Topic: Changes in Teaching Writing

10-second review: From emphasis on the product to the process or how the germ of an idea is developed into the finished product to recursiveness in the writing process.

Title: “Competing Paradigms for Research and Evaluation in the Teaching of English.” Richard L. Larson. Research in the Teaching of English (October 1993). pp. 283-304. A publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Summary: The article deals, actually, with alternative approaches to research, but part of the article discusses the changes in the teaching of writing from emphasis on the writing product to the writing process and recursiveness in the writing process and I thought these ideas would be useful. RayS.

Quote: Maxine Hairston on the changes in teaching writing: “…some changes she saw occurring in the teaching of writing and in research on that teaching. She asserted that the teaching of writing had undergone [a]…shift, from an emphasis on the achievement of the final text to an emphasis on the complex route by which the final text came into being—on how writers compose (i.e., their composing process).” p. 283.

Quote: “…though the research on composing did highlight what came to be called the recursiveness of writing. (The term refers to the fact that writers can engage in any act of composing—finding ideas, thinking about ways of organizing them, imagining ways of expressing them—at any time during their writing and often perform these acts many times while writing.)” pp. 283-284.