hayes 3/7

<!-- [if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>7.8 磅</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>2</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:SpaceForUL/> <w:BalanceSingleByteDoubleByteWidth/> <w:DoNotLeaveBackslashAlone/> <w:ULTrailSpace/> <w:DoNotExpandShiftReturn/> <w:AdjustLineHeightInTable/> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:UseFELayout/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!-- [if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!-- [if !mso]> <object classid="clsid:38481807-CA0E-42D2-BF39-B33AF135CC4D" id=ieooui> </object> <style> st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style> <![endif]--><!-- [if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:普通表格; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]-->

poor writers.17 As we will argue in the final section of this paper,the act of

developing and refining one's own goals is not limited to a"pre-writing

stage"in the composing process,but is intimately bound up with the on-

going,moment-to-moment process of composing.

Translating

This is essentially the process of putting ideas into visible language.We

have chosen the term translate for this process over other terms such as

"transcribe"or"write"in order to emphasize the peculiar qualities of the

task.The information generated in planning may be represented in a variety

of symbol systems other than language,such as imagery or kinetic sensations.

Trying to capture the movement of a deer on ice in language is clearly a kind

of translation.Even when the planning process represents one's thought in

words,that representation is unlikely to be in the elaborate syntax of written

English.So the writer's task is to translate a meaning,which may be em-

bodied in key words(what Vygotsky calls words"saturatedwith sense")and

organized in a complex network of relationships,into a linear piece of writ-

ten English.

The process of translating requires the writer to juggle all the special

demands of written English,which Ellen Nold has described as lying on a

spectrum from generic and formal demands through syntactic and lexical

ones down to the motor tasks of forming letters.For children and inexperi-

enced writers,this extra burden may overwhelm the limited capacity of

short-term memory.18 If the writer must devote conscious attention to de-

mands such as spelling and grammar,the task of translating can interfere with

the more global process of planning what one wants to say.Or one can sim-

ply ignore some of the constraints of written English.One path produces

poor or local planning,the other produces errors,and both,as Mina

Shaughnessy showed,lead to frustration for the writer.19

A CognitiveProcessTheory 373CollegeCompositionand Communication

In some of the most exciting and extensive research in this area,Marlene

Scardamaliaand Carl Bereiter have looked at the ways children cope with the

cognitive demands of writing.Well-learned skills,such as sentence construc-

tion,tend to become automatic and lost to consciousness.Because so little of

the writing process is automatic for children,they must devote conscious

attention to a variety of individual thinking tasks which adults perform

quickly and automatically.Such studies,which trace the development of a

given skill over several age groups,can show us the hidden components of an

adult process as well as show us how children learn.For example,these

studies have been able to distinguish children's ability to handle idea com-

plexity from their ability to handle syntactic complexity;that is,they demon-

strate the difference between seeing complex relationships and translating

them into appropriate language.In another series of studies Bereiter and

Scardamaliashowed how children learn to handle the translation process by

adapting,then eventually abandoning,the discourse conventions of conversa-

tion.20

Reviewing

As you can see in Figure 1,reviewing depends on two sub-processes:

evaluating and revising.Reviewing,itself,may be a conscious process in

which writers choose to read what they have written either as a springboard

to further translating or with an eye to systematically evaluating and/or revis-

ing the text.These periods of planned reviewing frequently lead to new cy-

cles of planning and translating.However,the reviewing process can also

occur as an unplanned action triggered by an evaluation of either the text or

one's own planning(that is,people revise written as well as unwritten

thoughts or statements).The sub-processes of revising and evaluating,along

with generating,share the special distinction of being able to interrupt any

other process and occur at any time in the act of writing.

The Monitor

As writers compose,they also monitor their current process and progress.

The monitor functions as a writing strategist which determines when the

writer moves from one process to the next.For example,it determines how

long a writer will continue generating ideas before attempting to write prose.

