Writing, because it allows us to represent to ourselves our learning, our ways of making meaning, teaches us the most profound lesson about how we read, write, and use language, about what it means to know. (Zamel, 1992, p. 481)
This chapter proposes to set the context of investigating written learner English at university level. A descriptive and analytical undertaking, such a project needs to be informed by general second language acquisition theory, research design considerations and specifically by the results of research in writing pedagogy. I will present the theoretical framework of my study and then review the literature that has shaped the present project.
The chapter is divided into six sections. In the first, a general introduction to second language acquisition (SLA) research and writing theory will set the context of the issues considered in this dissertation (1.1). The notions and practice of product- and process-oriented writing instruction will feature in the next section (1.2). Narrowing down the scope of investigation, the following section aims to systematize what is known about the practice of writing pedagogy (assignments, course goals, and writing instruction procedures, in 1.3). Focusing on the interaction between teacher and learner, and among students, section 1.4 will elaborate on revision strategies, and the role of peer revision. The literature review will then present the theory and practice of feedback students receive on their scripts (1.5). The concluding section (1.6) will synthesize the most important strands of the literature.
I hope that after this discussion, the present research agenda for integrating learner writing development with the method and findings of corpus linguistics will be made explicit.
A similar proposal was made by Brumfit (1995) in the discussion of teacher professionalism and research. Offering his views on British educational policy and on the needs for integrating global SLA research with local observations, he suggested that for classroom practice descriptions to be significant, one needs to consider the common variables in different language teaching contexts (p. 41). Specifically, Brumfit suggested that educational research needs a systematic program, rather than focusing on fragmented projects.
Three strands of investigation were suggested (Brumfit, 1995, pp. 39-40). The first ought to describe classroom practice so that events, attitudes and policies are spelled out. The second should take on to explain what was found in the first phase: drawing on the data gathered, theory needs to construct models to be able to adequately structure that knowledge. Third, studies directed at the pedagogical processes need to extract what ought to take place in education from what is happening there. Brumfit argued that these three approaches will enable empirical research to establish the program orientation.
For the field to arrive at valid conclusions on the acquirer of language, Larsen-Freeman (1991) pointed out the importance of studying and describing the learner. Reviewing research into the differential success of acquiring a second language (L2), she critiqued findings related to variables such as learner age, language learning aptitude, attitude and motivation, personality, cognitive issues and learning strategies. She concluded that future research and language education will need to corroborate findings and test such hypotheses as the following: Learning is a gradual process; it is not linear; unless learners are ready to proceed to new phases of learning, no long-term acquisition takes place. In a discussion of instructed SLA research, Larsen-Freeman and Long (1991) called attention to the need to study the ways in which instruction affects SLA. For this process to be studied, they suggested that linguistic input sequence and frequency have to be operationalized, together with those tasks that learners are exposed to in the classroom. By studying these variables, SLA theory can integrate action research findings initiated by the teacher (Larsen-Freeman & Long 1991, p. 327), a proposal similar to that made by Ellis (1995; 1998) and Dörnyei (1997).
In many ways, the tasks the language educator faces in teaching and in initiating research and the tasks in which learners perform have common features. Both aim to integrate what is known with what is being learned about the situation or the language item being studied. Yet there are crucial differences, too. In a discussion of the interface between language learning theory and practice, Prabhu; (1995) offered a four-component model to describe this relationship. These are the ideational (concepts and processes of language learning), operational (pedagogical practice), ideological (social variables), and managerial (pedagogical decision-making). As far as the operational module is concerned, Prabhu pointed out the contrast between teaching and learning, saying that while teaching can be planned and sequenced, learning follows a route based on mental processes that are difficult to observe.
The Monitor Hypothesis is concerned with language production--the ability to use language is a result of competence based on acquisition, while learning acts to enable speakers and writers to "change the output of the acquired system before [they] speak or write" (Krashen, 1985, p. 2). For this monitor (or editor) to operate, Krashen hypothesized, the user needs to be aware of the importance of accuracy, and the rule stating correct forms should be present. The Affective Filter Hypothesis states that for comprehensible input to become intake, a mental block should be lowered: this can occur when the speaker is self-confident, and when a potential failure to produce the necessary language is not seen as a risk. Krashen added that for the filter to be down, the speaker must focus on the message. This model of language acquisition was partly based on Krashen's survey and evaluation of theoretical work in applied linguistics, and on investigations of skill-specific empirical research, also motivating subsequent work on the implications of the hypothesis in language education. Particularly relevant of these studies is his summary of writing research (Krashen, 1984) and a recommendation for a reading-based program (Krashen, 1993).
