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poor writers.17 As we will argue in the final section of this paper,the act of
developing and refining one's own goals is not limited to a"pre-writing
stage"in the composing process,but is intimately bound up with the on-
going,moment-to-moment process of composing.
Translating
This is essentially the process of putting ideas into visible language.We
have chosen the term translate for this process over other terms such as
"transcribe"or"write"in order to emphasize the peculiar qualities of the
task.The information generated in planning may be represented in a variety
of symbol systems other than language,such as imagery or kinetic sensations.
Trying to capture the movement of a deer on ice in language is clearly a kind
of translation.Even when the planning process represents one's thought in
words,that representation is unlikely to be in the elaborate syntax of written
English.So the writer's task is to translate a meaning,which may be em-
bodied in key words(what Vygotsky calls words"saturatedwith sense")and
organized in a complex network of relationships,into a linear piece of writ-
ten English.
The process of translating requires the writer to juggle all the special
demands of written English,which Ellen Nold has described as lying on a
spectrum from generic and formal demands through syntactic and lexical
ones down to the motor tasks of forming letters.For children and inexperi-
enced writers,this extra burden may overwhelm the limited capacity of
short-term memory.18 If the writer must devote conscious attention to de-
mands such as spelling and grammar,the task of translating can interfere with
the more global process of planning what one wants to say.Or one can sim-
ply ignore some of the constraints of written English.One path produces
poor or local planning,the other produces errors,and both,as Mina
Shaughnessy showed,lead to frustration for the writer.19
A CognitiveProcessTheory 373CollegeCompositionand Communication
In some of the most exciting and extensive research in this area,Marlene
Scardamaliaand Carl Bereiter have looked at the ways children cope with the
cognitive demands of writing.Well-learned skills,such as sentence construc-
tion,tend to become automatic and lost to consciousness.Because so little of
the writing process is automatic for children,they must devote conscious
attention to a variety of individual thinking tasks which adults perform
quickly and automatically.Such studies,which trace the development of a
given skill over several age groups,can show us the hidden components of an
adult process as well as show us how children learn.For example,these
studies have been able to distinguish children's ability to handle idea com-
plexity from their ability to handle syntactic complexity;that is,they demon-
strate the difference between seeing complex relationships and translating
them into appropriate language.In another series of studies Bereiter and
Scardamaliashowed how children learn to handle the translation process by
adapting,then eventually abandoning,the discourse conventions of conversa-
tion.20
Reviewing
As you can see in Figure 1,reviewing depends on two sub-processes:
evaluating and revising.Reviewing,itself,may be a conscious process in
which writers choose to read what they have written either as a springboard
to further translating or with an eye to systematically evaluating and/or revis-
ing the text.These periods of planned reviewing frequently lead to new cy-
cles of planning and translating.However,the reviewing process can also
occur as an unplanned action triggered by an evaluation of either the text or
one's own planning(that is,people revise written as well as unwritten
thoughts or statements).The sub-processes of revising and evaluating,along
with generating,share the special distinction of being able to interrupt any
other process and occur at any time in the act of writing.
The Monitor
As writers compose,they also monitor their current process and progress.
The monitor functions as a writing strategist which determines when the
writer moves from one process to the next.For example,it determines how
long a writer will continue generating ideas before attempting to write prose.
Our observations suggest that this choice is determined both by the writer's
goals and by individual writing habits or styles.As an example of varied com-
posing styles,writers appear to range from people who try to move to
polished prose as quickly as possible to people who choose to plan the entire
discourse in detail before writing a word.Bereiter and Scardamalia have
shown that much of a child's difficulty and lack of fluency lies in their lack of
an"executive routine"which would promote switching between processes or
encourage the sustained generation of ideas.21 Children for example,possess
374A CognitiveProcessTheory
the skills necessary to generate ideas,but lack the kind of monitor which tells
them to"keep using"that skill and generate a little more.
