Welcome. This video is on the writing process.

Please be sure that you've read the

two
required articles for this week. Teach writing as process, not product,
by Donald Murray and the short article by Ali Hale called the writing process
before watching this video. So what is the writing process? Donald Murray describes
the process
approach as focusing on how a writing might be written rather than solely the
product of the writing theory of teaching. Writing process is built upon the belief
that paying attention to how we write can improve what we write. The process
approach starts with
the premise that writing is a complex and individualized task, which can be
described through
a series of recursive stages. These stages commonly include pre writing,
writing, revision and editing, and the craft involved in each stage can
be modeled and taught to students. As a result, the teacher can identify
specific areas where a student is experiencing difficulties and provide
appropriate instruction and support. There's a big difference,
in how you go about helping a student who is struggling to figure
out what they have to say. Versus a student who is
struggling with grammar, for instance, as I mentioned previously,
the impetus for this theory was an investigation into
how riel or professional writers wrote. The results showed that different writers
wrote in decidedly different ways. But a few basic patterns did emerge
the most basic involved two stages. Discovery and communication. Just about all
writers have turned out
did not start out a writing project by focusing on communicating material
to a particular audience. Instead, they began by attempting to
discover what that material was what did they know? What did they need to find out
what did they truly want to say? Discovery here means discovering for
yourself, the writer, what it is you want to talk about, how you want to talk about
it and what you have to say about it. Communicating that to
an audience is important, but comes later in its most basic form. The writing
process can be thought of as
having those two stages the discovery stage, where the writer seeks
to discover what they know and need to know about their subject. And what they have
to say about it and communication where the writer begins
to shape the materials in such a way to speak to an intended audience in order
to accomplish the writers purpose. This basic approach of first discovery, then
communication is at
the core of the writing process. That doesn't mean you shouldn't give any
thought to your audience when you're in the discovery stage, or that you won't need
to discover something
more during the communication stage. But it does mean that your primary
focus would be on discovery first and communications second. When you investigate
the writing process, you'll find that variations of this
discovery communication concept exist. That's because there is
no one writing process. As those who studied writers discovered,
different writers wrote in different ways, there is no one way the writing process
is actually writing processes, however. A few basic patterns did emerge. Donald
Murray divided writing
process into three stages. Pre writing, writing and rewriting. Ali Hale in the
writing process
describes what might be a more familiar process of five steps. Pre writing,
writing, revising,
editing and publishing. Note that these five steps are not
in opposition to Murray's, but they simply separate Murray's last
stage into three different parts. These five steps are the most
common ones you'll find listed when educators talk about the writing
process and, in fact, because of the recursive nature, if you
could list these sort of in a circle. Going around that would probably be
even more accurate than in a list like this that looks so linear whether they
have their own categories or not. Separating revision from editing is
important because many students don't realize the two stages are different.
Revising, as Hale says, is about making
big picture changes, you might add, new material rearranged the order
of what's their take out portions. Even whole sections, replace one section
with another and Betty Flowers process, revision belongs to the architect,
whereas editing belongs to the carpenter. Editing, Hale says, involves a close up
view of individual sentences and words. Editing usually takes place after
revision because it's helpful to have all your content and order settled before you
dig down into
individual sentences and word choice. [COUGH] A student in one of my classes
recently shared what he had heard, a professional writers say was the
difference between revision and editing. Editing is the process of getting rid
of missed aches, this writer said. Revision is the process of
adding virtues and again. This doesn't mean that you can't
go back and clean up the writing of a draft of a first draft or,
free riding, do some basic editing. But when it comes to really focusing
in on the editing on the words and the sentences, the language, the grammar, doing
that in a focused way is best
held off for later in the process. Another variation list the stages
of the writing process in this way. Pre writing, drafting, reviewing,
revising, editing, proof, reading and publishing. Pre riding remains everything
that you
do from the moment you get the urge or the assignment to write up to
when you start the first draft. This could involve doing research or
making lists or mind maps. It could involve free riding or taking
a walk in the woods notebook in hand. Of course, a writer friend of mine did
a whole lot of free right of pre writing while doing her laundry because she was
thinking about the writing all the while. Drafting is what Murray calls writing.
