Landmark Essays...Graves, Perl, Flower & Hayes, Sommers) - For Feb 20

All of these essays were very informative. The first thing that I realized was that a case study is a ton of work...(not to say that I thought it would be easy) but it seemed that the essay by Graves on the writing process of seven year old children. I thought the "recording of a writing episode" was extremely complicated (and this would have been "pre-technological boom" that we have seen in the late 90's to now). The amount of data that was recorded from one event was phenomenal. It was also interesting to see the different processes of the "case-study" seven year old when it comes to writing and one of the more interesting points made refers to the idea that "children write for unique reasons, employ highly individual coping strategies, and view writing in ways peculiar to their own person." (Graves 35). In other words - a child's composition practices are complex indeed. The complexity of a case study was further demonstrated in Perl's piece discussing the composing processes. The system of "symbols/codes" used in this study was, to me, far too complex. Though this system used was very complicated, it did yield very good results when referring to being able to diagnose the different stages of writing. I found it interesting that the "unskilled writer" read the directions and the question of the prompt twice. Most "unskilled" or "poor" writers would typically quickly read the prompt and then begin to form an argument without a clear comprehension of the question. A skilled writer would read, reread, and then potentially reread the question yet again to make sure that he/she attained a clear understanding. The list on page 44 listed the different information that could be gathered from the charts due to the method in which the information was transcribed. Another interesting facet was the idea of "miscue analysis." I wasn't too sure, but the way I interpreted this idea was that sometimes students will read a passage and then "develop their own" meaning, so that it makes sense to them...when the meaning that was developed was never actually in the text. As I continued to read, I learned that it also applies to a student's writing, which goes against the notion that I currently believe to be true. I strongly believe that everyone, students and professors, typically compose written text with greater attention to grammatical structure and a higher level of coherence than when they speak. This idea apparently does not hold true to students who are "unskilled writers" as according to the data from the miscue analysis table on Tony, he would speak, and then commit certain grammatical mistakes when writing his ideas down. Another interesting fact that I found was in the essay "The Cognition of Discover: Defining a Rhetorical Problem" by Flower & Hayes, the idea of reflection and thought when approaching a prompt between what they define as novice and expert writers. The all the aspects of a rhetorical problem were clearly addressed (as exhibited by the table) by the expert writers numerous times to help make their points clear, whereas the novice writers would only address certain parts of the problem. This fits a problem that (at least according to my high school English teacher) plagues most high school writers (who for the purposes of this argument would fit the "novice" writer description). Students will only answer "part" of the question, typically the part that he/she feels the most comfortable with, and assume that they have effectively answered the entire prompt. Finally, the piece that discussed revision made a point that I could very easily relate to. Page 78, all of the "revision strategies of student writers" make very clear sense to me (probably because when asked what my idea of revision/rewriting, I used similar vocabulary. However, many of the statements made by experienced writers on revision also made sense to me, especially the one that starts "I rewrite as I write..." When I was writing papers for my high school English class, I would write the paper completely and then revise. In college, I have found that as I write a paper, I'll be more "actively engaged with the text and will revise my writing right after I type it.