Extracting Enhanced Composition

In Sondra Perl's "The Composing Processes of Unskilled College Writers," one of the conclusions that she makes from her case study is:

These unskilled college writers are not beginners in a tabula rasa
sense, and teachers err in assuming they are. The results of this
study suggest that teachers may first need to identify which
characteristic components of each student's process facilitate
writing and which inhibit it before further teaching takes place.
If they do not, teachers of unskilled writers may continue to place
themselves in a defeating position: imposing another method of writing
instruction upon the student's already internalized processes without first
helping students to extricate themselves from the knots and tangles in those
processes. (334)

This will be an important concept for me to remember as a teacher, and all teachers in general. Many of the discussions that we've had in class address the issue of evaluating and responding to student writing. The above quote from Perl provides teachers with a mode for evaluating student writing, without making assumptions about their writing. For instance, Dr. Cauthen said that we should give students multiple writing assignments that are not necessarily graded in order to understand how the individual student processes information, formulate sentences, and constructs ideas and thoughts onto paper. Dr. Cauthen also gave us a quick and very painless writing assignment on the first day of class. I am sure he did this not only as a method to understand who we are individually, but perhaps to get a sample of our writing, thoughts and ideas, as with the discovery draft.

Currently, what I have learned in this course, leads me to believe that making assumptions about student writing will not only limit the student, but the instructor as well. I believe that the underlining argument that Perl is making when she states, "Imposing another method of writing instruction upon the student's already internalized processes without first helping students to extricate themselves from the knots and tangles in those processes"(334) is accurate, and will provide a window for the teacher to help the student enhance how they currently internalize the composition process. This method gives me hope that there are ways in which to help the inexperienced writer. Prior to taking this course, I would become frustrated beyond belief of how the students that I tutored composed a paper. After reading this article, I understand that every student has a mode in which they learn to write, and in most cases errors in writing may not be due to laziness, but rather helping a student "to extricate themselves from the knots and tangles in those processes" (334). I believe that zeal without knowledge is useless. In retrospect, teaching a student without first understanding how the student composes is ineffective. I have sure learned a great deal in this article, and it makes sense. I hope to implement these methods in my own teaching.