Word count: minimum essay of 300–400 words; outline of 100–300 words Prompt: Explain to a beginner writer how to organise an essay and adhere to the writing process by using Donald Murray's essay as a guide, which is this one:
Most of us are trained as English teachers by studying a product: writing.
Our critical skills are honed by examining literature, which is finished writ-ing; language as it has been used by authors. And then, fully trained in the autopsy, we go out and are assigned to teach our students to write, to make language live.
Naturally we try to use our training. It's an investment and so we teach writing as a product, focusing our critical attentions on what our students have done, as if they had passed literature in to us. It isn't literature, of course, and we use our skills, with which we can dissect and sometimes almost destroy Shakespeare or Robert Lowell to prove it.
Our students knew it wasn't literature when they passed it in, and our attack usually does little more than confirm their lack of self-respect for their work and for themselves; we are as frustrated as our students, for conscien-tious, doggedly responsible, repetitive autopsying doesn't give birth to live writing. The product doesn't improve, and so, blaming the student- who else? —we pass him along to the next teacher, who is trained, too often, the same way we were. Year after year the student shudders under a barrage of criticism, much of it brilliant, some of it stupid, and all of it irrelevant. No matter how careful our criticisms, they do not help the student since when we teach composition we are not teaching a product, we are teaching a
And once you can look at your composition program with the realization you are teaching a process, you may be able to design a curriculum which works. Not overnight, for writing is a demanding, intellectual process;
but sooner than you think, for the process can be put to work to produce a product which may be worth your reading.
What is the process we should teach? It is the process of discovery through language. It is the process of exploration of what we know and what we feel about what we know through language. It is the process of using language to learn about our world, to evaluate what we learn about our world, to communicate what we learn about our world.
Instead of teaching finished writing, we should teach unfinished writ-ing, and glory in its unfinishedness. We work with language in action. We share with our students the continual excitement of choosing one word instead of another, of searching for the one true word.
This is not a question of correct or incorrect, of etiquette or custom.
This is a matter of far higher importance. The writer, as he writes, is making ethical decisions. He doesn't test his words by a rule book, but by life. He uses language to reveal the truth to himself so that he can tell it to others. It is an exciting, eventful, evolving process.
This process of discovery through language we call writing can be introduced to your classroom as soon as you have a very simple understanding of that process, and as soon as you accept the full implications of teaching process, not product.
The writing process itself can be divided into three stages: prewriting, writing, and rewriting. The amount of time a writer spends in each stage depends on his personality, his work habits, his maturity as a craftsman, and the challenge of what he is trying to say. It is not a rigid lock-step process, but most writers most of the time pass through these three stages.
Prewriting is everything that takes place before the first draft. Prewriting usually takes about 85% of the writer's time. It includes the awareness of his world from which his subject is born. In prewriting, the writer focuses on that subject, spots an audience, chooses a form which may carry his subject to his audience. Prewriting may include research and daydreaming, note-making and outlining, title-writing and lead-writing.
Writing is the act of producing a hrst draft. It is the fastest part of the process, and the most frightening, for it is a commitment. When you complete a draft you know how much, and how little, you know. And the writing of this first draft-rough, searching, unfinished —may take as little as one percent of the writer's time.
Rewriting is reconsideration of subject, form, and audience. It is re-searching, rethinking, redesigning, rewriting—and finally, line-by-line edit-ing, the demanding, satisfying process of making each word right. It may take many times the hours required for a first draft, perhaps the remaining fourteen percent of the time the writer spends on the project.
How do you motivate your student to pass through this process, perhaps even pass through it again and again on the same piece of writing?
First by shutting up. When you are talking he isn't writing. And you don't learn a process by talking about it, but by doing it. Next by placing the opportunity for discovery in your student's hands. When you give him an assignment you tell him what to say and how to say it, and thereby cheat your student of the opportunity to learn the process of discovery we call writing.
To be a teacher of a process such as this takes qualities too few of us have, but which most of us can develop. We have to be quiet, to listen, to re-spond. We are not the initiator or the motivator; we are the reader, the recipient.
