A Cognitive Look at the Writing Process

I found the readings for this week to be of interest, in particular, the pieces which examine the cognitive process as it applies to composition. I would like begin with Flowers and Hayes piece, A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing. It appears to me that these scholars are challenging the standard way to look at the writing process. For example, when composing an essay the student should pre-write/outline, write a first draft and then revise the writing. According to these theorists, the writing process is by no means so linear and I agree with this assertion. Flowers and Hayes believe that ‘[w]riting is a goal-oriented process… People start out writing without knowing exactly where they will end up; yet they agree that writing is a purposeful act” (377). Good writing, as it appears these two are suggesting, makes discoveries. They go on to suggest that “[p]oor writers will frequently depend on very abstract, undeveloped top-level goals” (379). This statement reminds of the results I saw from an essay that I just finished grading for my ninth grade students.

For the assignment (a transition between a unit about poetry to the reading of The Odyssey), I asked the student to write a compare/contrast essay about two poems about Helen of Troy. The first poem, To Helen by Edgar Allen Poe, is essentially a love letter to Helen; whereas, the other poem, Helen by Hilda Doolittle, makes Helen out to be a plague on Greece. For the essay, the students were expected to compare and contrast the poet’s ‘portraits” of Helen using poetic elements such as alliteration, diction, metaphor, form, etc… to analyze the differences between the two poems. Students, who struggled with the essay, attempted to write beyond their capabilities. Basically, their goals were not realistic. I advised students who were being overly sophisticated, to spend more time analyzing the poem as opposed to critiquing Helen’s role in Greek history. In other cases, I saw students who were talking about how the form of the poems influenced the meaning, but provided no examples from the poems to properly illustrate the claims they were making. Perhaps, this is an example how “very abstract, undeveloped top-level goals” (377) hinders the composition process for students.

I wonder how Mike Rose would respond to all of this. In his piece, Narrowing the Mind and Page: Remedial Writers and Cognitive Reductionism Rose challenges cognitive development theories from the likes of theorists like Piaget. Rose appears to be arguing that the research regarding students lacking cognitive abilities, especially to composition process, is biased and ignore the social, political and social implications influencing control groups responses to research which studies cognitive abilities. Furthermore, Rose feels that cognitive research finding raise further questions because students were often blindly tested. A psychologist named Donaldson, challenge some of Piaget’s findings by “provid[ing] a chance for the children to get familiar with the tasks, and rephrase instructions to make sure children understand what is being asked”. Not surprisingly, [c]hildren in these conditions end up performing remarkably better on the tasks” (284). This finding made me think about the dreaded standardized testing process. Students, who have very little education in their homes or community, typically perform inadequately on mandated state assessments in public schools; however, these tests are not an accurate reflection of their cognitive abilities as it is in a context that they are not familiar with. This is the point that Rose appears to be making, that cognitive theory is not the best frame of reference to use when addressing the composition process for remedial students. Essentially, Rose appears to feel that the cognitive approach to writing is too narrow because cognitive process research does not represent students from marginalized parts of society, rather it uses the status quo to determine what patterns of thoughts and actions best solve problems, but the status quo has a different set of social, political and historical circumstances surrounding their thought process; hence, those who do have difficulties are being ignored in the field of cognitive research and if this is the case, how can instructors possible use the cognitive approach to the writing process, when the cognitive process essentially “reduces remedial writers”?