Implicationsof a CognitiveProcessModel
A model such as the one presented here is first and foremost a tool for
researchers to think with.By giving a testable shape and definition to our
observations,we have tried to pose new questions to be answered.For
example,the model identifies three major processes(plan,translate,and
review)and a number of sub-processes available to the writer.And yet the
first assertion of this cognitive process theory is that people do not march
through these processes in a simple 1,2,3 order.Although writers may
spend more time in planning at the beginning of a composing session,plan-
ning is not a unitary stage,but a distinctive thinking process which writers
use over and over during composing.Furthermore,it is used at all levels,
whether the writer is making a global plan'for the whole text or a local repre-
sentation of the meaning of the next sentence.This then raises a question:if
the process of writing is not a sequence of stages but a set of optional actions,
how are these thinking processes in our repertory actually orchestrated or
organized as we write?The second point of our cognitive process theory
offers one answer to this question.
2.The processes of writing are hierarchically organized,with
component processes embedded within other components.
A hierarchical system is one in which a large working system such as com-
posing can subsume other less inclusive systems,such as generating ideas,
which in turn contain still other systems,and so on.Unlike those in a linear
organization,the events in a hierarchical process are not fixed in a rigid or-
der.A given process may be called upon at any time and embedded within
another process or even within another instance of itself,in much the same
way we embed a subject clause within a larger clause or a picture within a
picture.
For instance,a writer trying to construct a sentence(that is,a writer in the
act of translating)may run into a problem and call in a condensed version of
the entire writing process to help her out(e.g.,she might generate and organ-
ize a new set of ideas,express them in standard writing English,and review
this new alternative,all in order to further her current goal of translating
This particular kind of embedding,in which an entire process is embedded
within a larger instance of itself,is known technically in linguistics as recur-
sion.However,it is much more common for writers to simply embed indi-
vidual processes as needed-to call upon them as sub-routines to help carry
out the task at hand.
375CollegeCompositionand Communication
Writing processes may be viewed as the writer's tool kit.In using the tools,
the writer is not constrained to use them in a fixed order or in stages.And
using any tool may create the need to use another.Generating ideas may
require evaluation,as may writing sentences.And evaluation may force the
writer to think up new ideas.
Figure 2 demonstrates the embedded processes of a writer trying to com-
pose(translate)the first sentence of a paper.After producing and reviewing
two trial versions of the sentence,he invokes a brief sequence of planning,
translating,and reviewing-all in the service of that vexing sentence.In our
example the writer is trying to translate some sketchily represented meaning
about"the first day of class"into prose,and a hierarchical process allows him
to embed a variety of processes as sub-routines within his overall attempt to
translate.
(Plan)Ok,firstdayof class.....just jot down a possibility.
(Translate)Can you imagine what yourfirst day of a collegeEnglish classwill belike?
(Review)I don'tlike thatsentence,it'slousy-sounds like theme talk.
(Review)Oh Lord-I get closer to it andI get closer-
(Plan)Couldplayup the sex thinga little bit
(Translate)When you walk into an English class the first day you'll be
interested,you'll bethinking about boys,tasks,and professor-
(Review)That's banal-that's awful.
Figure2.An Exampleof Embedding
A process that is hierarchical and admits many embedded sub-processes is
powerful because it is flexible:it lets a writer do a great deal with only a few
relatively simple processes-the basic ones being plan,translate,and re-
view.This means,for instance,that we do not need to define"revision"as a
unique stage in composing,but as a thinking process that can occur at any
time a writer chooses to evaluate or revise his text or his plans.As an impor-
tant part of writing,it constantly leads to new planning or a"re-vision"of
what one wanted to say.
