Perl: Composing Processes of Unskilled College Writers Pt 1(Dani):
● Goals of the study
○ How do unskilled writers write?
○ Can their writing be analyzed in a systemic, replicable manner
○ What does an increased understanding of their process suggest about the nature of composing in general and the manner in which writing is taught in the schools?
● No study yet of unskilled writers
● 4 meetings of externalized, thinking-out-loud writing; 1 interview
● Assumed that the teacher is the writing’s audience
● This study created a system that is
○ Standardized
○ Categorical
○ Concise
○ Structural
○ Diachronic (chronological)
● Thanks to this system, different behaviors can be observed
○ Length/Frequency of different stages of writing
● Miscue analysis on texts
○ “Reading in” missing words or word endings
○ Deleting words or word endings
○ “Reading” the desired word rather than the word on the page
○ “Reading” abbreviations and misspellings as though they were written correctly
● Tony’s writing process
○ Completely recursive: always read previous parts when adding on
○ Spent a *lot* of time proofreading
○ A lot of misspellings
○ Talked with complete sentences; often only wrote down parts/incorrect sentences
>Conclusion from the study, students has this consistency which suggested, "a much greater internalization of the process than has ever before been suspected."
>data suggests: that certain strategies, such as creating an association to a key word, focusing in and narrowing down the topic, dichotomizing and classifying, can and do take place in a relatively brief span of time; and that the developing and clarifying of ideas is facilitated once students translate some of those ideas into written form. In other words, seeing ideas on paper enables students to reflect upon, change and develop those ideas further.
>Writing process has a lot of recursion.
>Composing is not linear, and it is a mix of construction and discovery.
>students often times look for grammatical errors in editing, but not necessarily looking at the meat of the material.
>students sometimes become complacent to certain sections or phrases in their writing, certain that those are the words they want(selective perception)
>Students often fail to inform the reader and be more explicit