hayes 2/7

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include planning,retrieving information from long-term memory,re-

viewing,and so on.

2.Second,you would want to show how these various elements of the

process interact in the total process of writing.For example,how is

"knowledge"about the audience actually integrated into the moment-

to-moment act of composing?

3.And finally,since a model is primarily a tool for thinking with,you

would want your model to speak to critical questions in the discipline.

It should help you see things you didn't see before.

Obviously,the best way to model the writing process is to study a writer in

action,and there are many ways to do this.However,people's after-the-fact,

introspectiveanalysis of what they did while writing is notoriously inaccurate

and likely to be influenced by their notions of what they should have done.

Therefore we turned to protocolanalysis,which has been successfully used to

study other cognitive processes.10 Unlike introspective reports,thinking

aloud protocols capture a detailed record of what is going on in the writer's

mind during the act of composing itself.To collect a protocol,we give writ-

ers a problem,such as"Write an article on your job for the readers of Sev-

enteen magazine,"and then ask them to compose out loud near an unobtru-

sive tape recorder.We ask them to work on the task as they normally

would-thinking,jotting notes,and writing-except that they must think out

loud.They are asked to verbalize everything that goes through their minds as

they write,including stray notions,false starts,and incomplete or fragmen-

tary thought.The writers are not asked to engage in any kind of introspection

or self-analysis while writing,but simply to think out loud while working like

a person talking to herself.

The transcript of this session,which may amount to 20 pages for an hour

session,is called a protocol.As a research tool,a protocol is extraordinarily

rich in data and,together with the writer's notes and manuscript,it gives us a

very detailed picture of the writer's composing process.It lets us see not only

368A CognitiveProcessTheory

the development of the written product but many of the intellectual pro-

cesses which produced it.The model of the writing process presented in

Figure 1 attempts to account for the major thinking processes and constraints

we saw at work in these protocols.But note that it does not specify the order

in which they are invoked.

The act of writing involves three major elements which are reflected in the

three units of the model:the task environment,the writer's long-term

memory,and the writing processes.The task environment includes all of

those things outside the writer's skin,starting with the rhetorical problem or

assignment and eventually including the growing text itself.The second ele-

ment is the writer's long-term memory in which the writer has stored knowl-

edge,not only of the topic,but of the audience and of various writing plans.

The third element in our model contains writing processes themselves,spe-

cifically the basic processes of Planning,Translating,and Reviewing,

which are under the control of a Monitor.

This model attempts to account for the processes we saw in the composing

protocols.It is also a guide to research,which asks us to explore each of

these elements and their interaction more fully.Since this model is described

in detail elsewhere,'1 let us focus here on some ways each element contrib-

utes to the overall process.

Overviewof The Model

The Rhetorical Problem

At the beginning of composing,the most important element is obviously

the rhetorical problem itself.A school assignment is a simplified version of

such a problem,describing the writer's topic,audience,and(implicitly)her

role as student to teacher.Insofar as writing is a rhetorical act,not a mere

artifact,writers attempt to"solve"or respond to this rhetorical problem by

writing something.

In theory this problem is a very complex thing:it includes not only the

rhetorical situation and audience which prompts one to write,it also includes

the writer's own goals in writing.12A good writer is a person who can juggle

all of these demands.But in practice we have observed,as did Britton,l3 that

writers frequently reduce this large set of constraints to a radically simplified

problem,such as"write another theme for English class."Redefining the

problem in this way is obviously an economical strategy as long as the new

representation fits reality.But when it doesn't,there is a catch:people only

solve the problems they define for themselves.If a writer's representation of

her rhetorical problem is inaccurate or simply underdeveloped,then she is

unlikely to"solve"or attend to the missing aspects of the problem.To sum

up,defining the rhetorical problem is a major,immutable part of the writing

process.But the way in which people choose to define a rhetorical problem

to themselves can vary greatly from writer to writer.An important goal for

369

A CognitiveProcessTheory

research then will be to discover how this process of representing the prob-

lem works and how it affects the writer's performance.

The Written Text

As composing proceeds,a new element enters the task environment which

places even more constraints upon what the writer can say.Just as a title

constrains the content of a paper and a topic sentence shapes the options of a

paragraph,each word in the growing text determines and limits the choices

of what can come next.However,the influence that the growing text exerts

on the composing process can vary greatly.When writing is incoherent,the

text may have exerted too little influence;the writer may have failed to con-

solidate new ideas with earlier statements.On the other hand,one of the

earmarks of a basic writer is a dogged concern with extending the previous

sentence14 and a reluctance to jump from local,text-bound planning to more

global decisions,such as"what do I want to cover here?"

