Post 97: Writiing as a Process (Acquisition View)

Post 97: Writing as a Process (Acquisition View)

Writing is a complex task that is best taught when you break down the process. Students who understand the writing process find themselves with less Writer's block.  Many of my writing students become frozen or paralyzed with fear when the sit down and are faced with a blank sheet of paper. But by learning the Writing Process, students break down their anxiety and quickly learn to write. Krashen writes that anxiety and stress inhibits a student from learning a skill properly in his Affective Filter Hypothesis.

What is the Writing Process?

At UCLA, when I took the ESL Writing for Teachers, a course that teaches ESL teachers to teach English Composition writing, I learned that the three basic steps to the Writing Process are Prewriting, Writing and Re-writing.

Pre-Writing--includes brainstorming for a topic, doing a concept or mind map to visualize the essay, coming up with a thesis statement with body paragraphs, and doing a formal outline.

Writing--After the student writes an outline, he/she writes a rough draft.

Re-Writing--Student revises and proofreads rough draft. Student peer edits each others' papers. Student can keep a writing portfolio where he can write multiple rough drafts based on the feedback he/she gets from both teacher and other students. With each rough draft revision, student gets better and better at writing.

Therefore, when a student can re-write many drafts of the same paper, then the student goes through a long process of writing where the focus of the writing class is not on the finished written product for a grade like in the Learning View Writing Product Approach, but instead, the student focuses more on writing improvement through collaborative learning with other students and the teacher. 

When I used to teach face to face at a year round school, I would have students keep writing portfolios where a student can rewrite the same essay for many months. Each time a student turned in a revised draft, I would give that student feedback and then she would then hand in another revised draft and by the end of 3 months, she had a practically perfect essay.

Also, I would have students sit in a circle and they would exchange papers and correct/grade each others' papers. Sometimes, I would let students give each other a grade, but I only did this if the students had bonded and trusted each other a lot.  I love how the Writing Process embraces a more collaborative approach to teaching where the teacher is just a guide and helps facilitate students on their road to better writing.

By the end of the year, I would have students turn in their best papers and we would make a class book, then we would make copies of these class books for every student to take home as a memento of the year-long class.  I would also have students create class web sites where students post their favorite essays online. 

In my teaching career, I have used both the Writing as a Product Approach (usually when I am introducing a new lesson or unit) or teaching a really short intensive writing class, and I have used The Writing Process when I was teaching face to face.

Note: I have used The Writing Process in conjunction with Writing as a Product when teaching Freshman Composition in college and high school. I will talk about how I did that in my next blog post.