Process Writing

JoAnn Miller, Macmillan Publishers joannmillerj@gmail.com

Differences between speech and writing

Speech

• Universal

• Dialect variations

• Voices and body language

• Pauses and intonation

• Spontaneous and unplanned

• Pronunciation

• Listener is present, feedback

• Informal and repetitive

• Compound sentences (and’s and but’s)

Writing

• Not universal

• Standard forms

• Only page for expression

• Punctuation

• Usually planned

• Spelling

• Only one chance to communicate

• More formal and compact

Complex sentences common

History

• Shift in emphasis from the product of

writing activities (the finished text) to

ways in which text can be developed

– from ‘what have you written?', ‘what

grade is it worth?’

– to ‘how will you write it?', ‘how can it

be improved?’

• Beginning at the end of the 1960s and

continuing through the 70s and 80s,

composition was investigated as a

cognitive process

– began to be reflected in L1 freshman

composition

– filtered eventually into ESL writing

textbooks.

• ESL began investigations of L2 writing

informed by the insights of L1

What is process writing?

• All writing is a creative act

– requires time and positive feedback to

be done well

• Teacher doesn’t just assign a writing topic

and receive the finished product for

correction with no intervention in the

writing process itself.

Why use process writing?

• To address the needs of our changing

society,

– teachers must prepare students for

the challenges of today's world.

• Writing is a powerful tool

– can influence others and clarify one's

own thoughts.

• Teaching the writing process can give

students the key to unlocking this

powerful tool.

Teacher / Student Roles

• Teacher

– Move away from being a marker to a

reader

– Respond to content more than form.

• Students

– encouraged to think about audience

– realize what they put down on paper

can be changed

The role of grammar

“Grammar is important—but as a tool, a means, and not as an end in itself.”

Assumptions about writing

• Writing is a thinking process

• Writing is a form of problem-solving

• Ideas are revealed during the act of

writing itself.

Process Writing

JoAnn Miller, Macmillan Publishers joannmillerj@gmail.com

The stages of the process

• Pre-writing

• Focusing ideas

• First Draft

• Revision

• Editing

• Publishing

Stage One: Pre-writing

• Stimulate students' creativity

– get them thinking how to approach a

writing topic.

• Most important

– flow of ideas

– not always necessary to produce much

(if any) written work. • magazines/newspapers/periodicals/CD-ROM

• conduct an interview based on your topic

• media-radio, TV, internet

• experiences

• movies and documentaries

• music

• visual art

• dreams

• memories

• discussion and brainstorming

• responding to literature

• role playing

• research

• imagination

• personal interest inventories

• class interest inventory

Pre-writing activities

• free writing

• “journalling “

• image streaming

– transplant yourself

to another place or time and describe

from a first person point of view)

• lists

• visualization

• brainstorming

– individually or as a group

• webbing / mapping / clustering

• graphic organizers

• topic or word chart

Stage Two: Focusing

• Students write without much attention to

the accuracy of their work or the

organization.

• Most important feature is meaning.

• Concentrate on the content of the

writing.

– Is it coherent?

– Is there anything missing?

-- Anything extra? Focusing activities

• Fast writing

– students write quickly for five to ten

minutes without worrying about correct

language or punctuation.

– Later this text is revised.

• Group compositions

– Working together in groups, sharing ideas.

– involves other skills (speaking in

particular.)

• Changing Viewpoints

– follow a role-play or storytelling activity.

– students choose different points of view

– discuss what character would write in a

diary, witness statement, etc.

• Varying form

– different text types are selected.

– how would the text be different as a

letter, or a newspaper article, etc.

Stage Three: First Draft

Ideas are composed on paper.

– focus on the content, not the

mechanics.

– ideas should flow easily and the words

be written quickly.

Questions for writers

• What is my purpose for writing this

piece?

Process Writing

JoAnn Miller, Macmillan Publishers joannmillerj@gmail.com

• What will my audience want to know about

my topic?

• How can I best arrange my information?

• What are the main ideas I want to

present?

• What details can I add to support my

main ideas?

• What will make a good lead to catch the

reader's attention?

• How can I end the piece effectively?

Stage Four: Revision

Revising is . . . • Making decisions about how

to improve writing

• Looking at writing from a different point

of view

• Picking places where writing could be

clearer, more interesting, more

informative and more convincing.

• It's important to note that revision is not

editing for mechanics and spelling.

• “A cultivation of a sense of responsibility

for being one’s own critic”

• Writer must realize he/she will be read

by other people, not just graded Conferencing

• Conferencing can be with another student

or with the teacher.

• The conferencing will involve each person

rereading and sharing ideas that will

enhance and clarify the writing.

• Students should be taught to conference

effectively.

Stages

• First reading:

– Put your pen down and read the

composition for content

– Comment on content

• Second reading

– Pick up pen

– Comment on writing, communication,

not picky details

Revising Activities A.R.R.R. - four types of changes. Adding: What else does the reader need to

know?

Rearranging: Is the information in the most

logical order?

Removing: What extra details are in this piece

of writing?

Replacing: What words could be replaced by

clearer or stronger expressions?