In the writing study, Krashen (1984) hypothesized that his generic SLA hypothesis of comprehensible input held for the development of writing skills, suggesting that extended reading was necessary for organizational and grammatical improvement to occur. He analyzed a wealth of case studies that confirmed the hypothesis: the acts of planning, rereading, scanning, revising for clarification occurred significantly more often and with better results in good writers who also reported pleasure in reading. Also, while less able writers were shown to have much more difficulty in transferring what is known as writer-based prose to reader-based prose, more apt writers had less difficulty to consider readers' needs. Krashen concluded that although formal instruction of sentence-level rules can help improvement in writing, for significant and successful writing development to occur, this may only be a complement to receiving comprehensible input via reading.
In the reading-focused work, Krashen (1993) presented the framework and application of a program that allows the extensive use of what he called "free voluntary reading." Investigating the relationship between writing instruction and learning, he reported that because the rules of formal writing are far too complicated to learn, style does not result from more writing practice but from more reading. Opposing the view that "we learn to write by actually writing" (Krashen, 1993, p. 73) he claimed that improved writing quality, and the ensuing discovery of one's own style, is a result of frequent reading.
Particularly influential was the work of Hayes and Flower (1980) and Flower and Hayes (1981), who developed a cognitive theory of writing processes, eliciting information directly from writers via think-aloud protocols and observations (Grabe & Kaplan, 1996, p. 91). They proposed a model that was based on three tenets:
One result of this research was that the use of protocols came under heavy criticism: it was argued that the validity of the model that relied on writers aiming to explain what they were doing while they were engaged in writing was limited. In response to the need for theory building and for validating theory in research, Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987) offered a new perspective: instead of bringing together factors characteristic of novice and expert writers, they suggested that different models can describe different levels and contexts. Basically, their two-process theory aimed to explain how and why differences occur in inexperienced and experienced writers' performance.
Two models make up the theory. The first is called "knowledge-telling," which involves the processes of inexperienced writers, and the second is "knowledge-transforming." In both, the writer considers three main factors: knowledge of content, knowledge of discourse, and ideas of a writing assignment. However, the first is primarily a step-by-step operation that is engaged as the writer collects material and lexis, whereas the second includes the writer's identification of a unique problem and goal so that the writing becomes essentially a process to solve the rhetorical problem. The first model describes the less experienced writer, whereas the second the expert writer. How one proceeds from one level to another, however, was not shown explicitly.
According to Silva (1990) the development and pedagogical application of these cognitive models meant a decreasing concern with error in English as a Second Language (ESL) and EFL. The emerging paradigm of the process approach called for a much more positive and encouraging setting, a workshop-like environment (p. 15). Still, as Leki noted (1991), contrastive rhetoric still has much to offer to language teachers: The information a contrastive analysis reveals of L1 and L2 text structures can contribute to what teachers and students regard as successful communication (p. 137).
In the nineties, one can witness a wide variety of writing pedagogy and research, applying and critiquing both major traditions. As noted by Raimes (1991), the field has come to acknowledge the complexity of the composing process, with individual research projects focusing on the central issues of form, the writer, content, and the reader (p. 421): an ethnography of writing is being produced (Silva, 1990; Atkinson & Ramanathan, 1995; and Leki, 1995 are among the recent examples of such endeavors). This recognition has a number of implications for theory and practice: the field has to gather more data on novice and expert student writers' performance, on the writing processes applied in various classroom settings, both L1 and L2, on the social contexts of pedagogy, and on how teachers themselves may initiate research into their practice.
For an in-depth understanding and evaluation of writing pedagogy issues, Silva (1990) claimed that teachers and researchers in the field have to evaluate approaches based on a clear set of principles and that they need to conceptualize these approaches in a model that takes account of the following factors (p. 19):
because these activities allow students to actively engage and grapple with texts, to explore how and why texts affect them, [they] can make discoveries about what other readers do with texts they compose. They come to realize that if reading involves reconstruction, they must help guide readers of their own texts in that reconstruction.... (Zamel, 1992, p. 481)How this realization may take place with the help of writing pedagogy can, of course, be impacted by what views teachers hold of the processes involved in making meaning. For this purpose, a study aimed to elicit answers from the teachers themselves. Caudrey (1996) conducted an electronic mail survey among ESL teachers to investigate how they define and apply processes and products in their own teaching. He found that many came to adopt an approach that combines the two elements--one that stresses that "the writing process is a means to an end" (p. 13). While this was a positive finding that one could predict, the other major revelation was that a number of respondents applied the process approach rather rigidly, sometimes with whole classes of students "moved through the writing process...in step with each other" (Caudrey, 1996, p. 13). In other words, there were a number of instances, according to the answers, of a singular process being applied as opposed to multiple processes encouraged to engage a more cyclical application of writing processes. As the sample of the teachers involved in the survey was small, however, this finding may need to be substantiated in a follow-up study. Obviously, the practice of integrating various types of process approaches, the classroom sequences and syllabuses of these courses need further investigation, factors that the survey did not address.
