SKEP The psychology of writing

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The process of writing is very slow, on a psychological scale compared to other psychological processes. Handwriting is only about 20 words/minute, while keyboarding is typically 40 – 85 wpm, and stenographic recording can range up to 300 wpm. However, other “languaging�? psychological processes, such as listening, speaking and reading can easily range into the 100’s of words per minute, even the 1000’s! What are some of the stage theories of writing production? How should writing be taught? What are some of the differences between the processes that expert writers use, compared to novice writers? And, have the recent efforts on standardized tests of writing ability, and computer assisted writing technology helped to improve student writing?

Introduction

What is writing and what purpose does it serve? It may seem like a simple question that should have a simple answer. The fact of the matter is that the complexity of writing is too large of a scope to answer very quickly. In it's shortest answer we write to communicate with others, to preserve thought, to share knowledge, to express feelings and emotions, to entertain, to promote events, to sell products and services, to learn, to support or protest political views, and many other forms that we communicate with one another. Writing can address an individual, a small group, or to large masses of people. The written text can be short-term communication like a grocery list or long-term communication such as the declaration of independence. As it is easily seen writing is not a simple procedure that can be easily studied. The attempt that this paper will try to analyze is why writing is taught in schools, how writing is taught, and what tools are available for students' potential writing improvement.

History

Brief Evolution of Writing

I would like to first take you back to a time when words were not written and barely spoken. Man was just grunting and possibly using body language to communicate with one another. Then came the pictures on the wall. Cave drawing represented aspects of humanistic life over 20,000 years ago that are still studied today. These were attempts to communicate from one individual to another or from group to group. As human intelligence progressed the pictures became symbols that represented ideas, phrases, or items in the life of the author. These symbols differ by geographical location and time era, but they began to convey more specific information. Finally, these picture writing eventually gave way to a variety of alphabets such as Archaic, Aramaic, Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Hebrew, Asian, and many others until the modern alphabets of today (Ryan).

Brief Evolution of Writing Tools

The medium of writing has gone through many changes as well. Going back 20,000 years or so again, the medium was a cave that was painted or carved. We could say that these were the first writing tools and anyone with ability and imagination could participate in the writing. With the advent of clay, record keeping became portable and writing had to become more detailed in meaning. As the alphabets developed the writing tools developed with them. From carving tools to bamboo stems that were turned into a sort of fountain pen by the Egyptians, eventually becoming a quill or feather pen, and finally today to what we know as a pen. The writing instrument has changed dramatically as the ink was improved and refined and the paper came into use. Paper came into the picture and the paper and pen have been best of friends since 2,000 B.C. Paper was not very widely available in Europe until the 14th century and so writing was limited to the few individuals that could afford it (Billis, 2005).

Implications of the Evolution of Writing

Going back again to the cave man, it is fair to say that writing was not limited. Anyone that wanted to write could if the society that they lived in painted or carved on walls. Even if parts of the population were not allowed to carve or paint, primarily women, there was always a way to express oneself in writing some how. As the tools of writing became more complex and refined, writing became unavailable to most. You needed to be educated, which meant you needed to have the resources for an education. Before the mass production of paper, you had to make your own paper from animal or plant products, sharpen your feathers, make or mix ingredients for ink, write and dry the ink, and store the paper safely for future use. It was a long and tedious task that many did not have the luxury of time nor money to dedicate in writing a document (Billis). Writing became a function of the many when education became a standard norm in many societies. Education relied on the ability of many people being able to read and write in order to learn other subjects. The focus today is that all children entering our school systems leave with a good education, which includes good writing skills to effectively communicate. This is a pivotal change in society where most people were illiterate just a few hundred years ago to an almost fully literate culture that can communicate in written form to and individual, a group, or a mass audience (Ryan, 200?).

Why Writing is Taught in Schools

Educational Interest

"Educationally, our interest is in what it takes for students to grow beyond their dependencies and acquire the autonomous competence of the expert writer" (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 200?) Most educators would agree with this statement of why writing is taught in schools. It is this notion of getting students to a point beyond what they know that drives and fuels many educators to teach students about the world beyond their geographical location. Reading about many subjects and issues and then being able to write intelligent prose about what they read, saw, heard, or experienced is valuable to the education of a child. As educators we want children to be able to understand what they read and express in writing information that they have internalized. Writing opens the door to the potential of many other functions in our society.

Written Language vs. Spoken Language

Why should we focus on the written language that students have? The written language and the spoken language that students have are very different. While orally we communicate to express personal relationships, writing is largely used to convey knowledge or information (Snow, 1991). When students speak they have many other forms of communication that they can utilize in the process such as gestures, body language, movement, and voice to further express their feelings. Written language requires that the author conveys meaning only through the printed words and as such a large vocabulary of words is essential beyond that of everyday conversations with explicit meaning. (Wells, 1986; Chall, Jacobs, Baldwin, 1991; Carson 1995). As students learn to write they also learn vocabulary that is not part of their everyday life. This vocabulary helps them to further understand information that they read in books as they grow mature and develop as capable writers.