Our observations suggest that this choice is determined both by the writer's

goals and by individual writing habits or styles.As an example of varied com-

posing styles,writers appear to range from people who try to move to

polished prose as quickly as possible to people who choose to plan the entire

discourse in detail before writing a word.Bereiter and Scardamalia have

shown that much of a child's difficulty and lack of fluency lies in their lack of

an"executive routine"which would promote switching between processes or

encourage the sustained generation of ideas.21 Children for example,possess

374A CognitiveProcessTheory

the skills necessary to generate ideas,but lack the kind of monitor which tells

them to"keep using"that skill and generate a little more.

Implicationsof a CognitiveProcessModel

A model such as the one presented here is first and foremost a tool for

researchers to think with.By giving a testable shape and definition to our

observations,we have tried to pose new questions to be answered.For

example,the model identifies three major processes(plan,translate,and

review)and a number of sub-processes available to the writer.And yet the

first assertion of this cognitive process theory is that people do not march

through these processes in a simple 1,2,3 order.Although writers may

spend more time in planning at the beginning of a composing session,plan-

ning is not a unitary stage,but a distinctive thinking process which writers

use over and over during composing.Furthermore,it is used at all levels,

whether the writer is making a global plan'for the whole text or a local repre-

sentation of the meaning of the next sentence.This then raises a question:if

the process of writing is not a sequence of stages but a set of optional actions,

how are these thinking processes in our repertory actually orchestrated or

organized as we write?The second point of our cognitive process theory

offers one answer to this question.

2.The processes of writing are hierarchically organized,with

component processes embedded within other components.

A hierarchical system is one in which a large working system such as com-

posing can subsume other less inclusive systems,such as generating ideas,

which in turn contain still other systems,and so on.Unlike those in a linear

organization,the events in a hierarchical process are not fixed in a rigid or-

der.A given process may be called upon at any time and embedded within

another process or even within another instance of itself,in much the same

way we embed a subject clause within a larger clause or a picture within a

picture.

For instance,a writer trying to construct a sentence(that is,a writer in the

act of translating)may run into a problem and call in a condensed version of

the entire writing process to help her out(e.g.,she might generate and organ-

ize a new set of ideas,express them in standard writing English,and review

this new alternative,all in order to further her current goal of translating

This particular kind of embedding,in which an entire process is embedded

within a larger instance of itself,is known technically in linguistics as recur-

sion.However,it is much more common for writers to simply embed indi-

vidual processes as needed-to call upon them as sub-routines to help carry

out the task at hand.

375CollegeCompositionand Communication

Writing processes may be viewed as the writer's tool kit.In using the tools,

the writer is not constrained to use them in a fixed order or in stages.And

using any tool may create the need to use another.Generating ideas may

require evaluation,as may writing sentences.And evaluation may force the

writer to think up new ideas.

Figure 2 demonstrates the embedded processes of a writer trying to com-

pose(translate)the first sentence of a paper.After producing and reviewing

two trial versions of the sentence,he invokes a brief sequence of planning,

translating,and reviewing-all in the service of that vexing sentence.In our

example the writer is trying to translate some sketchily represented meaning

about"the first day of class"into prose,and a hierarchical process allows him

to embed a variety of processes as sub-routines within his overall attempt to

translate.

(Plan)Ok,firstdayof class.....just jot down a possibility.

(Translate)Can you imagine what yourfirst day of a collegeEnglish classwill belike?

(Review)I don'tlike thatsentence,it'slousy-sounds like theme talk.

(Review)Oh Lord-I get closer to it andI get closer-

(Plan)Couldplayup the sex thinga little bit

(Translate)When you walk into an English class the first day you'll be

interested,you'll bethinking about boys,tasks,and professor-

(Review)That's banal-that's awful.

Figure2.An Exampleof Embedding

A process that is hierarchical and admits many embedded sub-processes is

powerful because it is flexible:it lets a writer do a great deal with only a few

relatively simple processes-the basic ones being plan,translate,and re-

view.This means,for instance,that we do not need to define"revision"as a

unique stage in composing,but as a thinking process that can occur at any

time a writer chooses to evaluate or revise his text or his plans.As an impor-

tant part of writing,it constantly leads to new planning or a"re-vision"of

what one wanted to say.

