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Personality and Individual Writing Processes

1984; National Council of Teachers of English; Volume: 35; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/357457

1939-9006

George H. Jensen, John K. DiTiberio,

Linguistics and Discourse Analysis

Though composition theorists concur that writing should be taught as a process, they seem to agree little on the nature of that process. Pearl G. Aldrich, in a recent article in this journal, surveyed the writing habits of business executives and concluded that their writing suffered from inadequate planning: These responses, therefore, showed that the majority of these, and presumably other, adult writers seem not to know the value of deciding in advance of writing what their purpose, audience, and point will be.1 Peter Elbow, on the other hand, feels that writers often become blocked by too much planning. He advises: Write fast. Don't waste any time or energy on how to organize it, what to start with, paragraphing, wording, spelling, grammar, or any other matters of presentation. Just get things down helter-skelter. 2 Both authors describe distinctly different writing processes that apparently work for them, but what would happen if Aldrich were a student in Elbow's class or Elbow a student in Aldrich's class? To state the question more generally, how can we teach a classroom full of individuals, each of whom needs to approach the process of writing in his or her own way? Three possible approaches to the problem can be suggested. We can advise all students to write as we do and teach a single writing process. The process will, if we are lucky, work for some students. It will, however, not work for others, for it will force them to write in a way that will fail to draw upon their strengths. Or we can suggest that students try a variety of approaches, as W. Ross Winterowd does when discussing outlines: Some writers prepare detailed outlines before they begin to write, but most don't. Most writers use some kind of brief outline or notes, but some writers don't. You just can't generalize. However, outlines can be useful.'3 Winterowd's approach is preferable, but it also has limitations. If students feel confused about how to write an essay, will such open-ended advice confuse them further? If students rigidly