Such concerns were emphasized by Bloor and St. John (1988), White (1988), Tsui (1996) and Davies (1988). The authors described task types and processes initiated by writing teachers that provide insight into the intricacies of process versus product. Using an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) project writing task, Bloor and St. John (1988) argued that this type of activity addresses the distinct needs of the students involved and engages them in learning language. In their classrooms at two British universities, EFL students were assigned to write field-specific project reports and to prepare oral presentations. An advantage of the project was the integration of writing and speaking by incorporating an oral task. Besides, the sheltered nature of project writing was a factor that students welcomed, according to the authors (Bloor & St. John, 1988, p. 90). The task set involved the following elements: a preparatory reading to set the context and genres for the writing task; a specific purpose for reading specialized literature; and a procedural methodology that ensured that students were focusing on meaning. As for the teachers, they focused students' attention on being readers and writers at the same time, so that during each phase of producing the project they could reflect on task achievement.
In an exceptional case study, Tsui (1996) introduced a writing ESL teacher (Li) who claimed to be dissatisfied with the method and techniques she had applied. A Chinese national, she had some experience in teaching writing but was frustrated in her efforts. She was also aware of the frustration many of the Hong Kong students she taught had. The source: the time consuming and often exhausting activities that were applied in the writing classes. Tsui gathered multiple types of data (the teacher's reports, scripts by students, observations of classroom and conference interactions, and student interviews and evaluations) to track down the process and product of how this teacher implemented a process approach to tackle the frustration and to learn how to better teach ESL writing. The most relevant finding of the project was that Li first introduced process-writing types of activities in her classes, then reverted to more traditional product-type tasks, and finally she began to adopt modified versions of process-type tasks, showing a development in her teaching skills and in her understanding of different student needs and skills. Especially revealing is how she reasoned for the changes that occurred in her teaching:
I found myself in situations [in] which I had to abandon what I planned and react to the needs of students. I need to be not only more sensitive to needs but also more flexible. (Tsui, 1996, p. 116)As flexbility in teaching can sometimes prove taxing for a non-native teacher (Medgyes, 1992, 1994), this intervention in one's own teaching orientation for the benefit of the learning outcome is well worth further investigation. Nevertheless, there is already research evidence of the need for flexibility in the development of a writing course syllabus itself. As shown by Davies's theoretical framework (1988), the process of working out a genre-based syllabus in which ESL students' needs in terms of the discourse requirements of their respective fields were accounted for is an area that can benefit from collaboration between students and teachers. Davies presented the duality of process and product by calling attention to a crucial factor of process for L2 writers: for them, writing is partly a mode of capturing meaning about the world, and partly an experience with which to learn "about a language through writing" (1988, p. 131). That is, while doing research, taking notes, formulating theses and gathering supporting evidence, the L2 writer will gather information about the subject per se and the language with which to express knowledge about this subject.
For both ESP and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) students, Davies argued, this necessitates a teaching approach that integrates reading and writing, focusing on the text types or genres that these students are exposed to and are required to produce themselves. In the actual development of the syllabus, then, the teacher's role is to engage in what Davies called an "open-ended collaborative analysis" (1988, p. 133) that will provide the necessary experience in the target types of texts. She also added that for these aims to be met, a writing syllabus needs to stimulate confidence.
While this framework emphasizes collaboration, there is little evidence to support the claim that the approach did stimulate more confidence in students than other syllabuses. A different perspective, and a different type of collaboration, was adopted by Boughey (1997), who investigated how activities designed for large groups of students enabled them to integrate reading and writing. In her study, 30 tertiary multilingual ESP students participated in one writing task activity, complemented by reading collections and studying handbooks. Boughey reported that because the writing task was set up for groups of students, the teacher was able to afford to give more detailed feedback. Besides, for the students in the groups the notion of audience was much less abstract. They also reported they were less shy than otherwise, and that the amount of research that the participants carried out would have been much smaller if the task had called for individual effort. The conclusion seems well founded: such experiences of writing as part of a group can become additional vehicles of generating context and dealing with the inherent problems of a large class. The drawback that some students reported reluctance to participate as members of a group can be minimized if students have the option of choosing writing tasks in which they would prefer to work individually or as members.
For participating in a writing program that adopts the process approach, a model was proposed by Singh (1992), who suggested that the three main steps are not rigid but can overlap or come in a different order depending on the nature of the writing task or individual needs. The steps are as follows:
Stage 1: planning
Stage 2: drafting
Stage 3: revising
At each step, a different set of functions and activities is emphasized. While planning, the writer generates ideas, surveys possibilities, decides on how to tackle the task and on how to order units, and chooses suitable information. While drafting, the student reviews any notes produced in the first phase and identifies problems. It is clear that an overlap has already occurred here: planning does not seem to involve any writing, yet in the model the second phase refers to text generated, and it already includes a revising element in the problem identification activity. In the last phase, the writer revises by checking text, eliminating errors found, and by rewriting to incorporate elements that enhance purpose and readership awareness. What is less elaborate in the model is how the stages are performed by individual students and what the role of the teacher is.
