers. The process I used to compose this commentary is very similar to the process that Flower and Hayes describe.

I am going to paraphrase and summarize what Flower and Hayes have said about the writing process: Joseph Harris would be proud of me, because I am trying to “rewrite” and make my writing “additive” to the writing community (writing teachers). Flower and Hayes say that the “goal” that a writer develops during the process of invention or topic development should change and be revised based on the process of composition and what the writer is learning about the topic during the writing process. So, not only is the “process” of writing dynamic, but the composition itself, the product, is also dynamic because the “product” is developing as the writer writes.

Harris and Flower say, “Writing is serendipitous, an act of discovery. Start out writing not knowing where you will end up. (377) I believe that the “act of discovery” is an important part of the dynamic process of writing. The writer “discovers” something; a new idea based on the process of writing, which he adds or subtracts from the composition. It is this constant revising that leads to new thoughts and ideas.

I’ve said this before in an earlier commentary either in this class or in English 5870 that the reason we have been reading the thinking of previous writers, the ones mentioned earlier, is because we need to know where we started with the process of writing so that we can take it to the next level. I’m not trying to be narcisstic, but by “taking it to the next level” I mean that we as writing teachers must help and assist our students improve their writing.

As writing teachers we should not improve our students’ writing by telling them what to write. We teach and assist our students improve their writing by “guiding” them through the process of “discovery”; the discovery espoused by Flower and Hayes.

Recently, we have read about culture and the fact that we will have students from different cultures in our writing classes. We need to think of all students, regardless of culture, as developing writers. I think that the approach we take as teachers to teach and guide our students to become better writers depends on how well we help our students “discover” something by writing: a voice, the ability to “invent” a topic, and the ability to persuade. We have read about all of these terms this semester. Our goal as writing teachers should be to teach and guide our students in the discovery process to find their own voice using the process of “invention” and “persuasion.”