I found this article by Linda Flower and John Hayes fascinating.  As they state at the end of the article, “Writers and teachers of writing have long argued that one learns through the act of writing itself, but it has been difficult to support the claim in other ways” (386).  I have felt exactly this way—that I believed people learned by writing because I had experienced clarification and development of my own ideas after writing them, but I couldn’t support the idea with anything very specific.  Now I have specific language with which to discuss this with my students.  We plan by generating and organizing ideas (as words or symbolic systems) and goal-setting, which build an internal representation.  We then translate this internal representation into visual language, and later review, evaluate and revise.  All of this happens under the “monitor” that guides the writer in determining when to finish one mode and start another or return to an earlier mode.  The rhetorical problem—the topic, audience, and exigency or need to respond, along with the text the writer has produced so far, feed into the entire process as well.  Learning through writing happens as these processes feed into each other and change what one is writing.  This model is complicated, but it makes sense of all the varied forces at work when one is writing.

The authors have undertaken an amazingly elaborate study with their “protocol analysis” (368).  This procedure reminded me of “think alouds” that teachers use as a way to model and share with students what goes on in our heads as we’re reading or writing.  The authors had to wade through a lot of thinking to get to their pattern analysis, but their conclusions, especially regarding poor writers and what they do or don’t do, gave me some interesting ideas to use with my students.  For example, they note that poorer writers tend to set abstract or undeveloped top level goals, or they focus on low level goals like finishing a sentence or correctly spelling a word (379).  Poorer writers also produce “writer-based prose,” which is “solely based on prose and fails to transform or reorganize knowledge to meet the different needs of the reader” (372).  In other words, poor writers aren’t able to think of audience.  But I hadn’t thought if it as “writer-based prose.”  That makes the concept even more clear in my mind.  I think talking with students about the process these authors lay out—planning, including goal-setting, translating ideas into visible language, and then reviewing—will be helpful.  Even though I already teach a process model and teach that the process is recursive rather than linear, these authors have added more explicit detail to the model that allows me to imagine the process more concretely and communicate about it with students.  It also helps guide what we need to teach students.  Goal-setting and defining one’s own rhetorical problem encompasses the writer, the audience and the text in a fluid way that I think students will understand.  I even think showing students the protocol analysis could be helpful.  I’ve had students to “think alouds” when they’re reading, but I haven’t had them do this when they’re writing.  I plan to do this soon.  As the authors mention, the writing process is “unstructured, open-minded, and exploratory … and at the same time [possesses] its own underlying coherence, direction and purpose” (377).  I think the “messiness” in writing can sometimes discourage less-skilled writers.  This model shows that the process is messy and yet still productive and successful. 

I’m just unabashedly impressed with this article.  I would never have patience to record and wade through such detailed “think alouds” and analyze them, but as a psychology major, I find models of brain and thought processes extremely valuable.