The foregoing review of the products of processes has focused on studies conducted in traditional off-line classrooms. In such environments, the participants meet in a regular classroom, discuss and negotiate face-to-face, produce drafts, reflect on readings and on feedback. Often, there is an opportunity for student-teacher writing conferences, either in a time-tabled office-hour slot or as part of the services of a writing center. But times are changing, and now there is an ever-widening pool of students served by non-traditional on-line classes dedicated to writing skills development. The processes of writing are affected by the technology that these classes make available, and so is the repertoire of teaching.
The environment that a course where learning is facilitated by computer-mediated collaboration was studied by Warschauer (1997). He identified seven features that are specific to online communication. Of these, the fact that such interaction can take place between multiple users, that it is independent of time and place, and that it can be accessed across a distance appear to be most significant in the long run. As the author noted, much as such collaboration may be potentially useful for participants, empirical research was necessary to establish how or whether traditional "transmission" approached (Warschauer, 1997, p. 478) were being modified.
In Sullivan (1998), this type of environment was introduced and studied empirically. Using classroom transcripts as her data, Sullivan found that the ethnically mixed class of university students engaged in more interaction, as the computer-assisted setting fostered collaborative learning and social interaction. This did not result in improvement in language accuracy, but it did contribute to an increase in the quantity of language performance. It was also claimed that by interacting part of the time by computer, the minority students had more valuable opportunities for self-exploration and expression. As the study did not intend to add triangulation to the data, some of the claims call for further validation; however, the application of such technologies will probably continue to affect both writing instruction and research.
Raimes (1983a) posited that writing is a cognitive and learning experience that helps us to "find out what we want to say" (p. 261). Reflecting on how the grammar- and drill-focused tradition of writing instruction failed to elicit real communication between real writers and readers, she called attention to the composing element of the tasks labeled as "controlled composition." She suggested that in many of these activities, control was paramount, and little composition was being facilitated. To tackle the frustration that ESL students in the U.S. had (in her teaching experience involving tertiary-level students of academic English) with sentence- and paragraph-level problems, Raimes offered three recommendations, each addressing a distinct part of the process of writing instruction. Much of what she stated in this study seems to have been adopted, and so it is useful to review the principal recommendations.
First, the assignment for writing should not be reduced to some concrete or abstract theme or topic--the act of assigning must contain suggestions and guidance to complete it. Arguing that the processes of writing are not rigid entities, Raimes encouraged a cyclical, rather than linear, application of the processes of prewriting, writing and revising. Second, marking papers should involve not only mere corrections of grammatical errors, but also the process of conferencing with students, explanation and praise. Third, a combination of writing and reading tasks enables students to predict, such as in a specially designed cloze-test task, and in activities that aimed to develop a sense for tone of writing and word choice, thus letting students "see that they really know a lot about tone and textual and thematic development" (Raimes, 1983a, p. 269). Other techniques that also aimed to turn the writing class into a composing and thinking class are described in Raimes (1983b).
The complementary processes of composing and thinking were approached from a science writing perspective by Andersen (1988), who was concerned with how ESP students of English as a SL working in a specialized field were able to attain success during their university years and later in their chosen careers. Placing this writing pedagogy issue into the British social context, he proposed that overwriting was a distinct feature of much scholarly writing. Reviewing research that analyzed the acceptability of writing styles, complexity, content, and affiliation of scientific writing in English, and drawing on his own experience, he found that "clear and simple writing is produced by only a small minority of authors" (Andersen, 1988, p. 152). (For the professional writer's views on simplicity, see Zinsser, 1988; 1998). Although Andersen did not give a definition of the technique, "overwriting" appears to be a process whereby the scientist writer prefers the more complex phrase to the simpler, the longer sentence to the shorter, a frequent use of the passive, and long nominal compounds. Although clarity and transparency of writing is largely a subjective notion, as well as a field-specific one, Andersen (1988) suggested that instructors working in these specialized fields need to assist their non-native students in understanding the social and institutional contexts in which this register is used--the aim being to avoid using it "for the display of status" instead of revealing knowledge (p. 157).
Andersen's paper addressed social and stylistic factors in ESP/ESL writing--the practical issues related to success in writing were taken up in more detail by Kroll (1991), who investigated and described the chief components of an ESL course. Her observations included insights into the general concerns of curriculum development, the syllabus design of a writing class, the role of reading, writing assignments and theoretical issues in feedback types, covering the full spectrum of relevant factors. In each of these areas, she looked at what may result in success, and potential pitfalls, for the participants. She concluded that although writing is viewed as a process, it does generate a product whose success is not easy to predict. It hinges, among others, on how skillful a student is in controlling linguistic knowledge and systems, and in addressing a specific audience. Her main recommendation took the long-term view of: what ESL students will be able to achieve in the future.
