Summary of The Composing Processes of Unskilled College Writers

This paper presents the findings from a study of the composing processes of five unskilled
college writers. The first part summarizes the goals of the original study, the kinds of data
collected, and the research methods employed. The second part is a synopsis of the study
of Tony, one of the original five case studies. The third part presents a condensed version of
the findings on the composing process and discusses these findings in light of current
pedagogical practice and research design.

Goals of study:
This research addressed three major questions: (1) How do unskilled writers write? (2) Can
their writing processes be analyzed in a systematic, replicable manner? and (3) What does
an increased understanding of their processes suggest about the nature of composing in
general and the manner in which writing is taught in the schools?

In recent years, interest in the composing process has grown. Some authors have shifted in
emphasis in writing research. Opposite to the traditional, large scale studies, there is now
widespread recognition of the need for works of more modest and probing nature works that
attempt to elucidate basic processes. The studies on composing that have been completed
to date are small-scale studies based on the observation of writers engaged in the process
of writing.

The present study was developed as a response to previous works that presented some
limitations. The first limitation is methodological, because narrative descriptions do not
provide enough graphic evidence for the perception of underlying regularities and patterns.
The second limitation is related to students because there is no examination of the
composing process that has dealt with unskilled writers.

Design of the study:

This study took place during the 1975-1976 fall semester at eugenio MAria de Hostos
Community College of the City University of New York. Five students were selected for the
study on the basis of their writing samples that qualified them as unskilled writers and their
willingness to participate. The “content” material they were studying was divided into two
modes: extensive, in which the writer was directed to approach the material in an objective,
impersonal fashion, and reflexive, in which the writer was directed to approach similar
material in an affective, personalized fashion.

Data Analysis:
three kinds of data were collected in this study: the students’ written products, their
composing tapes, and their responses to the interview. This paper reviews only two of the
data sets generated in the study.

Coding the Composing Process: one of the goals of this research was to devise a tool for
describing the movements that occur during composing. The method created in this
research allows the researcher to apprehend a process as it unfolds. It lays out the
movements or behavior sequences in such a way that if patterns within a student´s process
or among a group of students exist, they become apparent.
The Code: The method consists of coding each composing behavior exhibited by the
student and charting each behavior on a continuum. During this study, the coding occurred
after the student had finished composing. It was done by working from the student’s product
and the audiotape. The tape captured what the student said and the sound of the pen
moving across the page. So, they could determine when students were talking, when writing
and when both, or neither.
The major categorical divisions in this coding system are talking, writing and reading, but
there are several types of talking, writing and reading. From this, the following operations
were distinguished:
General planning: organizing our thoughts for writing
Local planning
Global planning
Commenting: Making a comment or judgement about the topic
Interpreting: rephrase the topic
Questioning
Taking leading to writing: voicing ideas of the topic
Talking and writing at the same time
Repeating
Reading related to the topic
Reading related to one’s own written product
Writing silently
Writing aloud
Editing: adding or deleting phrases/ words, change spelling, concerning for appropriate
vocabulary
Periods of silence

From these observable behaviors that occur during composing and from labelling them, this
system provides a way of analyzing the process of writing.

The Continuum:
The second component of this system is the construction of a timeline, with which we can
see the frequency and duration of the composing behaviors and the relation between each
behavior and the process.
In this study, blank charts with lines were designed. These charts can be read by moving
along the timeline, noting which behavior occurs and in what sequence.
The charts do not explain what students wrote, but rather how they wrote. It indicates the
sequence of behaviors that occur from the beginning to the end.

Analyzing Miscues in the Writing Process:

Miscue analysis is based on Goodman’s model of the reading process which is a tool for
studying what students do when they read.
In this present study, miscue analysis was adapted from Goodman's model in order to
provide insight into the writing process. Since students composed aloud, two types of oral
behaviors were available for study: encoding processes or what students spoke while they
were writing and decoding processes or what students "read" (Here reading refers to
students' verbalizing words or endings even when the symbols for those words are missing
or only minimally present) after they had finished writing. When a discrepancy existed
between encoding or decoding and what was on the paper, it was referred to as miscue.
 - For encoding, the miscue analysis was carried out in the following manner:
(1) The students' written products were typed, preserving the original style and spelling.
(2) What students said while composing aloud was checked against the written products;
discrepancies were noted on the paper wherever they occurred.
(3) The discrepancies were categorized and counted.
Three miscue categories were derived for encoding:
(1) Speaking complete ideas but omitting certain words during writing.
(2) Pronouncing words with plural markers or other suffixes completely but omitting these
endings during writing.
(3) Pronouncing the desired word but writing a homonym, an approximation of the word or a
personal abbreviation of the word on paper.
- For decoding, similar procedures were used, this time comparing the words of the
written product with what the student "read" orally. When a discrepancy occurred, it
was noted. The discrepancies were then categorized and counted.
Four miscue categories were derived for decoding:
(1) "Reading in" missing words or word endings;
(2) Deleting words or word endings;
(3) "Reading" the desired word rather than the word on the page;
(4) "Reading" abbreviations and misspellings as though they were written correctly.

