losing in the process

Losing the Productin the Processew researchers would dare dispute that the process movement has done wonders toimprove the teaching of writing.Emig’s The Composing Processes of TwelfthGraders and other publications of the late 1960s and early 1970s made the pointthat a strictly grammatical approach to writing did not reflect the way that studentsactually wrote.In 1973 the National Writing Project was established to help promulgatethe concept that writing might not necessarily follow the circumscribed steps suggested inthe lessons available in textbooks,many of which focused upon intricacies of outlining,Fgrammar,and spelling.Later,Flower and Hayescontributed some handy flowcharts that seemedto map out rather neatly the cognitive processesassociated with the writing process.At the end ofthe millennium,“the writing process”has be-come so accepted as the paradigm for compo-sition that even Warriner’s now devotes hugesections of its erstwhile grammatical textbook to“the process.”Still,the extent to which teaching writing asa process affects student achievement and attitudesis somewhat uncertain.Despite over two millionteacher graduates from the National Writing Pro-ject alone(not including graduates of the New Jer-sey Writing Project,Breadloaf,or any of the othermyriad regional and university sponsored sites),thelatest National Assessment of Educational Progress(NAEP)writing results reveal that the overall writ-ing performance of students has stagnated sincethe inception of the NAEP assessment of writingsome fourteen years ago.Moreover,the data alsoindicate that students’perceptions of writinghaven’t changed much either.If teaching writing asa process has had such a tremendous effect on theattitudes and achievement of students,why isn’tthe evidence on its behalf more convincing?T h r e e P o p u l a r Wa y s o f Te a c h i n g“T h eP r o c e s s”i n S e c o n d a r y E n g l i s h C l a s s r o o m sMost of the time,creating a piece of interestingwriting is difficult enough.Trying to convince agroup of adolescents and young adults to crank outsubstantive papers on demand within the confinesof the standard fifty-five minute class period in aroom packed with their hormone-happy peers re-quires both extensive preparation and savvy class-room management skills.We want to emphasizethat we respect and admire the incredible workthat many of the teachers of writing we observedroutinely perform.Over the past six years,the four of us haveobserved over three hundred secondary(grades6–12)teachers of English in the act of teaching writ-ing.While some of the teachers we observed werewonderfully effective and many were quite compe-tent,when we recently compared our observationnotes,we discovered that“the process approach towriting”varied from classroom to classroom.Wefound three basic variations on the process ap-proach that seemed to be very popular among writ-ing teachers,and while these three approaches arecertainly not inclusive of the diverse ways in whichwe witnessed writing being taught in secondaryschools,they are the three methods we observedagain and again.We characterize these three ap-proaches as follows:1.The“classic”process approach2.The“antigrammarian”approach3.The“five paragraph”approachEach of the scenarios below is entirely fictional,though each is a composite portrait of actual occur-rences during our observations.The“Classic”Process ClassroomArmed with notes from college and several copiesof books about process writing,Mrs.K lays outplans for an essay assignment.First,students brain-storm events in their lives that they feel are memo-rable,then they select one specific event aboutwhich they would like to write.Next,the studentsbegin to write down words,fragments,or memo-ries associated with the event.They then grouptheir thoughts into clusters and attempt to orderthem in preparation for the writing of their essays.This done,students have an outline of sorts to drawfrom,and they are ready to start writing a roughdraft.“Avoid revision now,”Mrs.K suggests.“We’ll get to that later.”Quinn raises his hand.“Can’t I just write it?I know what I want to write about.Do I have to re-ally go through all this mess?”The teacher smiles knowingly and explainsthat by following the steps of the process,Quinnwill eventually write a superior essay.The studentacquiesces and begins to circle some ideas fromthose he has written down.Once Quinn shows Mrs.K his cluster,he is allowed to draft.From the minute he starts writing,Quinnscribbles with abandon,stopping occasionally torevise as he writes.When she spots this,Mrs.Kadvises,“Quinn,don’t break your rhythm.Keepwriting.”Mrs.K wants her students to be able to or-ganize and format a good essay,but perhaps moreimportantly,she wants the students to come toenjoy writing,to come to savor the act of reachingwithin themselves to learn the beauty of their ownvoices.As Mrs.K glances around the room,she no-tices that some students are staring out the win-dow,some are writing furiously,while others aremoving their lips as if reading,struggling over theselection of a particular word,perhaps.The mostenthusiastic writers,such as Quinn,have com-pletely abandoned their clusters and are writingaway.Others,who had welcomed the structureprovided within the prewriting activity,plod awaymore methodically,paying close attention to theirorganization and putting little focus on the contentof their product.At the beginning of class the next day,Mrs.K asks students to get into groups.