Our real goal is to gradually wean our students away from us, providing them with strategies and tools for their continued growth as writers and for the successful fulfillment of future writing tasks they might face once they have completed their writing course with us. (Kroll, 1991, p. 261)This goal can be achieved with the continued formal and informal development of the training of writing teachers, Kroll added. A source of such training is manifold: it includes gathering reliable information on one's own teaching, observing classes, keeping abreast of research in the field, as well as developing innovations that build group dynamics within a writing course so that the community established there may be transferred to the professional communities where these students will seek audience recognition and response.
These steps can be taken in both traditional and technology-enhanced programs. For the former, Young-Scholten (1994) and Blue (1988) argued that one potential classroom management innovation was to adopt a writing center context by turning part of the contact hours into individualized reading and writing skills development. This was done by Young-Scholten (1994) in her U.K. and U.S. classes, in each of which upwards of 40 students between the ages of 18 and 60 were enrolled. Blue (1988) found that U.K. ESP student reactions were generally positive when they had an opportunity to participate in frequent one-to-one tuition and that this factor seemed to result in more willingness to rewrite.
For the technology-enhanced application, Sullivan and Pratt (1996) compared a traditional oral and a computer-assisted classroom in which the Daedalus software package was used, coming with modules for word processing, topic exploration, messaging, and InterChange, a real-time discussion program (for a review on studies in which the same package was used, see Horváth, 1999e). In their analysis of Puerto-Rican intermediate-level ESL students' attitudes, transcripts and tapes of classroom acts, they found that although environment did not affect attitudes to writing in general, there was a significant difference between the two classrooms: there was much less teacher-initiated and controlled discussion, and all students in the computer classroom participated, as opposed to a 50% rate in the oral class. Students involved in peer response groups in the computer class tended to give more specific suggestions (Sullivan & Pratt, 1996, p. 500). Whether less domination by the teacher and more specific comments by student writers resulted in improved writing, however, was not studied.
Caudrey's (1998) and Farrell's (1989) classroom observation projects offered different perspectives on computer-assisted writing programs. Farrell was concerned with the procedures used in a high-school writing center, whereas Caudrey reflected on how the teacher's early interventions in the composition tasks of EFL university students shaped their views on revision. Farrell reported (1989, p. 110) that one advantage of the project was that tutors had the time and experience to observe how student writers were developing their scripts and what types of problems they had. Also, the technological tools appeared to be an additional motivational factor.
Working with a small group of Danish university students in advanced writing courses, Caudrey (1998) introduced the technique of monitoring each student's progress during draft sessions. In the computer lab sessions, he had access to each developing script and so he could intervene when he recognized an organizational issue that needed prompt action. He hypothesized that the time teachers spend on providing written feedback could be minimized if they could observe how a script was being developed. Although no concrete qualitative or comparative analysis was done, Caudrey reported that some students were satisfied with the teacher's on-line assistance. One participant reported that the technique was "very good" as it allowed for revision during the composing process. Yet there were also problems. A student would have preferred to have dictionaries while writing, with another one complaining that the lab was too noisy and thus distracting. There was no information available on whether students could voluntarily sign up for this course. A drawback of the approach may be that students can experience even more serious writer's block if they know that someone is watching their work at the keyboard. Caudrey provided a brief statistical overview of the effect of the approach by comparing the marks five raters gave on three types of script:
The cross-sectional baseline study (Fekete, Major & Nikolov, 1999) was conducted primarily to assess the language teaching and testing situation in the country's secondary schools. As far as writing instruction issues are concerned, a classroom observation project by Nikolov (1999) investigated the current practices of EFL teachers in incorporating writing tasks. Although the study established that there were a few schools that were good examples of effective teaching, the overall results are far from reassuring. The situation was not positive in the writing related section of the "Classroom Observation Project," either. The most frequent writing tasks observed in the 118 classes in years 10, 11, and 12 were based on Hungarian school-leaving exam test techniques, such as translation and gap-filling. This finding lends some support to the claim (Nikolov, 1999, p. 233) that examination techniques exercise a washback effect on what is going on in the classroom: if exams incorporate translation and gap-filling, teachers will tend to favor these types of tasks in their classes, too.
When looking closely at the table that listed the writing tasks observed across the three years (Nikolov, 1999, p. 235) one can find another somewhat worrying trend: most non-translation task types applied were meant to elicit students' manipulation of texts given. These tasks included copying, filling in data, arranging words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs (with paragraphs arranged into larger passages observed once). While such tasks can complement and sometimes improve grammar and organization skills, on their own they can hardly result in the development of a writing attitude needed for improving mastery over the language in the written mode of expression.
The study did not aim to gather information on how written tasks were developed as part of a syllabus, what the role of groups of students was in the various stages of the writing process, or how students received various types of feedback on their writing. However, the task and text type distribution information, coupled with the results on classroom management, on language use, and on the other skill areas, indicated that writing pedagogy was not a high priority in these classes and that the traditional grammar-translation method impacted this skill's treatment in the classes observed. As the sample of schools was not representative, however, we need further studies that could aim to investigate, on a representative national or regional sample, the procedures, performances, and syllabuses as related to each of the four skills.
