Cornell University

Through my work with blocked writers I've become interested in a loose category of difficulties I call "interference with writing ability." This category includes writing blocks, which are somewhat uncommon among undergraduates, but it also includes other kinds of counterproductive effort that eventually yield essays and can therefore go unnoticed in the product-oriented writing class. For a variety of reasons, some students in our classes are working too hard, with unproductive methods based on misconceptions of the writing process, of our standards for performance, or of their own ability. Because these writers are already pushing themselves in the wrong directions, if we assume that we need to push our students toward higher motivations and standards, through greater effort, our teaching can further complicate their problems, reduce the quality of their work, and even induce writing blocks, now or in the future.

Counterproductive effort is difficult to identify and address in a conventional writing class for four reasons:

Most of this work occurs outside class, where we cannot observe it.

The average undergraduate does not have specific language or concepts for describing the writing process.

Although some theories of discourse suggest that "A written text. . .can be a compelling model of the 'composing process,' once we conceive of a writer at work within a text," (as David Bartholomae argued in "Inventing the University"), we can't reliably infer from a student essay the amounts or kinds of work that went into it.

Grading systems and the institutional functions of a writing class suggest that our main job is to improve the quality of studentwriting and evaluate progress on a vertical scale, with the best writing on the top and the worst at the bottom.

As a consequence, the question "How is student X doing in your class?" usually means "How good are his essays?" or "Is he working hard enough?" To the extent that we consider degrees of struggle in the writing process at all, we tend to assume that this scale of effort is also vertical and parallel to the scale of quality in finished work: that better writing results from more time and effort, closer reading, stronger motivation, deeper thinking, more extensive revision and editing. For most of our students this assumption is probably correct, but for some it is not.

To acknowledge that greater effort in the writing process does not always improve writing quality, we do not need to abandon a vertical scale for evaluating student work or to teach writing entirely as a process, as Donald Murray and others argued in the 1970s. We simply need to add a horizontal scale to our conception of the writing class and of variations among student writers, as in the diagram below.

This diagram is still a crude representation of the variations among the products and processes of writing in a typical class, but it does distinguish the great differences among students whose finished papers might look very similar and receive comparable grades. The letters on the diagram represent both the grades a paper might receive and the individual writers of these papers. Student A produces excellent writing with considerable ease. Student A ' produces work of similar quality with great difficulty and frustration. Student C ' struggles equally to produce weak writing, according to standards for the course. Student C produces similarly weak papers with little effort. Student F fails to complete assignments due to low motivation and effort. Student X is a severely blocked writer who, with great effort, does not complete assignments either.

These five students will need to change their writing strategies in different ways and, in the process, will need different amounts and kinds of help from instructors. While student C, for example, might need the challenges and incentives teachers typically provide in a freshman writing course, student C ' might need to develop more efficient strategies or more accurate conceptions of the task. Less effort, or different kinds of effort, might improve the quality of her essays.

If we plot these cases on a narrowly vertical scale of textual quality, we can see how such distinctions become blurred to the point that they seem irrelevant:

Most unfortunate, perhaps, is the failure to distinguish student F from Student X. Because neither of these students completes assignments, teachers have no textual basis for evaluating their work and providing guidance. As a consequence, both will probably fail or drop the course. These students might provide similar explanations for their failure to turn in assigned work, such as "I ran out of time," or "I had trouble understanding the readings." Yet student F might have procrastinated and skimmed the readings, if she looked at them at all, while student X spent too much time reading the material, making elaborate notes and plans for an ambitious paper he could not actually write. F is probably the least motivated student in the class, while X might be the most highly motivated and capable.

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION

I haven't tried to address the implications of these distinctions for teaching practice, so most of the discussion questions that come to mind concern these implications.

Are the distinctions I made above necessarily relevant to a writing class?

If these distinctions are relevant, how can we acquire the information needed to make them?

Suggestions that we should "teach writing as a process" took root, in textbooks and courses, with an emphasis on the "a." If we teach a particular process (say, with scheduled freewriting, drafts, and revisions), does this structure reduce or only conceal the variations I described?

I noted that my diagram is still a crude representation of variations among student writers. For example, are two students in the position of A ' necessarily expending the same kinds of effort for the same reasons? Will they need the same kinds of instruction?

To what extent (or perhaps in what sense) can we actually infer the process from the product, or see "the writer at work within a text"?

I'm aware that teachers often make and address the kinds of distinctions I described, even if they do not have a frame of reference for doing so. If you recognize that a student is mired in the writing process, struggling unproductively with an assignment, how do you know this, and what do you do?

ANNOTATED WORKS CITED

Bartholomae, David. “Inventing the University.” When a Writer Can’tWrite. Ed. Mike Rose. New York: Guilford, 1996. 134-165. (A widely cited account of the complex rhetorical challenges that novice writers face in academic work.)

Boice, Robert. "Which is More Productive, Writing in Binge Patterns of Creative Illness or in Moderation?" Written Communication. Oct. 1997: 435-459. (A report on Boice's long-term studies of the writing practices and productivity of assistant professors.)

Cayton, Mary Kupiec. "What Happens When Things Go Wrong: Women and Writing Blocks." Journal of Advanced Composition 10 (1990): 321-338. (Cayton's study suggests that women and men experience and contend with writing blocks differently--the women with greater emphasis on authority, audience, and the affective dimensions of the problem.)

Hjortshoj, Keith. Understanding Writing Blocks. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. (This book constructs a framework for understanding and moving beyond blocks in academic writing, from undergraduate studies through graduate work and professional scholarship.)

Murray, Donald M. "The Essential Delay: When Writer's Block Isn't." When a Writer Can't Write. Ed. Mike Rose. New York: Guilford Press. 1985. 219-226. (Murray argues that delay and related frustrations are normal occurrences in the working lives of serious writers.)

---. "Teach Writing as a Process not Product." The Leaflet. Nov. 1972:11-14. (A very brief argument that writing should be taught as a process of discovery.)

Rose, Mike. "Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans, and the Stifling of Language: A Cognitivist Analysis of Writer's Block." ." College Composition and Communication 31 (1980): 389-401. (One of few systematic attempts to study and explain writing blocks, among undergraduates at UCLA.)

---. Writer's Block: The Cognitive Dimension. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois U. Press. 1984. (Using the previous reference as pilot studies, Rose extended his research and analysis in this short book, based on his doctoral dissertation.)