How Writing is Taught

Writing Instruction; Then & Now

In the past 50 years how writing is taught has changed in focus and principal. In the 1960s the majority of teachers only had basic skills in the teaching and understanding of writing instruction. (Braddock, Lloyd, and Schoer, 1963). Writing instruction then had, what many consider, a paradigm shift in the 1970s and 1980s from "the product" to "the process" of writing (Applebee, 1986). The focus became how to write instead of the final product. The core of instruction became what steps were needed to create a good piece of written product. In the 1990s it became common by professionals in the field of education to view writing as a field of study or discipline that can be analyzed and described (Graves 1999). In the 2000s the research continues and the availability of writing programs at all grade levels are numerous.

Phonics

In the new millennium the tools that are used by teachers today are as different as the teacher in the classroom. Some of the approaches that teachers may use are phonics, whole-language, and grammar instruction. Phonics is the study of sounds that are represented by letters and letter combinations. Rules for the sounds that letters produce is taught and then students are taught how to put these sounds together to make words from text (Griffith & Olson, 1992). In other words, learning from parts-to-whole method. Commercial products are available for home and classroom use.

Whole Language

Whole Language is an emphasis on learning the patterns, rhythm, and structure of the language in text. By reading in and seeing how sounds are produced as the reader reads the story, students pick-up on the sounds that letters make. Along the way students begin to memorize sight words and instruction reinforces the sound to letter relationship in writing (Manning, Manning, & Long, 1989). It is learning from a whole-to-parts method. Another shift in this area is the Phonics in Whole Language approach in which both systems are used side by side and help develop a sense of language with sound to letter relationship (Mills, O'Keefe, & Stephens, 1992; Powell & Hornesby, 1993).

Grammar Instruction

Grammar instruction is a system in which students write a piece of work prompted by the instructor. The teacher and the students then use the writing to edit and modify the writing. The teacher uses the student's writing to teach lessons on spelling, punctuation, and grammatical rules. The focus is on making the rules of grammar quickly and easily used by the students to improve their own writing. The final product is then an improved version of the original story submitted by the student (Chin, 2000). These are just a few of the methods available, researched, and used by educators. Individual teachers make their choices based on the personal preferences that they wish to focus their teaching methods in.

The Fourth Grade Slump

Potential for Failure

A report by Chall, Jacobs, and Baldwin (1990) shows that students of low income have the higher probability of falling behind in all academic skill, including writing, around the fourth grade. These children are mostly of minority groups. It is believed that this is attributed, in part, that fourth grade is where the switch from learning-to-read becomes reading-to-learn. Research shows, as low income and minority students go higher in academic level, the abilities in performance decrease. Reading and writing abilities were similar at the second grade level between students of low income and the regular population, but the low income students were behind as much as two grade levels by the 7th grade (Chall & Jacobs, 1983).

The potential for greater failure is present if students of low income are not considered in determining what teaching method is used in the classroom. Phonics, Whole Language, and Grammar Instruction all have research and studies that either support or discredited one over the other. Unfortunately, very little reliable research has been conducted on how these methods help or hinder the needs of low-income, minority, or second language students. An effective program that works with a Korean population may not work with a Mexican population. It is then left up to the teacher to evaluate what is best for the classroom relying only on intuition and not on best practices based on research. The more diverse that the classroom becomes, the less accurate the teachers prediction may become. It is a disservice to these students and the community that we do not have the information to help teachers educate all students in the classroom. As students fall behind in reading and writing skills, the affects will hinder the abilities of students from around the world to perform in math, science, social studies, foreign languages, literature, and many other subjects that greatly depend on students’ ability to communicate in the written form of English in the U.S.

What Tools are Available for Students' Potential Writing Improvement

Available Technology

As already mentioned, many teaching methods are valuable to educators and parents based on the approach they wish to follow for literacy. One tool that has not been discussed is the computer. The technological devices available today offer many more tools to teach writing skills. From Sesame Street on-line, to Dora the Explorer CD-rom, to word processing programs, the sky is the limit. All the teaching methods mentioned and many others being developed are available on-line and are just a click away. The computer has revolutionized they way that many students use writing skills and learn new skills in technology. Students compose e-mails, web logs, WebPages, instant messages, chats, school papers, electronic portfolios, and many other electronic forms of composing text to communicate with different audiences (Yancey, 2004).

Writing Changing Trend

Although the pencil and paper is and will be used in schools, the keyboard and mouse is quickly becoming the choice of writing for many students today. The writing process may still be somewhat the same in that students compose, edit, and publish their work. The difference now is that many students may do all these steps, if they wish, on the computer (Norfleet, 2003). The computer also allows for the writer to express a style or character as different fonts, bolds, italics, and other letter styles are used to create the writing.

Digital Creativity

A large impact on students writing electronically is the availability and ease of use of visual images. Importing a jpeg, creating a chart, adding moving text and graphics, uploading sounds or music to text, hyper linking one document to another, and many other tools allow students to make a much more "attractive" product (Yancey, 2004). Students are interested in their work when they can personalize it in ways that may be too difficult with paper and pencil. The creative outpour of a student is freed and is not limited by his or her artistic ability.

