Response to February 20th readings: Landmark Essays: Graves, Perl, Flower & Hayes, and Sommers.

These essays are connected by the idea that writing is not a linear activity. Although Graves separates the writing episode in different phases, in his analysis and his methodology it can be seen how writing is not a linear activity and that many micro and macro factors influence it. While reading Graves’ chapter, I was wondering if the methodology employed in the study has ever been used in adults. I think that the fact that they were working with children influenced the weight that observations and thick descriptions (in the ethnographic sense) had in the study (for example, in page 27). I got a little confused by the way the writing episodes were recorded, and once I understood it, I thought that if this study were replicated (has it been replicated?) the use of a video camera would be great. I liked the fact that the quantitative and qualitative research methods were combined and the focus on the large group and the case study were switched. I loved the last sentence: “it is ironic that research devoted to the full study of single individuals is so rare” (p. 37). As a matter of fact, while doing my literature review about academic writing in the U.S. (I was focusing on non-native speakers ) I only found a couple of articles that showed ethnographic studies that lasted more than two or three semesters.
Perl, as Graves, also worried about developing methodological tools that allow them to analyze the composing process. But again, while reading the article I thought that these authors were trying to find the code of the code to analyze the code. Too complex! But I guess that these methodologies help them to systematize the highly complex process of writing.
What I like about Flower and Hayes’ article was their critic to the myth of discovery in writing and how they propose that writing is not a matter of discovering the words but of creating meaning. According to them, the writing process is a “problem-solving activity” and not a “creative accident” (p. 64). And that the problem for writers is not to discover what to say, but to find the problem to solve (the rhetorical problem) since this is what will determine our writing. I absolutely agree with them when they state that “writers build or represent such a problem to themselves, rather than “find” it” (p. 65) and here comes our role as teachers, and here comes our problem: how to best present prompts to students. I think that by having a better idea of the complexity of the writing process teachers will be able to better guide students to develop their writing. In addition, on page 69, when they provide an example of how differently experienced and novice writers draw on their knowledge to represent the problem, I don’t agree with them. I think that experienced writers would focus on what Flower & Hayes say writers focus on AND on what the authors say the novice writers focus on. All in all, experienced writers also sometimes conceptualize writing for assignments in the way novice writers do, but in a more complex way. I also think that the fact that the experts they compared with students were writing and rhetoric teachers could have influenced the fact that these experienced writers are more aware of audience and other elements of the writing process. I wonder what would have happened if instead of writing and rhetoric teachers the authors would have compared students with scholars writing a paper in their field. Would they conceptualize in such a complete way the rhetorical problem as the writing teachers? In this regard, Sommers’ study, I think, is better because she chose experienced writers in different fields: journalists, editors and academics.