As we will see,the growing text makes large demands on the writer's time

and attention during composing.But in doing so,it is competing with two

other forces which could and also should direct the composing process;

namely,the writer's knowledge stored in long-term memory and the writer's

plans for dealing with the rhetorical problem.It is easy,for example,to im-

agine a conflict between what you know about a topic and what you might

actually want to say to a given reader,or between a graceful phrase that

completes a sentence and the more awkward point you actually wanted to

make.Part of the drama of writing is seeing how writers juggle and integrate

the multiple constraints of their knowledge,their plans,and their text into

the production of each new sentence.15

The Long-Term Memory

The writer's long-term memory,which can exist in the mind as well as in

outside resources such as books,is a storehouse of knowledge about the

topic and audience,as well as knowledge of writing plans and problem repre-

sentations.Sometimes a single cue in an assignment,such as"write a persua-

sive....,"can let a writer tap a stored representation of a problem and bring

a whole raft of writing plans into play.

Unlike short-term memory,which is our active processing capacity or con-

scious attention,long-term memory is a relatively stable entity and has its

own internal organization of information.The problem with long-term mem-

ory is,first of all,getting things out of it-that is,finding the cue that will let

you retrieve a network of useful knowledge.The second problem for a writer

is usually reorganizing or adapting that information to fit the demands of the

rhetorical problem.The phenomena of"writer-based"prose nicely demon-

strates the results of a writing strategy based solely on retrieval.The organi-

zation of a piece of writer-based prose faithfully reflects the writer's own

371CollegeCompositionand Communication

discovery process and the structure of the remembered information itself,

but it often fails to transform or reorganize that knowledge to meet the dif-

ferent needs of a reader.16

Planning

People often think of planning as the act of figuring out how to get from

here to there,i.e.,making a detailed plan.But our model uses the term in its

much broader sense.In the planning process writers form an internal repre

sentation of the knowledge that will be used in writing.This internal repre-

sentation is likely to be more abstract than the writer's prose representation

will eventually be.For example,a whole network of ideas might be repre-

sented by a single key word.Furthermore,this representation of one's

knowledge will not necessarily be made in language,but could be held as a

visual or perceptual code,e.g.,as a fleeting image the writer must then cap-

ture in words.

Planning,or the act of building this internal representation,involves a

number of sub-processes.The most obvious is the act of generating ideas,

which includes retrieving relevant information from long-term memory.

Sometimes this information is so well developed and organized in memor

that the writer is essentially generating standard written English.At other

times one may generate only fragmentary,unconnected,even contradictory

thoughts,like the pieces of a poem that hasn't yet taken shape.

When the structure of ideas already in the writer's memory is not

adequately adapted to the current rhetorical task,the sub-process of organiz-

ing takes on the job of helping the writer make meaning,that is,give a

meaningful structure to his.or her ideas.The process of organizing appears

to play an important part in creative thinking and discovery since it is capable

of grouping ideas and forming new concepts.More specifically,the organiz-

ing process allows the writer to identify categories,to search for subordinate

ideas which develop a current topic,and to search for superordinate ideas

which include or subsume the current topic.At another level the process of

organizing also attends to more strictly textual decisions about the presenta-

tion and ordering of the text.That is,writers identify first or last topics,

important ideas,and presentation patterns.However,organizing is much

more than merely ordering points.And it seems clear that all rhetorical deci-

sions and plans for reaching the audience affect the process of organizing

ideas at all levels,because it is often guided by major goals established during

the powerful process of goal-setting.

Goal-setting is indeed a third,little-studied but major,aspect of the

planning process.The goals writers give themselves are both procedural

(e.g.,"Now let's see-a-I want to start out with"energy")and substantive,

often both at the same time(e.g.,"I have to relate this[engineering project]

to the economics[of energy]to show why I'm improving it and why the

372steam turbine needs to be more efficient"or"I want to suggest that-that-

um-the reader should sort of-what-what should one say-the reader

should look at what she is interested in and look at the things that give her

pleasure...").

The most important thing about writing goals is the fact that they are

createdby the writer.Although some well-learned plans and goals may be

drawn intact from long-term memory,most of the writer's goals are gener-

ated,developed,and revised by the same processes that generate and organ-

ize new ideas.And this process goes on throughout composing.Just as goals

lead a writer to generate ideas,those ideas lead to new,more complex goals

which can then integrate content and purpose.

Our own studies on goal setting to date suggest that the act of defining

one's own rhetorical problem and setting goals is an important part of"being

creative"and can account for some important differences between good and