“Get with yourpartners and have them read what you wrote yes-terday.If you are editing someone else’s paper,givethe students some explicit suggestions.Don’t sayanything mean that might hurt someone’s feelings,but try to be honest.”Quinn trades his essay withSophia,who giggles as she reads.“Oh my God,didthis really happen?”Sophia asks.After Quinn tellsher about the inspiration for his story,he tellsSophia,“You know,your paper is just great.You’vegot fantastic handwriting,too.”“Should I change the ending?It seems kindof too sad,”Sophia says.“No,it’s perfect just the way it is,”saysQuinn.“By the way,Bill told me that he saw you atthe mall the other day and that...”Quinn and Sophia’s conversation turnsmore personal and animated as other studentscomplete their peer editing sessions.After a fewmore minutes,Mrs.K asks students to spend theremainder of class revising their papers.“Tomor-row,I want you to turn in the cluster,your roughdraft with the comments of your peer editor,andthe final paper.”“What if your peer didn’t give you any sug-gestions?”asks Sophia.Mrs.K shakes her head.“Surely,Quinn can help you with something.”Quinn thinks,then says,“You need a title.”Sophia looks at her paper and smiles.“It should besomething catchy.”Mrs.K and Sophia laugh.After Mrs.K walksaway,Quinn begins crossing out words on his paper.“What are you doing?”asks Sophia.“I’m making my rough draft.Mrs.K takesoff ten points if you don’t include the rough draft.Ijust cross out some words,then recopy it on an-other sheet of paper.”Although Mrs.K takes the papers homewith the intention of grading them,she usuallydoesn’t finish with them until the next week.Be-cause she doesn’t like to“cover students’papers inred ink,”she tries to be upbeat and positive aboutstudents’writing.She mostly gives As to those whoturn something in and Bs to those who don’t writemuch or who fail to turn in the cluster or roughdraft.The only students who get Cs,Ds,or Fs arethose who refuse to write anything.The“Antigrammarian”Approach“Don’t worry about grammar,”announces Ms.Mbefore giving the day’s composition assignment.“Iwon’t count off for spelling or punctuation,either.Ijust want you to write.”“What are we writing about?”asks Jamal.“Whatever you want to write about,”repliesMs.M with unbridled enthusiasm.“And spelling,grammar,and punctuation don’t matter.”“Just tell a story?”asks Jamal.“Just write whatever you feel like writing—your diary,your feelings about the death penalty,what you did this weekend,how you feel right nowat this very moment.”“So,anything?”asks Jamal.“You countin’offfor spelling?”“Just write,Jamal.What matters is what youhave to say,not silly commas or periods.”After students finish their pieces,they peeredit.Ms.M sometimes records the grade thepeers give and averages it with her own assess-ment.Almost everyone who turns in a paper getsan A on writing assignments,though grades aremore widely distributed on tests over literature andworksheets.Sometimes students read their composi-tions aloud,and Ms.M often posts student workaround the room.Ms.M rarely marks on studentpapers except to pose a question,make a nonjudg-mental comment,or commend a particularly ex-pressive passage.During a poetry unit,she asks students towrite an original poem about a person to whomthey feel very close.Jamal writes about his father:I hate my dad.I hate my dad because he won’t give me anymoney for a car.I hate my dad because he is a fat tightwad.I hate my dad because he just sucks.I hate my dad.When Ms.M hands back Jamal’s paper,hecomments,“Hey,there’s no grade on this!”Ms.M responds,“It is impossible to gradepoetry,Jamal.If your poem means something toyou,that’s what counts.”The“Five Paragraph”Process“I don’t like to teach the five paragraph essay,butit’s what they expect us to teach,”says Mr.A,ayoung man in his second year of teaching.“Thesestudents need to know how to write,and in myclasses,we practice and practice.To get themready,I often use a prompt from last year’s statewriting test.And we go over it and over it until theyget it right.The scorers of those tests look to see ifstudents are using the right transitions and if theyknow how to write a paragraph.”She mostly gives As to thosewho turn something in and Bsto those who don’t write muchor who fail to turn in thecluster or rough draft.Although he teaches English,Mr.A doesnot like to write but does not necessarily see notbeing a writer as a detriment to his teaching.