R.A.G. - Read Around Group (3-5 writers / group

•Anonymous compositions

•Everyone reads each paper once to get a general

idea. Nothing is written on papers.

•On separate paper, graded on a scale of 1-4 and

write comments for later discussion

•Same group: second reading. More detail.

Stage Five: Editing

• Proofread for mechanics and grammar.

– beginning stages of writing, focus on

one area at a time to edit

– More advanced students can focus on

more areas.

• can conference with other

students and provide proofreading

support for each other

Editing Activities

• Self Edit

– Read your own work backwards.

– Read the last sentence, then the

second

last sentence, etc.

– Does each sentence make sense when

you read it on it's own?

– Do you see or hear any errors in the

sentence?

• Peer Edit

– Checklist for students

Process Writing

JoAnn Miller, Macmillan Publishers joannmillerj@gmail.com

General Editing Strategies

• See errors as friends, not enemies

• Use errors in students’ writing to plan

ahead

• Learn to expect errors that regularly

occur at certain stages in a student’s

learning

• Devise a system for indicating some or all

of the errors in the student’s second or

third drafts.

Stage Six: Publishing

• Students prepare final version

• Then they need to have response to their

writing.

– helps clarify their work, generate new

ideas, and most importantly validate

the piece of writing.

– involves sharing a piece of writing with

an audience.

Where to publish?

• Author's chair

– Students sit on a designated chair for

"authors" and read their writing to an

audience.

• On-Line publishing

– An on-line magazine

• Blogging (see bibliography)

• Printed class newspaper

• Bulletin Board

• Tape oral versions

Process Writing

JoAnn Miller, Macmillan Publishers joannmillerj@gmail.com Bibliography

Antifaiff, G. “Implementing the Writing Process”. Gloria’s Website. Qu'Appelle Valley School Division, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. http://www3.sk.sympatico.ca/fiss/ (link not working)

Bello, T. ( 1997) Improving ESL Learners' Writing Skills. ERIC Digest. ERIC Identifier: ED409746. http://www.ericfacility.net/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed409746.html (link not working)

Campbell, Aaron Patric. Weblogs for Use with ESL Classes, http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Campbell-Weblogs.html

Furneaux, C. (1998) “Process Writing”. in Johnson, K & H Johnson (eds.) 1998 Encyclopedic Dictionary of Applied Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell, pp 257-260. ISBN 0 631 18089 3.

Jarvis, D. J. “The Process Writing Method”. The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. VIII, No. 7, July 2002. http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Jarvis-Writing.html

Lipkewich, A.E., Mazurenko, R. (1999) “ABC’s of the Writing Process: A Universal Process for any writing task.” Edmonton Public Schools, Canada. http://www.angelfire.com/wi/writingprocess/

Losh, E., Strenski, E. (2001) Correction Symbols for UCI Writing Programs. UC Irvine's Lower-Division Writing Requirements. http://eee.uci.edu/faculty/strenski/transfer/symbols.html

Louisiana Department of Education. (2002) “Peer Editing”. http://206.218.128.2/laintech/peer.htm (link not working)

Myers, S. (1997) “Teaching Writing as a Process and Teaching Sentence-Level Syntax: Reformulation as ESL Composition Feedback” TESL-EJ. Vol. 2, No. 4 (June). http://www.kyoto-su.ac.jp/information/tesl-ej/ej08/a2.html

North Central Regional Educational Laboratory. “Process Writing”. Pathways to School Improvement. http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/methods/instrctn/in5lk11.htm

Raimes, A. (1983) Techniques in Teaching Writing. OUP.

Stanley, G. “Approaches to process writing”. Teaching English. British Council, BBC. http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/write/process_write.shtml

White, R., Arndt, V. (1991) Process Writing. Longman. Sample Lessons:

Antifaiff, G. “Mini-Lessons” in “Implementing the Writing Process”. Gloria’s Website. Qu'Appelle Valley School Division, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. http://www3.sk.sympatico.ca/fiss/mini-les.htm (link not working)

Peachey, N. “Developing writing skills: A news report.” Teaching English. British Council, BBC. http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/plans/newsreport/news.shtml

Blogging:

Technorati, http://www.technorati.com/about/

Weblogs for Use with ESL Classes, by Aaron Patric Campbell, http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Campbell-Weblogs.html

Mr. Horne’s ESL Class Blog, http://horne.ws/class

Huffaker, D. (2005). Let Them Blog: Using Weblogs to Promote Listening in K-12 Education. In L. T. W. Hin and R. Subramaniam (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Literacy in Technology at the K-12 Level. Hershey, PA: Idea Group. http://www.davehuffaker.com/papers/Huffaker2005_LetThemBlog.pdf

Blogger.com (Google): http://new.blogger.com

Edublogs: http://edublogs.org/

Education & Tech, Learning, Knowledge, Tech, Social Media, TonNet, http://www.miltonramirez.com/2008/10/web-20-should-be-used-more-often-in.html

Journalism 2 at HCRHS, http://central.hcrhs.k12.nj.us/journ2/

Bloglines: www.bloglines.com