The Ecology of Writing

Abstract

The idea that is a process and that process is a recursive cognitive activity involving certain universal stages (prewriting, writing, revising) seemed quite revolutionary not so many years ago. In 1982, Maxine Hairston hailed the move to a process-centered theory of teaching writing as first sign of a paradigm shift in composition theory (77). But even by then process, not product was slogan of numerous college textbooks, large and small, validated by enclosure within brightly-colored covers with imprimatur of Harper & Row, Macmillan, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Scott, Foresman. So revolution dwindles to dogma. Now, perhaps, time has come for some assessment of benefits and limitations of thinking of as essentially-and simply-a cognitive process. Motivation for paradigm shift in theory perhaps came first from teachers increasingly disenchanted with red-inking errors, delivering lectures on comma splices or on two ways to organize a comparison-contrast essay, and reading alienated and alienating essays written from a list of topic sentences or in five-paragraph format. Reacting against pedagogy that now seemed completely ineffective, we developed methods that required students to concentrate less on form and more on content, that required them to think. We decided to talk about ideas rather than forms in classroom and sent students

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