John R. Hayes’s and Linda Flower’s “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing” put words to a lot of notions I feel are true, specifically that “In this act of writing, people regenerate or recreate their own goals in light of what they learn” (381). They also say that the best writers are ones open to discovery and exploration through writing, the ones that use what they’ve learned through the process to change their initial goals and further understanding. I see this theory working inside my own head: my usual goal for writing anything is to reach a new perspective, to gain an insight that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. I also see it as an explanation for some students’ lack of motivation: if their goal is simply to “get through this English class,” their writing (and I mean reflective writing ability, thinking critically and applying that thought to their own internal formations of truth) will not improve, no matter how much I try to help.

Perhaps, then, the teacher’s job is to inspire the goal of discovery, the goal of self-development and engagement with the long history and culture of writing—but how? As much as I love to read studies of the cognitive processes, I have trouble applying them because you can’t be in anyone’s head but your own. I may talk about “goals-for-self-improvement” or “goals-to-thinking-critically,” but students may hear “another-assignment-where-I-have-to-make-up-goals” or “another-fake-me-has-to-write-this-memo.” Indeed, this “define your goals for this class” assignment is one I detested, too. I detested it because I had no idea what my goals were, but I still was always open to discovering—I was perhaps so open to new experiences that I had no idea what I was supposed to want from a geography course, just that I wanted to learn something new. But for some reason, I didn’t feel it would fulfill the assignment for me to say “to discover something new” or “to find a connection between this class and my internal idea of truth.” And maybe that’s what our students are facing, too: we are trying to force them to choose a writing identity when they 1) already have a preconception that their major won’t require them to write or 2) are so open to learning new things that they can’t define why writing is important.

I am also skeptical of goals assignments because goals impose an end—they naturally contradict the idea that writing is a process.

So, maybe the idea is not to force goal definition but to inspire it through example, much like Kent’s notion of reaching agreement in the moment of communication rather than trying to alter students’ thought processes by making them write about abstractions like “values.” We can allow the act of conversing in conference and class discussions to demonstrate discovery. Even if students can’t define what happened in that process of insight, they may have the inkling of learning, and they may choose to seek out similar relationships with other classmates and teachers; they may naturally seek to discover instead of produce.

For instance, we all can tell when a student seeks to produce a paper (“how long is this assignment?”) vs. one who wants to engage in a personal learning process (“how might I write about religion without sounding controversial”)? Just Friday, I conferenced with a student who hates writing, and I was trying to help him see how he could write about his religious club for his feature article if he interviewed each of the members for their stories about how they found the club helpful to their self-formation. Somewhere in the conversation, butterflies were mentioned, as a joke, but just the idea allowed the student to compare the uniqueness of butterflies to the uniqueness of the members of his club. Especially for this student, who has the critical thinking skills but also extreme apprehension to write, we were able to discover something, anything that could make writing a little easier for him—a concrete image that could help him frame his paper and also an easy-to-remember visual that can get him started. If we both weren’t open to discovery, engaging in the guesswork of communication, the conversation would not have led to such an insight for this student.

In his essay on process, Lester Faigley calls for a synthesis of competing writing theories by emphasizing an awareness of the history of writing, which is quite inspiring. He says, “the process movement . . . must take a broader conception of writing, one that understands writing processes are historically dynamic—not psychic states, cognitive routines, or neutral social relationships [like communities]” (537). If teaching writing should be a discipline, we need to “look beyond who is writing to whom to the texts and social systems that stand in relation to the act of writing” (539).

I feel that if Faigley gave some practical examples, or if I could fully grasp the idea of intertextuality in the process discussion, I would gain answers to my questions about how to break down students’ preconceptions about writing and perhaps to more pressing questions: what is communication once it becomes a product, when it’s marked “done”? Is product-oriented communication “professional communication”? Is process-oriented? What is professional communication if the message forms in the subtext? How does the process of writing naturally contradict the product? (How does the product kill the process?) How can we teach something that can only be heard by students open to discovery?

That’s a lot to chew on.

 

Works Cited

Faigley, Lester. “Competing Theories of Process.” College English  48.6 (1986): 527-542. PDF file.

Flower, Linda, and John R. Hayes. “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing.” College Composition and Communication 32:4 (1981): 365-387. JSTOR. Web. 20 Sept. 2012. PDF file.