Table 1: Activities for grammatical accuracy (based on Frodesen, 1991, pp. 266-275)
In this model, revision is seen primarily as a means that arises from a need to eliminate error: the main goal is to assist the learner and groups of learners to polish text so that their awareness may later be used in the pre-composing stages of writing. Frodesen concludes by stating that in "selecting and developing grammar-oriented activities for the classroom, the teacher should always bear in mind the students' needs and background as well as the demands of the writing tasks" (1991, p. 275). The task, in this interpretation, is obviously the end product: the error-free composition. However, task can be interpreted such that students focus directly on revising, with or without attention to grammatical accuracy. For such a definitely more innovative approach, we now turn to Lane's (1993) text.
As a writer, Lane approached the theme with a revolutionary idea: when we write the imaginary "The End" of any text, it really is just the beginning. Implicitly arguing against the lock-step fashion which sees revision as one of seven rigid steps in a rigid process, the author demystified the act of revising and turned it into a flexible route to achieving goals. In particular, he offered the following suggestion, contrasting tradition and innovation (Lane, 1993, p. 3):
| Traditional stages in writing | Lane's suggestion |
| 1. Brainstorm | 1. Revise |
| 2. Map | 2. Revise |
| 3. Freewrite | 3. Revise |
| 4. Draft | 4. Revise |
| 5. Revise | 5. Revise |
| 6. Clarify | 6. Revise |
| 7. Edit | 7. Revise |
Clearly, at each major theoretical juncture of writing, revising takes place. In brainstorming, the monitor may already revise what gets elicited. When a theme is mapped out, we may cross branches out and insert new ones. This, of course, may well lead to brainstorming new ideas that may not need mapping, leading directly to editing, and so forth.
In the main text of this self-help resource, Lane then structured the techniques around key processes in becoming flexible writers. Operating with a set of no-nonsense and concrete terms, he defined and exemplified revision micro-strategies that language teachers can (and some do) use in their classrooms. Among the most innovative such terms and techniques are the following:
Snapshots and thoughtshots: In explaining how an activity may be based on this idea, Lane shared this tip with the teacher:
Begin by explaining to students that writers have a magic camera that they can point at the world and create snapshots that contain smells and sounds as well as colors and light. (1993, p. 35)This metaphor of capturing specific detail as if by camera is then used for an activity that puts the learner behind the camera as well as enabling them to revise so that they include specific, rather than generic, information in their description of a person.
The revision Lane argued for does not give priority to grammar; it is much rather an attitudinal shift that the teacher can foster in becoming part of the revising effort, not just in the assigning and correcting stages. It is no wonder, then, that several of the activities are non-directive and developmental in that the steps described do not get prescribed. As for the specific language and behavior outcomes of such an attitude to revision, the recurring theme is this: a reader, who happens to be a teacher, has to have a voice, a distinct characteristic. Writers and students are not different. Throughout the hundreds of techniques, Lane works on this quality to surface in the writing class and eventually in the text. In addressing the teacher reader, he explains:
That's what makes me smile--seeing a kid's voice leap off the page, speaking to you directly like some hotline to the soul. It was also a quality in writing that was hard to break down and teach. If it was there, great. There's a writer. (Lane, 1993, p. 158)Lane nurtures this voice, this individuality in descriptive personal essay writing by fostering students' choice of theme and approach, by bringing them in close contact with their own audiences, and by exposing them to what he calls "boring, voiceless" (p. 164) research papers that students can revitalize.
This resource collection goes a long way toward enabling creative revision in the language classroom by helping students and teachers experiment. A contrast to the discrete grammar-focused revision approach, this latter aims to be holistic and thematic. In between these two extremes, there have been a number of other directions summarized in Grabe and Kaplan (1996). In the following, I will present the findings of their own research into revising and show what evidence empirical research has gathered on the benefits of different types of revision in different communities. As the specific details of a related issue, responding to writing, will feature in the next section, here I will focus on what these authors noted about revision processes as observed in peer-response and peer-revision settings.
Summarizing recent research in the field of peer response to learner writing, Grabe and Kaplan extracted four factors that seem to contribute to the effectiveness of the approach (1996, p. 387). The first is the individual's conviction that response from one's peers will be beneficial. This seems to be an area where the teacher's role is paramount: helping to create the conditions for a group to act as a group is a pedagogical responsibility (for group dynamics, see also Dörnyei & Malderez, 1997). The second factor influencing effectiveness is the formal training students receive in peer response and revision. Although some teachers were shown to oppose structured and formalized guidelines for their students in such programs, students preferred when the writing teacher helped them define the rules. Listed as the third one (but probably coming first for most L1 and L2 writers chronologically) is the awareness of goals students have in asking for and providing a response. The fourth factor refers to the requirements that once such practice is begun, participants are held responsible for their involvement.