“Howard Cosell never boxed,but he was an experton boxing,”he says.At the beginning of class,Mr.A frequentlyannounces the writing topic for the day.He collectsstudent work when the bell rings and runs a thor-oughly organized and neat classroom.Usually,stu-dents sit silently at their desks while he busily gradesthe horde of papers that inevitably comes with mak-ing frequent writing assignments.When studentshave questions,they usually walk up to the teacher’sdesk,where Mr.A cheerfully and patiently an-swers their questions.If students act sleepy orrefuse to complete an assignment,he sends themto the office or gives them detention.The studentsseem to like Mr.A,and he doesn’t have to punishstudents often.“Today,we’re going to write a comparison/contrast paper,”he says.“I want you to comparetwo things,maybe soccer and football,and tell howthey are alike and how they are different.”He turnson the transparency machine and begins writingwith a green felt tip pen.“How should I begin sucha paper?”he asks.Julie raises her hand and answers.“Soccerand football are alike and different in many ways.”“Okay,that’s good,”says Mr.A as he writesJulie’s sentence on the overhead,turns around toensure that his writing is legible for students,andbegins to field suggestions for the outline of themodel paper.“T h e P r o c e s s”a n d S t u d e n t E r r o rEach of the three popular approaches describedabove has certain strengths.The“classic”approachallows students to interact with their peers infor-mally and offers a step-by-step procedure for pro-ducing a final draft.The“antigrammarian”methodmight free students who would otherwise feel in-timidated or encumbered by the spectres of properspelling and standard English.The“five para-graph”approach offers a simple structure for stu-dents who might flounder without a ready-madeformat and seems to give both students and teach-ers a sense of security.Another very appealing,readily apparent aspect of the three approaches isthat teachers and students seem quite contentwithin these pleasant and largely stress-free writingenvironments.Students write and peer edit,teach-ers distribute generous praise and high grades,andeveryone goes home happy.Regrettably,one consequence of the wide-spread emergence of“the process”is that the worderror has been banished from teachers’vocabular-ies.Amid our observations of three hundred class-rooms,no teacher ever said,“That is wrong,”or“This is an error.”When we asked teachers whatthey looked for when they evaluated student writ-ing,we were more likely to get a sermon on thedamaging psychological effects of“bleeding red inkall over the page”than a statement regarding at-tributes of good writing.Overwhelmingly in our observations,thequality of writing was presented more as a personalchoice than a desired goal.That is to say,in conver-sations with teachers,many claimed that good writ-ing could not be suitably quantified and that badwriting was really not so bad once you understoodthe plethora of factors behind it—the student’shome environment,ethnicity,social life,popularity,absentee record,former teachers.It is not uncommon for advocates of“theprocess”to claim that grades are“arbitrary,coer-cive,and punishing.”Furthermore,they contendthat“grading writing does not contribute to thelearning of writing,and...[that]they would like tosee the practice of grading disappear completely.”Usually,students sit silentlyat their desks while he busilygrades the horde of papers thatinevitably comes with makingfrequent writing assignments.Perhaps many who teach“the process”havebegun to confuse the act of grading with the gentleart of correcting.While teachers of“the process”often graded papers without correcting them,theyseldom corrected papers without grading them.Predictably,the excommunication of error hascaused repercussions in many postsecondary insti-tutions.Many adolescents first learn as collegefreshmen that they aren’t flawless masters of thelanguage,when their English professors,usuallymore concerned with the quality of a piece of writ-ing than the fragile psyche of its author,return thefirst batch of papers.T h e L o n e l y,A r d u o u s Q u e s t f o r Q u a l i t yMost of the teachers we observed taught at leastfive classes containing a minimum of thirty stu-dents each;thus,giving a composition assignmentmeant that teachers would grade 150 or more pa-pers during off-hours in the evening or early morn-ing.If teachers could quickly read,correct,andevaluate a set of 150 at the blistering pace of fiveminutes per composition(almost impossible forany composition longer than a paragraph),theywould still have to log at least twelve and a halfhours of solid grading.If teachers do not requireproper grammar,then grammar does not have to begraded.There should be little surprise,then,thatmany teachers of“the process”have heeded re-searchers’calls for less error correction and fewerevaluative comments.Besides saving time,thismethod