We have to be patient and wait, and wait, and wait. The suspense in the beginning of a writing course is agonizing for the teacher, but if we break first, if we do the prewriting for our students they will not learn the largest part of the writing process.
We have to respect the student, not for his product, not for the paper we call literature by giving it a grade, but for the search for truth in which he is engaged. We must listen carefully for those words that may reveal a truth, that may reveal a voice. We must respect our student for his potential truth and for his potential voice. We are coaches, encouragers, developers, creators of environments in which our students can experience the writing process for themselves.
Let us see what some of the implications of teaching process, not prod-uct, are for the composition curriculum.
Implication No. 1. The text of the writing course is the student's own writing. Students examine their own evolving writing and that of their class-mates, so that they study writing while it is still a matter of choice, word by
Implication No. 2. The student finds his own subject. It is not the job of the teacher to legislate the student's truth. It is the responsibility of the student to explore his own world with his own language, to discover his own meaning. The teacher supports but does not direct this expedition to the student's own truth.
Implication No. 3. The student uses his own language. Too often, as writer and teacher Thomas Williams points out, we teach English to our students as if it were a foreign language. Actually, most of our students have learned a great deal of language before they come to us, and they are quite willing to exploit that language if they are allowed to embark on a serious search for their own truth.
Implication No. 4. The student should have the opportunity to write all the drafts necessary for him to discover what he has to say on this particular
subject. Each new draft, of course, is counted as equal to a new paper. You are not teaching a product, you are teaching a process.
Implication No. S. The student is encouraged to attempt any form of wnting which may help him discover and communicate what he has to say.
The process which produces "creative" and "functional" writing is the same.
You are not teaching products such as business letters and poetry, narrative and exposition. You are teaching a product your students can use — now and in the future-to produce whatever product his subject and his audience demand.
Implication No. 6. Mechanics come last. It is important to the writer, once he has discovered what he has to say, that nothing get between him and his reader. He must break only those traditions of written communication which would obscure his meaning.
Implication No. 7. There must be time for the writing process to take place and time for it to end. The writer must work within the stimulating tension of unpressured time to think and dream and stare out windows, and pressured time —the deadline - to which the writer must deliver.
Implication No. 8. Papers are examined to see what other choices the writer might make. The primary responsibility for seeing the choices is the student. He is learning a process. His papers are always unfinished, evolving, until the end of the marking period. A grade finishes a paper, the way publication usually does. The student writer is not graded on drafts any more than a concert pianist is judged on his practice sessions rather than on his performance. The student writer is graded on what he has produced at the end of the writing process.
Implication No. 9. The students are individuals who must explore the writing process in their own way, some fast, some slow, whatever it takes for them, within the limits of the course deadlines, to find their own way to their own truth.
Implication No. 10. There are no rules, no absolutes, just alternatives.
What works one time may not another. All writing is experimental.
None of these implications require a special schedule, exotic training, extensive new materials or gadgetry, new classrooms, or an increase in fed-eral, state, or local funds. They do not even require a reduced teaching load.
What they do require is a teacher who will respect and respond to his stu-dents, not for what they have done, but for what they may do; not for what they have produced, but for what they may produce, if they are given an opportunity to see writing as a process, not a product.
Now with that essay as an example, here is the question:
When determining the purpose of an essay, what is the most crucial step—or steps—that a novice writer should take into consideration? Don't forget to take into account the writing's purpose as well as its inspiration. To fulfil the requirements of the aforementioned Prompt, select one of the following two strategies for this task: 1. Outline: One possible title for your outline would be "Advice to a Beginning Writer." and highlight the key points that the essay makes.
2. Essay: Compose a response to the reader. Write your essay using one of the next five steps. You'll respond in one or more of the following ways: agreement or disagreement with the concepts presented in the book. Response to how the concepts in the article apply to your personal situation. Response to how concepts from the text relate to what you've read thus far. Your evaluation of the writer and readership. Your assessment of the effectiveness of this text's persuasive techniques and methods.