Embedding is a basic,omni-present feature of the writing process even

though we may not be fully conscious of doing it.However,a theory of

composing that only recognized embedding wouldn't describe the real com-

376A CognitiveProcessTheory

plexity of writing.It wouldn't explain why writers choose to invoke the pro-

cesses they do or how they know when they've done enough.To return to

Iee Odell's question,what guides the writers'decisions and choices and gives

an overall purposeful structure to composing?The third point of the theory

is an attempt to answer this question.

3.Writing is a goal-directed process.In the act of composing,writers

create a hierarchical network of goals and these in turn guide the

writing process.

This proposition is the keystone of the cognitive process theory we are

proposing-and yet it may also seem somewhat counter-intuitive According

to many writers,including our subjects,writing often seems a serendipitous

experience,an act of discovery.People start out writing without knowing

exactly where they will end up;yet they agree that writing is a purposeful act.

For example,our subjects often report that their writing process seemed

quite disorganized,even chaotic,as they worked,and yet their protocols re-

veal a coherent underlying structure.How,then,does the writing process

manage to seem so unstructured,open-minded,and exploratory("I don't

know what I mean until I see what I say")and at the same time possess its

own underlying coherence,direction,or purpose?

One answer to this question lies in the fact that people rapidly forget many

of their own local working goals once those goals have been satisfied.This is

why thinking aloud protocols tell us things retrospection doesn't.22 A second

answer lies in the nature of the goals themselves,which fall into two distinc-

tive categories:process goals and content goals.Process goals are essentially

the instructions people give themselves about how to carry out the process of

writing(e.g.,"Let's doodle a little bit.""So...,write an introduction.""I'll

go back to that later.").Good writers often give themselves many such in-

structions and seem to have greater conscious control over their own process

than the poorer writers we have studied.Content goals and plans,on the

other hand,specify all things the writer wants to say or to do to an audience.

Some goals,usually ones having to do with organization,can specify both

content and process,as in,"I want to open with a statement about political

views."In this discussion we will focus primarily on the writer's content

goals.

The most striking thing about a writer's content goals is that they grow into

an increasingly elaborate network of goals and sub-goals as the writer com-

poses.Figure 3(page 378)shows the network one writer had created during

four minutes of composing.Notice how the writer moves from a very

abstract goal of"appealing to a broad range in intellect"to a more opera-

tional definition of that goal,i.e.,"explain things simply."The eventual plan

to"write an introduction"is a reasonable,if conventional,response to all

377

CollegeCompositionand Communication

three top-level goals.And it too is developed with a set of alternative sub-

goals.Notice also how this network is hierarchicalin the sense that new goals

operate as a functional part of the more inclusive goals above them.

These networks have three important features:

1.They are created as people compose,throughout the entire process.

This means that they do not emerge full-blown as the result of"pre-writing."

Rather,as we will show,they are created in close interaction with ongoing

exploration and the growing text.

2.The goal-directed thinking that produces these networks takes many

forms.That is,goal-setting is not simply the act of stating a well-defined end

point such as"I want to write a two-page essay."Goal-directed thinking often

involves describing one's starting point("They're not going to be disposed to

hear what I'm saying"),or laying out a plan for reaching a goal("I'd better

explain things simply"),or evaluating one's success("That's banal-that's aw-

ful").Such statements are often setting implicit goals,e.g.,"Don't be banal."

In order to understand a writer's goals,then,we must be sensitive to the

broad range of plans,goals,and criteria that grow out of goal-directed think-

ing.

Goal directed thinking is intimately connected with discovery.Consider

for example,the discovery process of two famous explorers-Cortez,silent

378

on his peak in Darien,and that bear who went over the mountain.Both,

indeed,discovered the unexpected.However,we should note that both

chose to climb a long hill to do so.And it is this sort of goal-directed search

for the unexpected that we often see in writers as they attempt to explore

and consolidate their knowledge.Furthermore,this search for insight leads to

new,more adequate goals,which in turn guide further writing.

The beginning of an answer to Odell's question,"What guides compos-

ing?"lies here.The writer's own set of self-made goals guide composing,but