Cognitive Process of Writing in Practice

Blog #4

Janks, Hilary. The discipline and craft of academic writing: building writing capacity in institutions of higher education. 2012. Reading & Writing. 3(1). Art #25. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v3i1.25

In their article, “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing,” Flowers and Hayes introduced the idea composition was a set of distinct, hierarchical thinking processes that the writer organizers as she sets her ideas down on the page. The response to this article resulted in a major pedagogical shift in the way teaching writing was viewed. The one thing they almost all had in common was that no longer was the writing product the focus of the teaching pedagogy as much as the process used to produce that product. Writing from her experience as a participant in a two-week course on academic writing, Janks presents what can only be seen as an almost perfect case study of Flowers’ and Hayes’ theory in practice. She describes the pedagogy used in this course as a synthesis of academic writing with several techniques of creative writing, by a professor whose philosophy was that even research writing was creative writing. Janks describes the structure of the course – two weeks of classes with the weeks separated by a month in-between – and then describes in detail the exercises done and the impacts those exercises had on her writing. Sessions such as “creativity” and “pushing the boundaries”; peer groups where members critiqued each other’s work. Activities such as free writing on “I am the color of…”  “what stops you from writing…”, drawing mind-maps of students’ research and free associating on the word “before.” These go directly back to Flowers and Hayes’ four points; they are examples of how process can externally introduced and guided and how it works. That is its relevance for this course. The activities may seem far out, the methodology, “kooky,” but I it is critically important to have an open mind and understand what the theory of cognitive process really means when put into practice creatively. Its application becomes even more relevant because we have students from all different disciplines but they will all have to write research papers and do academic writing. It is our responsibility to teach them  how to do it in a way that demystifies it, makes it accessible to them, and gives them alternate tools to break through what are sometimes long-established barriers from historically bad experiences with writing. Although this may have been an unorthodox article, it was valuable article in demonstrating in a concrete way what process can mean and how we have to open our own minds to being more creative.