Synopsis of a Case Study

Tony was a 20 year old ex-marine raised in New York. He was able to speak Spanish as he
was Puerto Rican but he considered English as his native language.
Behavior: The composing style sheets provide an overview of the observable behaviors
exhibited by Tony during the composing process. The most salient feature of Tony's
composing process was its recursiveness. Tony rarely produced a sentence without
stopping to reread either a part or the whole. So, his observable behaviors were talking that
led to writing which led to reading which led to planning which again led to writing.
Editing occurred consistently in all sessions. During the intervals between drafts, Tony read
his written work, assessed his writing, planned new phrasings, transitions or endings, read
the directions and the question over, and edited once again.
Fluency: This study provides a numerical analysis of Tony’s writing performance. It makes it
possible to compare not only the amount of time spent on the various composing operations
but also the relative fluency. He produced fewer words in the prewriting and writing of the
extensive mode. Writing increased in the reflexive mode
Strategies: Tony exhibited a number of strategie that served him as a writer. Given any topic,
the first operation he performed was to focus in and narrow down the topic. He did this by
rephrasing the topic and linked it up with something in his own experience. In this way he
established a connection between the topic and himself. Then, at this point, he felt ready to
write.
Level of Language Use: Tony employed a pattern of classifying or dividing the topic into
manageable pieces and then using one or both of the divisions as the basis for narration. His
writing reflected a low level of generality and no formal principles were used to organize the
narratives. He was able to maintain the extensive/ reflexive distinction. He recognized when
he was asked for an opinion or to discuss concepts or ideas. But, the more distance
between the topic and himself, the more difficulty he experienced, and the more repetitive
his process became. When the topic was nearer to him, the process became more fluent
and smoother, with less pauses.
Editing: Tony spent a great deal of his composing time editing. Most of this time was spent
proofreading rather than changing, rephrasing, adding, or evaluating the substantive parts of
the discourse.
Miscue Analysis: Tony’s completed drafts often retained a look of incompleteness. Words
remained misspelled, syntax was uncorrected or overcorrected, suffixes, plural markers, and
verb endings were missing, and often words or complete phrases were omitted. Tony
consistently voiced complete sentences when composing aloud but only transcribed partial
sentences. When he first read looking for meaning, he did not seem to SEE what was
missing as regards form. When reading for form, he tried to apply the rules he learnt at
school that were very complicated to use, so he ended up using them partially or in a wrong
way.
Summary: Tony concluded the composing process with unresolved stylistic and syntactic
problems. The conclusion here is not that Tony can't write, or that Tony doesn't know how to
write, or that Tony needs to learn more rules: Tony is a writer with a highly consistent and
deeply embedded recursive process. What he needs are teachers who can interpret that
process for him, who can see through the tangles in the process just as he sees meaning
beneath the tangles in his prose, and who can intervene in such a way that untangling his
composing process leads him to create better prose.
(TANGLE: TWIST TOGETHER INTO A CONFUSED MASS- ENREDO)

Summary of the findings:

A major finding was that all of the students studied displayed consistent composing
processes - the behavioral subsequences prewriting, writing, and editing appeared in
sequential patterns that were recognizable across writing sessions and across students.
It was thought that the written products of basic writers looked arbitrary and that observers
assumed that students’ approach was also arbitrary. But, on closer observation, very little
appears random in how they write. The students observed had stable composing processes
which they used whenever they were presented with a writing task.
Among the findings, we are going to mention three major aspects of composing: prewriting,
writing, and editing.
Prewriting: when not given specific prewriting instructions, the students in this study began
writing within the first few minutes. The average time they spent in prewriting sessions was 4
minutes. Even when they expressed that they had read the topic and directions given a few
times and had no idea what to write, they began writing, without any secure sense of where
they were going. offer their first sentence was a rephrasing of the question in the topic. The
conclusion here is that certain strategies (such as focusing in and narrowing the topic) take
place in a short span of time, and that the developing and clarifying of ideas occur when they
see those words written on paper, so that they can reflect upon, make changes and develop
those ideas.

Writing: This study revealed that students wrote in a “back and forth” manner making it look
like a recursive feature: at one moment students were writing, moving their ideas and their
discourse forward; at the next they were backtracking, rereading, and digesting what had
been written.
Recursive movements appeared many times during the writing process.
The conclusions here are that although the students produced inadequate products, they
nevertheless seemed to understand and perform some of the crucial operations involved in
composing with skill.

Editing: Soon after students began writing their first drafts, they began to edit. However, after
the students’ attempts to correct their work, serious syntactic and stylistic problems
remained in their finished drafts. Two conclusions in this regard are appropriate here:
1. Editing prematurely breaks down the rhythms generated by thinking and writing. It makes
students lose track of their ideas.
2. When editing prematurely students look for errors and become locked into the few words
on the page. They seem to lack a conception of editing that includes flexibility, suspended
judgment, consideration of possibilities, and the reworking of ideas.

Implications for Teaching and Research:

One major implication of this study pertains to teachers' conceptions of unskilled writers.
The results of this study suggest that teachers may first need to identify which characteristic
components of each student's process facilitate writing and which inhibit it before further
teaching takes place.

A second implication of this study is that the composing process is now amenable to a
replicable mode of representation as a sequence of codable behaviors.
behaviors.T he composing style sheets provide researchers and teachers with the first
demonstrable way of documenting how individual students write. Such a tool may have
diagnostic as well as research benefits.

Standardized (introduces a coding system for observing the composing process that can be
replicated), categorical (labels specific, observable behaviors so that types of composing
movements are revealed), concise (presents the entire sequence of composing movements
on one or two pages), structural (provides a way of determining how parts of the process
relate to the whole), and diachronic (presents the sequences of movements that occur
during composing as they unfold in time).