When you finally do sit down and
begin to write, drafts are usually thought
of as a small tipple. Creations first draft second draft,
etcetera. Flowers might call the first
draft your madman draft, and Lamont calls it your to paraphrase
crappy first draft any first draft. The goal is to discover, I find reviewing can
be a helpful
state to emphasize for students. This is when you show your
work in progress to one or more people to discover their response. Reviewing can
happen during or after any
stage, even pre writing where you might want to simply talk with someone
about clarifying your ideas. If you use peer review with your students,
for instance, this would be the most common place for
students to have their dress reviewed. Revising may involve additional
drafts after the first, or it may involve taking one draft and
reworking parts of it. This is the stage where discovery and
communication work together, as we're trying to both decide what new
material we need to add that's missing and how we can best present that
material that's already there. Keep in mind that revision is working
with the content, order and form. It is not editing, which comes later. Editing is
most effective to do after
we believe we have all the content in the peace arranged, and
we focus on the nuts and bolts of sentence structure,
word choice, grammar and mechanics. Perforating is something I have found
also helpful to emphasize for students. Before they turn into writing,
they need to take a final look through it, even if it's just running. Spell check
writing should be as
error free as a writer can make it before submitting it I want to know. I tell my
students if
when you make an error, if you made it because you don't know
that it's not supposed to be that way or if you just missed it because
you didn't prove free. Publishing is clearly an important stage
to professional writers because they expect to publish when they write. But in
teaching process writing, publishing becomes
an important endpoint as well. Though it has a broader definition, publishing means
showing your work to
others that could simply be the teacher. Or it could be your friends and
family could be another audience, the school newspaper or
a literary journal. It could be reading your work to
your classmates or at an open mic. The idea behind publishing as the final
stage of the writing process is that it clearly defines the work is finished, and
it completes the communication
part of the process. Now there are actual readers that
the writer is communicating with. Sometimes it's mistakenly believe that
identifying these stages means there is only one writing process and that
everyone should do things in the same way. But every writer approaches
the process differently. And just as we mentioned with Betty
Flowers four stages, the writing process in any alteration is not always a linear
process, but it's often recursive. We might reach the revision stage and discover
we need to go back to pre
writing in order to explore an additional idea some of the benefits of teaching,
writing, using writing process. It frees writers from having to
think about everything all at once. This is, I think one of the most important
aspects I think of writing process, because very often students have
an idea of what they want to say. But they just don't know how to get
started because they're they're thinking about everything all at once. How do I say
what I'm going to say
what order I'm going to put it in? How do I write in such a way that it
doesn't have a lot of grammatical mistakes, that it's clear
that it makes sense. Teaching writing process also allows the
writer to focus first on what they know and don't know and what they want to say
before worrying about how to say it. It allows the writer to focus on one
step at a time it empowers students because each writer can and should adjust the
process to fit
their own needs and situation. For instance, one student might
prefer making lists to free riding, while another might make mind maps. And
students can revise as much as they
want or as much as they feel is necessary. Some students,
won't need to revise very much, whereas others may need
to do several revisions. It allows students to see the act of
writing as a series of decisions over which they have control. They don't have to
follow
somebody else's plan, and what I believe is most important,
it helps students understand that an individual writing is something that
develops over time and multiple drafts. It's not a one shot deal. You don't sit
down one
evening after dinner, Whip off your paper,
put the final period at the end and go that's it I'm done it's
all over remember as well. There is not one writing
process it is a mostly linear movement, but it is also recursive. Ultimately
process writing tries to
provide a step by step framework for how a writer might go about
producing a final product, but it takes the emphasis off that final
product until the end of the process.