The second of these four factors, training, was shown as a significant variable in the study conducted by Villamil and de Guerro (1998). In the first project that investigated how the variable of rhetoric mode influenced peer revision, they studied the revision activities of fourteen Puerto Rican university ESL students. By systematically gathering audiotaped sessions, script samples of first and finished drafts, the researchers found that after receiving explicit training on the terminology and principles of narrative and expository writing, the majority (74 percent) of the revisions suggested by peers were incorporated in the writing process. They reported that narrative scripts were longer than the expository ones, and this trend continued to hold for each revision, further evidence of the hypothesis that it is more difficult cognitively to process a persuasive writing task (Villamil & de Guerro, 1998, p. 509).
In the analysis of the scripts and their revisions, five criteria were applied by two external raters for both types of writing: content, organization, grammar, vocabulary and mechanics, qualities that are most common in assessment. Most revisions in both types of script were grammar-based, followed by content in the narrative and vocabulary in the persuasive scripts--however, the difference in the ranking or the weight of these revisions was statistically insignificant. The authors, one of whom was the teacher of the students participating in the study, suggested that the revision experience will be beneficial for students later when they need strategic competence for text revision. Although this claim was not validated by follow-up studies or by interviews with students, the study succeeded in focusing attention away from error analysis to revision analysis based on what students discussed and what changes they incorporated in their drafts.
Incorporating major structural changes in a text was found least likely to occur: for both types of script, this was the least frequent revision change. This is not surprising: organizing ideas, arguments and topics within the development of these arguments is among the most demanding processes for professional and amateur writers. However, future research is needed to investigate how the writing classroom can address these issues at various levels of development, in L1s and L2s.
Already, however, evidence suggests that not all students are willing to act on the suggestions by their peers. For example, a study conducted by Sengupta (1998) revealed that among a class of Cantonese EFL students there was a marked reluctance to carrying out peer evaluation. Students saw the job of commenting on their scripts to belong primarily to the teacher, and for these participants the reader who counted was the expert instructor. The finding in Huang (1995) corroborates this result: in the pilot study, 22 Chinese university students of writing were assigned to English and Chinese discussion groups and reported little enthusiasm about providing feedback to motivate revision in a two-draft writing task. Huang hypothesized that for such group involvement to promote peer revision a longer experience may be necessary.
In the ESL context, a slightly different result was obtained in Mangelsdorf's study (1992). Among a culturally heterogeneous mix of university students in Arizona, it revealed that often peers were unable to provide the type of feedback that would be helpful for them to draft a script. However, a positive element of the process, according to the interviewees, was that "peer reviews led [the students] to consider different ideas about their topics and helped them to develop and clarify these ideas" (Mangelsdorf, 1992, p. 278). Once the improvement in writing quality became obvious, participating students were more willing to share and act on suggestions in their revisions.
As for the EFL view, an Asian study aimed to establish correlation between holistic rating of EFL college writing quality and quantity of revision (Sato, 1990). It investigated Japanese students' success in a picture description task. Of the ninety participants, three levels of writers were identified. The study reported that although no significant differences could be established in various syntactic levels, the two top groups made significantly more successful revisions in their final drafts. The paper suggested (Sato, 1990, p. 157) that further research was needed to study the relationship between different tasks and levels of achievement, and that including variables of proficiency in the target language and of writing expertise would enhance the validity of findings.
Figure 1: The variables of response to writing
Feedback is an integral part of any pedagogy. It aims to engage participants in authentic communication about the subject of tuition, and about its goals by signaling transitions in the process of learning. As such, feedback also forms part of assessment and evaluation, both continuous and task-specific. Some educationalists view feedback as having the function to correct: to put things right when they go wrong. Another view of feedback is that it should inform the learner of the progress made, and thus correcting syntax and organization errors is valid. Bartram and Walton (1991) proposed that although written production is primarily an individual activity, much can be achieved in applying tasks involving pairs and groups of students. In terms of providing teacher feedback on student writing errors, they suggested that the "red-pen syndrome should be avoided" (Bartram & Walton, 1991, p. 78) and instead listed a number of areas and techniques with which to facilitate accuracy and composition improvement. These included the need to react to content, to restrict correction to specific morpho-syntactic units, to involve students in correction, and to reformulate. They emphasized, however, the importance of communication between teachers and students not only after a script is written but also before and during that stage.
To collect information on student attitudes to and preferences for receiving feedback, Dheram (1995) conducted a case study among five EFL students in Britain. She investigated whether students preferred comments on grammar or content, how they responded to feedback, and what the preferences meant for future writing instruction. Besides analyzing questionnaire and interview data, Dheram reviewed pre-feedback and post-feedback drafts and found that students became aware of the importance of revision as part of discovering meaning. Perhaps the most relevant finding was that content should enjoy top priority in teachers' response.