Embedding is a basic,omni-present feature of the writing process even
though we may not be fully conscious of doing it.However,a theory of
composing that only recognized embedding wouldn't describe the real com-
376A CognitiveProcessTheory
plexity of writing.It wouldn't explain why writers choose to invoke the pro-
cesses they do or how they know when they've done enough.To return to
Iee Odell's question,what guides the writers'decisions and choices and gives
an overall purposeful structure to composing?The third point of the theory
is an attempt to answer this question.
3.Writing is a goal-directed process.In the act of composing,writers
create a hierarchical network of goals and these in turn guide the
writing process.
This proposition is the keystone of the cognitive process theory we are
proposing-and yet it may also seem somewhat counter-intuitive According
to many writers,including our subjects,writing often seems a serendipitous
experience,an act of discovery.People start out writing without knowing
exactly where they will end up;yet they agree that writing is a purposeful act.
For example,our subjects often report that their writing process seemed
quite disorganized,even chaotic,as they worked,and yet their protocols re-
veal a coherent underlying structure.How,then,does the writing process
manage to seem so unstructured,open-minded,and exploratory("I don't
know what I mean until I see what I say")and at the same time possess its
own underlying coherence,direction,or purpose?
One answer to this question lies in the fact that people rapidly forget many
of their own local working goals once those goals have been satisfied.This is
why thinking aloud protocols tell us things retrospection doesn't.22 A second
answer lies in the nature of the goals themselves,which fall into two distinc-
tive categories:process goals and content goals.Process goals are essentially
the instructions people give themselves about how to carry out the process of
writing(e.g.,"Let's doodle a little bit.""So...,write an introduction.""I'll
go back to that later.").Good writers often give themselves many such in-
structions and seem to have greater conscious control over their own process
than the poorer writers we have studied.Content goals and plans,on the
other hand,specify all things the writer wants to say or to do to an audience.
Some goals,usually ones having to do with organization,can specify both
content and process,as in,"I want to open with a statement about political
views."In this discussion we will focus primarily on the writer's content
goals.
The most striking thing about a writer's content goals is that they grow into
an increasingly elaborate network of goals and sub-goals as the writer com-
poses.Figure 3(page 378)shows the network one writer had created during
four minutes of composing.Notice how the writer moves from a very
abstract goal of"appealing to a broad range in intellect"to a more opera-
tional definition of that goal,i.e.,"explain things simply."The eventual plan
to"write an introduction"is a reasonable,if conventional,response to all
377
CollegeCompositionand Communication
three top-level goals.And it too is developed with a set of alternative sub-
goals.Notice also how this network is hierarchicalin the sense that new goals
operate as a functional part of the more inclusive goals above them.
These networks have three important features:
1.They are created as people compose,throughout the entire process.
This means that they do not emerge full-blown as the result of"pre-writing."
Rather,as we will show,they are created in close interaction with ongoing
exploration and the growing text.
2.The goal-directed thinking that produces these networks takes many
forms.That is,goal-setting is not simply the act of stating a well-defined end
point such as"I want to write a two-page essay."Goal-directed thinking often
involves describing one's starting point("They're not going to be disposed to
hear what I'm saying"),or laying out a plan for reaching a goal("I'd better
explain things simply"),or evaluating one's success("That's banal-that's aw-
ful").Such statements are often setting implicit goals,e.g.,"Don't be banal."
In order to understand a writer's goals,then,we must be sensitive to the
broad range of plans,goals,and criteria that grow out of goal-directed think-
ing.
Goal directed thinking is intimately connected with discovery.Consider
for example,the discovery process of two famous explorers-Cortez,silent
378
on his peak in Darien,and that bear who went over the mountain.Both,
indeed,discovered the unexpected.However,we should note that both
chose to climb a long hill to do so.And it is this sort of goal-directed search
for the unexpected that we often see in writers as they attempt to explore
and consolidate their knowledge.Furthermore,this search for insight leads to
new,more adequate goals,which in turn guide further writing.
The beginning of an answer to Odell's question,"What guides compos-
ing?"lies here.The writer's own set of self-made goals guide composing,but