Empirical research on composing processes is virtually absent in our field. What "do" contemporary writers actually do when they compose? I argue that we need a return to research on composing processes, as writers are every day weaving together the social and cognitive through writing. One writer's composing process think-aloud suggests…

Engaging a complexity theory view of learning, this study examined an atypical timescale for tracking L2 authorial voice development through the interaction of cognitive processes that inform voice construction. A microgenetic analysis of seven adult Japanese learners of English in a three-week writing course designed to help students develop…

The creative writing workshop, involving peer critique of manuscripts in progress, is deeply connected to many writerly habits of mind. As such, this article examines workshop as a signature pedagogy in creative writing. Through workshop, students develop awareness of their readers, understanding of how texts are created by readers and through…

"Process and Intention: A Bridge from Theory to Classroom" is rooted in a time when intuitive, experience-based awareness that we should "Teach Writing as a Process Not Product" (Murray 3) was bolstered by systematic research into the complexity of writing. Lots of years have passed since those days, so as a reminder, the author mentions five…

Most students avoid the reflective nature the writing process requires. Their resistance to meta-cognition, thinking about one's thinking, often means they are incapable of capitalizing on their strengths or improving upon their weaknesses. The author believes students who are familiar with writers' lives and habits will be that much more…

In this frankly utopian essay, Robert Yagelski's theme is the transformative power of writing as an act in and of itself. He makes us reevaluate our motivation and point for teaching writing in schools and asks us to consider an agenda that will quite frankly scare teachers as he explains why we need an ontology of writing. (Contains 6 notes.)

Maja Wilson and Michael Niemczyk advocate turning away from mandated writing toward learning environments that honor the messy, inner life of the writer. They explain the importance of disorientation in that it unsettles but nurtures the emerging intention of student writers, and they stress the need to return our attention to the heart and center…

When writers write, how do they decide to whom they are speaking? How does this decision affect writers' cognition about writing? Their motivation to write? In this article, I review literature on cognitive and social processes of writing, conceptualizations of audience, writing across distinct learning environments, and writers' motivations. I…

Working from both literary and composition theory, this book argues that American composition theory and pedagogy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is founded on the Platonic view that invention is a solitary act in which the individual, drawing upon innate knowledge and mental structures, searches for the truth, using introspective self…