eliminates being the bearer of the badnews that much work still needs to be done.In analyzing how authors really write(as op-posed to how writers of writing books say that writ-ers should write),we eventually come to theconclusion that real writing always begins in inten-sity or discomfiture and may take highly idiosyn-cratic forms.Earl Stanley Gardner wrote so muchthat an editor once joked that he wrote as thoughhis hair were on fire.Rex Stout believed that if thewords did not pour forth from his pen in perfectprose,then his story wasn’t any good.J.G.Ballardused to write in his bathtub at four o’clock in themorning.John Dewey would often stare out of awindow for hours at a time.Immanuel Kant used towalk the same path around his German village inorder to work through ideas in his head.Today,theincreasing sophistication of word processing andauthoring programs for computers gives writerseven more tools from which to choose.Regrettably,one consequence ofthe widespread emergence of“theprocess”is that the word error hasbeen banished from teachers’vocabularies.What is interesting about each of the threemajor approaches to process writing is that manyteachers we observed seemed more dedicated to“the process”than to improving the quality of stu-dents’writing.Of course,teachers may not be ableto bring in bathtubs,scout out walking trails,oreven open the windows of their classrooms(thoughthese ideas might do no harm)in order to get stu-dents to write well,but they can at least imbue theteaching of writing with a little intensity,flexibility,and(perhaps most importantly)honesty.Somehow,for many teachers,the process approach to writinghas come to be equated with a set of sequential,pseudo-scientific steps,irrespective of how individ-ual students really write or the tangible outcomesof their efforts.The product has become of sec-ondary importance—an absurd victory of formover content.A P a r a d i g m T h a t N e e d s B r e a k i n gIn the classrooms we observed,the obsession withprocess,at times,crowded out the hard,dirty workof learning how to write well.Grammar,spelling,vocabulary,or sentence structure were rarely,ifever,mentioned.Although we are not nostalgicabout the painfully dull and irrelevant practice ofteaching writing through decontextualized drill,wefeel that many teachers of“the process”have tooflippantly rejected the prospect that a studentsomewhere might eventually need to know the ruleof grammar regarding subject and verb agreement.There is nothing heinous about informing individ-ual students where their writing falters from stan-dard English.Once informed,these students can atleast have the option of learning standard Englishso that they can use it appropriately,should theyfind themselves in a position where such knowl-edge may be required—in a job,for example.So,what can teachers do to improve howwriting is taught and learned?For one thing,theycan consider allowing the idea of error back intothe classroom.Although a student may experiencesome unpleasant disequilibrium when an error isidentified,the experience is not something fromwhich most students will be unable to recover.While it is commendable to be concerned with stu-dents’sensitivities,the self-esteem of most adoles-cents is a little beyond being manipulated by goldstars or push-button pleasantries,anyway.Ratherthan post a“No Hunting Allowed!”sign on thedoor,as Kirby,Liner,and Vinz suggest,to dissuadestudents from making rude remarks about eachothers’writing,perhaps a teacher could post a“Constructive Comments Welcome!”sign and helpstudents track and analyze their progress towardsovercoming their most common mistakes.Teachers of writing might also loosen up withregard to“the process”that students use to get to theendpoint of a piece of writing.Most worthwhilewriting begins in the gut or the heart and has little todo with the lockstep allegiance to the simplisticmantra of“brainstorm/draft/revise.”Even most ad-vocates of“the process”acknowledge that studentswho care about their subject will write more con-vincingly than students who don’t.What is interesting about eachof the three major approachesto process writing is that manyteachers we observed seemedmore dedicated to“the process”than to improving the qualityof students’writing.Finally,teachers of writing might reconsidertheir goals for student writing.Which is moreimportant—self-esteem or achievement,standardEnglish or dialect,process or product?In the cur-rent educational climate,a teacher acknowledgingthat one piece of writing might be more lucid,moremoving,more eloquent—or dare we say it?—betterthan another would be tantamount to treason.Inthe never-ending struggle to preserve self-esteem,nothing can be said that might offend or hurt an-other’s feelings.As a result,“the process”has be-come so ubiquitous as to mean anything,orperhaps more precisely,it has come to mean almostnothing.Tragically,the art and soul of writing havebeen lost in the process.s