Digital Divide

On a cautionary note, this digital tool is only as effective as it is available to the students. For students that have access to this technology at home, the benefits can be very promising in their technological skills. These skills will help students create papers that are interesting to them, if they have a regular exposure to the technology. Unfortunately, many students do not have computers at home and their only exposure to this technology is at school. Students need to have adequate technological exposure in school in order to be digitally proficient. The digital divide is a large gap that at the present time isolates too many lower income students (Adrian, Baird, Dumond-Kerr, Gaston, & Smith, 2005). The report further states that the digital divide has actually widened and not closed as many educators falsely believe. This has further separated the gap between the 'haves' and the 'have-not.' The implications for students are that technology has the potential for writing improvements in the students’ final products, students' creativity can promote good writing, but limited access to technology can hinder the success of many students.

Conclusion

The fact that writing began as an expression by painting or carving on a cave wall with pictures to represent a story, to the evolution of the paper and pencil, to the keyboard; also mirrors the idea of writing psychology. Writing started as a free expression by anyone who wanted to express him or herself. Writing then became a learned skill that only those that could afford the education and the writing tools had the ability. Today writing is a skill that should be widely available to everyone again and not the few. State and national standards expect students to be able to write effectively. Teaching methods are available and research supports many of these techniques. Technology has the great potential of reaching many students in ways that the paper and pencil is limited. It is definitely cheaper to teach writing with pencil and paper when compared to the cost associated with technology. The lack of teaching writing skills with technological methods will further separate the population of literacy, if adequate use in the schools is not administered.

Life experiences, testimonies and stories related to this chapter, "signed" by contributor

Resources

The following is simply a list of a few of the resources available on-line. Most of these sites are free and offer advice, writing samples, prompts, writing styles, and /or methods of teaching writing. Of course, there are also books available to purchase and textbook companies have writing programs available. Hopefully these sites will direct you towards an e-source suitable for your students' age/ability group.

http://www.geocities.com/fifth_grade_tpes/nonfiction_genre.html

http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Atrium/1437/expo.html

http://www.manatee.k12.fl.us/sites/elementary/palmasola/writingindex.htm

http://www.stanford.edu/~arnetha/expowrite/index.html

http://www.webenglishteacher.com/writing.html

http://www.orangeusd.k12.ca.us/yorba/writing.htm

http://www.arcanum-butler.k12.oh.us/Home_Page.html

http://www.people.virginia.edu/~dlf3m/writequest/

http://www.writing-smart.com/index.html

http://www.amazon.com search for "Step-by-step Strategies For Teaching Expository Writing" by Barbara Mariconda

http://storymind.com/store/expository-writing.htm

http://write4kids.com/?OVRAW=expository%20writing&OVKEY=expository%20writing&OVMTC=standard

http://www.springfield.k12.il.us/resources/languagearts/readingwriting/writerworkshop.htm

References

Adrian, C., Baird, N., Gaston, R., Kerr, L., and Smith, L. (2005). Ethics on the internet. University of Illinois: Champaign, IL.

Applebee, A.N. (1986). Problems in process approaches. The Teaching of writting: The National Society for the Study of Writing.

Bereiter, C., and Scardamalia, M. (1987). The psychology of written composition. Hillsdale, NJ, Lawrece Erlbaum Ass.

Bellis, M. (2005). A brief history of writing instruments. Retrieved August 29, 2005 from About.com. Web site: http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa100197.htm

Braddock, R.L. Lloyd-Jones, R., and Schoer, L. (1963). Research in written composition. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English

Chall, J., Jacobs, V. (1983). Writing and reading in the elementary grades: Developmental trends among low-ses children. Language Arts, vol. 60, no. 5, pp. 617-626.

Chall, J., Jacobs, V., and Baldwin, L. (1990). The reading crisis. Why poor children fall behind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Chin, B.A. (2000). The role of grammar in improving student's writing. Sadlier-Oxford: University of Montana.

Corson, D. (1995). Using English words. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer.

Graves, R.L. (1999) Writing, teaching, learning: A sourcebook. Portsmouth, NH: Baynton/Cook.

Griffith, P.L., and Olson, M.W. (1992). Phonemic Awareness Helps Beginning Readers Break the Code. The Reading Teacher, 45, 516-525

Manning, M., Manning, G. and Long, R. (1989). Effects of a whole language and a skill-oriented program on the literacy development of inner city primary children. ERIC: ED 324 642

Mills, H., O'Keefe, Y., and Stephens, D. (1992). Looking closely: Exploring the role of phonics in one whole language classroom. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Norfleet, P. (2003). Alpha smart: One solution for eliminating grumbling from the writing process. A Tapestry of Knowledge, vol. 3, (pp. 262-269). Virginia Beach, VA: Virginia Beach Public Schools.

Ryan, D. The history of writing (1997). Retrieved August 29, 2005, from Historian.net. Web site: http://www.historian.net/hxwrite.htm

Powell, D., and Hornsby, D. (1993). Learning phonics and spelling in a whole language classroom. New York: Scholastic.