When a process approach is adopted, it is crucial that students are helped in the development of their scripts at every stage. To add further assistance, Frankenberg-Garcia (1999) put forth the innovative suggestion that feedback could be given even before a text is produced: at the initial stages of the development of ideas for a composition. This view reverberates the procedure whereby a classroom is seen as a workshop, with part of the time turned into intervening in the writing process. Frankenberg-Garcia pointed out that text-based feedback had serious limitations because the type of feedback students need most cannot be adequately given without having hard evidence of the types of decisions (good and bad) that students typically make when composing. The written text may be polished with little need for grammatical or compositional change, yet it may not reflect writer intention if the student had major difficulty with an idea, grammatical unit or vocabulary item and decided to apply an avoidance strategy, thus fossilizing a problem. To deal with the actual composing process, then, she argued, we need to gather information on the specific needs students have and incorporate that information in the verbal or written feedback that is given on the processes, rather than a draft. She emphasized that this approach was not intended to replace text-based writing feedback--rather, to complement it.
The form and content that teachers' feedback may take continue to challenge practitioners in the field. The ideas suggested by Cohen and Cavalcanti (1990), Chen (1997), Grundy and Li (1998), Leki (1990), Mosher (1998), Myers (1997), Allwright (1988) and Schultz (1994) represent some of the potentially most valuable recommendations. Here I will briefly introduce claims about what should be favored and avoided in feedback.
Myers (1997) gave a detailed account of her writing course for ESL students in which she adopted the technique of sentence reformulation. Using simple codes, she returned papers that students were requested to amend by incorporating the revisions she had made. By doing this, students prepared a clean copy with no grammatical inaccuracies so that they could focus in class on the content of their peers' writing, thus participating in a program that relied heavily on teacher direction in terms of language correction, but which eventually enabled students to exercise the role of peer editors of ideas in the sessions.
First of all, applying a multiple-draft composition syllabus ensures that assignments are integrated so that feedback on each draft may be usefully incorporated by students. This also has the advantage that the teacher may intervene in the writing process when it is most needed. Second, when assignments form a well planned project, the writing course will facilitate long-term development, with teacher comments applied in subsequent tasks as well. Third, students can be given a set of questions that elicit information on what they, the primary stakeholders, consider the best features of their writing. This may not appear to be a teacher's feedback at first sight: after all, the teacher provides the questions, and the students reflect on them. However, by identifying what is valuable for them, these students enable the teacher to better focus on those elements of writing, thus bridging the gap between writer's intention and reader's interpretation, a significant benefit considering that student writers do not always have the skills to communicate their goals fully.
As the final issue in teacher response to student writing, we need to consider the effect it has on students' perceptions and its implications: how students respond to response. Primarily interested in the meta-cognitive processes activated by expert feedback, Hedgcock and Lefkowitz (1996) collected and analyzed data from ESL and EFL students. They established that for feedback to be used effectively, students must be engaged in the process. They obtained evidence that FL learners were in favor of feedback that helped them formulate the content and structure of their scripts. Rather surprisingly, the majority (82%) of the students preferred "red-pen" corrections, apparently because this resulted in most short-term improvement in surface-level features, with FL students being of the opinion that "form should precede, and have priority over, expression of meaning, concepts, or original ideas" (Hedgcock & Lefkowitz, 1996, p. 297). What they did not intend to measure, however, was how teacher feedback was attended to in revised texts. Nevertheless, the study can be regarded as a welcome example of applying quantitative and qualitative research methods.
To highlight an additional implication of feedback practice, I showed that teachers' comments themselves may serve as resources for teaching and exploration for students (Horváth, 1997b, 1998d). English major FL students at Janus Pannonius University were given samples of teachers' comments on timed essay tests and asked to read, review, and reflect on them. This was done so that they could familiarize with the discourse the raters of the essays produced and it broadened students' understanding of the areas that the comments elaborated on, especially noting what the teachers marked as positive features of the scripts.
The theory of L2 writing has been informed by L1 writing theory in the contrastive rhetorical tradition, establishing the need for verifiable research into language varieties. The communicative approach to language teaching coincided with the move away from the sentence-level concern with grammar and the focus on product, in the process orientation. The development of L2 writing theory and pedagogy has been motivated by the practice of task-based learning, in both traditional and online contexts.
As the chapter has shown, the majority of L2 writing development studies were conducted by native speakers of the target language, raising questions about the validity of some of the claims made about innovation in the writing curriculum and syllabus when such endeavors do not tackle educational and cultural differences.
However, writing research has become a major component of recent applied linguistics studies. For continued progress, the field could benefit from cross-institutional and cross-cultural projects, as well as from combining insights gained by writing pedagogy with corpus linguistic data, so that the ethnography of writing can be supplemented by reliable data on student performance. To address the theoretical and practical implications of this endeavor, we will now turn to surveying the literature of the discipline of corpus linguistics, a sub-field of which is the development and exploitation of corpora of learners' written performance.