Writing as a Social Act
Another important concept reinforced by current research is that writing is a social act. Students need to discuss composition before, during, and after the writing process.
As they grow, writers still need opportunities to talk about what they are writing about, to rehearse the language of their upcoming texts and run ideas by trusted colleagues before taking the risk of committing words to paper. After making a draft, it is often helpful for writers to discuss with peers what they Tag Heuer Carrera Replica Watches have done, partly to get ideas from their peers, partly to see what they, the writers, say when they try to explain their thinking. (Writing Study Group)
Dialogue about the writing process involves more than the read-analyze-write model traditionally applied to writing about literature (Hartman and Tarone). To examine this social aspect of the writing process firsthand, I presented my students with writing topics and gave them a few days to compose drafts. I then asked them to talk about the writing process in small groups using some simple questions as a guide for the conversation:
What topics did you initially consider?
What are you trying to accomplish with the paper?
Did your direction change as you went through the process?
What difficulties did you experience?
Results of this classroom activity upheld the research I had read. Student comments quickly shifted from those about style and form (“I suck at spelling”) to those about depth and direction of the essays. One student said that the discussions made him realize that he “didn’t say what he wanted to say at all.” A bonus, as one student articulated, was that “we didn’t even talk about grammar in our group!” Marti Singer refers to this phenomenon when she writes, “I discovered that when students are clear about their focus and the meaning they want to make in writing, the usage errors tend to dissipate and the whole of their writing is more effective”. My students loved talking about their writing and were able to make better rhetorical and stylistic choices after doing so.
Having witnessed the effectiveness of Tag Heuer Replica Watches classroom applications of my newly acquired knowledge about the reading-writing connection and the social nature of writing, I sought to tie these concepts together. In an eleventh-grade English class we read The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. In groups, students discussed many aspects of the novel, including writing style, immigration, natural disasters, personal journeys, and prejudice. Applying the idea that “prompts [should be] developed from the curriculum and grounded in ‘real-world’ practices” (CCCC Committee on Assessment), I asked students to use our discussions as springboards for an essay. They talked in small groups prior to writing, during the writing process, and after the completion of a draft. Mark made the leap from the struggles of the Joacls to his struggles with skin cancer. Jessica used her knowledge of prejudice and intolerance in support of immigration reform. Andrea wrote her life in intercalary chapters, imitating Steinbeck’s style by alternating between journalistic commentary about current events and her personal story.
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