While English and language arts teachers have a disciplinary advantage in understanding and applying writing process principles, teachers in other disciplines have more problems. Their impulse is to use the model they remember form their own high school or undergraduate schooling rather than the process(es) they engage in as publishing professionals. Typically, they assign specific topics, providing few if any directions on how to write the paper. They read and comment only on the final draft, using intermediate drafts (if any) to ensure against plagiarism. Revision opportunities are few. Instructors in Writing Across the Curriculum faculty development programs often have to spend considerable time convincing participants of the inadequate pedagogy of this approach; even when teachers are unhappy with the papers written in this traditional manner, they are often reluctant to change--usually on the grounds that responding to drafts is too time consuming. ("The Great Paradigm Shift," Bloom, p. 44).
And so, you ask, what are those "writing process principles" to which Bloom refers in that first sentence? Here they are:
1. Writing is an activity, an act composed of a variety of activities.
2. The activities in writing are typically recursive rather than linear.
3. Writing is, first and foremost, a social activity.
4. The act of writing can be a means of learning and discovery.
5. Experienced writers are often aware of audience, purpose, and context.
6. Experienced writers spend considerable time on invention and revision.
7. Effective writing instruction allows students to practice these activities.
8. Such instruction includes ample opportunities for peer review.
9. Effective instructors grade student work not only on the finished product but on the efforts involved in the writing process.
10. Successful composition instruction entails finding appropriate occasions to intervene in each student's writing process. (Olson, qtd. in Bloom, p 33)
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