LANGUAGE DRIVING PRACTICE: CLARITY OR CONFUSION?

William T. Fagan

Students in linguistics generally study Benjamin Lee Whorf and the AWhorfian hypothesis@. Actually, Whorf made two major hypotheses: All higher levels of thinking are dependent on language, and the structure of the language one habitually uses influences the manner in which one understands his or her environment. It is the second hypothesis which I want to address in this paper along with how language not  only influences how people understand their environment but how they operate or act on it. As a graduate student I can recall arguments and counter arguments regarding this hypothesis. I can recall that I took a pro-stance and would cite the words Anap@ and Atuck@, labels for  clusters of trees in my part of Newfoundland, and how these words influenced our reaction and behaviour toward these environmental features.  But what happens when the language labels do not have a concordant reality?

Process Writing and Demand Writing

Within the Department of Education curriculum, the labels Aprocess writing@ and Ademand@ writing are used to refer to curricular outcomes, and within the Criterion Referenced Tests (CRA=s) there are actually test items constructed based on the understanding of these labels. The question is whether these two writing experiences are mutually exclusive, and I argue that they are not. In fact, if writing process is considered to be an inclusive phenomenon, then their mutual exclusivity is impossible.  Yet they have a separate reality in the Department of Education curriculum and testing program.

Research Study

As part of an assignment in a graduate course I taught at Memorial University in the summer session of 2005, ALiteracy and the young child: Home and school@, two graduate students engaged two young children in what might be considered a Ademand@ piece of writing. A difference was that the students studied these children through a method which I devised for tracking the writing process (Fagan, 1992) and which I now call Aretrospective writing analysis@ patterned after the writing  of Martens and Poonam (2004) on Amiscue retrospective analysis@. The children included Brent, a seven year old boy who had just completed Grade 2 French immersion, and David,  also  seven and who had just finished grade 1.

The initial Ademand@ directions given to the children were:

AI want you to write something for me. You can choose whatever you want to write about. Think about it. You can write as much as you want. Let me know when you are ready.@

The overall idea was that the researchers monitored or tracked the writing process of the children. As soon as the child indicated he was ready to start, the researcher asked the following questions: AWhat are you going to write about? Why did you choose this topic? Do you know now what the ending will be?@ The child was then told to begin writing, not to erase if he changed his mind, but to cross out any words and continue writing. The researcher also explained that she was going to be making little marks to remind her to ask the child some questions at the end of the writing and not  to mind her doing this.

The graduate student researchers gave each child a sheet of lined paper numbered from 1 to 24 in both margins and they had a similar sheet for themselves. The researchers Atracked@ the writing  of the students. For every word the child wrote, the researcher put a number on the line of the researcher=s sheet to correspond to these words. If the student paused (defined as a 3 second stop) after word 4 on line 2, for example, the researcher noted this as follows:

Line 4.              1                      2                      3                      4//                    5                      6

If the researcher noted the child looking back at this pause time, the researcher drew an arrow pointing upwards from this number. The child was not disturbed during the writing. When the child was finished, the researcher asked a number of questions to understand the process the child was engaging in. These questions could be grouped under the following process components: planning, composing, reviewing, editing. As part of planning, the researcher also asked about audience and how this may affect writing. With regard to the tracking of the words, depending on how many of these marks there were, the examiner took about 3 or 4. The researcher pointed to the approximate word position in the child=s writing and said something like: AI noticed you stopped here for a little while. Do you remember what you were thinking?@ Or, AI noticed you looked back here. Do you remember doing this? What was in your mind as you looked back?@ Any cross-outs were also studied in terms of the reasons underlying these (revision of ideas/content, or editing a spelling, grammatical construction, etc.).

Results

Both children were perfectly at ease in their writing, similar to hundreds of children on whom this technique has been used. Examples of some of the process information arising from these two instances are given below.

Brent stated that he chose to write about Batman because he liked Batman a lot and liked his gadgets. He had not decided on an ending at the beginning and said it would come later. When Brent stopped at what appeared to be the end of his work, he read it over and then continued writing . He was now on line 7 and after writing two words, stopped, tapped his pencil a few times, wrote another word, tapped his pencil again, then sounded out Aaction figure@ and wrote two more words. When he got to line 8, he said, AI know my ending now@ and he finished the writing on the next line.

The following interaction now took place.

Researcher: AI noticed you read over your work. Do you always read over your work when you finish writing? Why?@

Brent: AI wanted to read it out loud to see what I already wrote. Yes, I read over my work because I like to. It=s fun because I like to talk and I=m trying to see if I done a mistake into it.@

Researcher: (Pointing to approximate place on Brent=s paper) AI noticed you stopped about here and seemed to be thinking. Why did you stop? What were you thinking about?

Brent: AI thought I had made a mistake and checked.@

Researcher: (Again pointing to a line on his paper) AWhy did you pause here?

Brent: ABecause the pencil wasn=t comfortable in my hand. It was slipping so I needed to push the pencil up farther so I could do it >teensy=@.

Researcher: (Pointing). AI noticed you looked back over your work here. Do you remember looking back? Why would you look back?@

Brent: AI looked back because I wanted to see if I there were any problems, like mistakes.@

Researcher: ADid you have anyone in mind as you wrote?@

Brent: AI=m supposed to be writing for you. But I=m writing for my mom too because I want her to see my writing and I want to write it for the actor of Batman.@

Researcher: AI noticed you did not use a title. Why not? Do you ever use a title? When?

Brent: ASometimes. I use a title when I=m supposed to. My teacher tells me when I=m supposed to use a title.

David choose to write about warriors who had to fight the trolls. This was based on a game which he and his mom play. He knew at the time he started writing how he would end it B that a certain warrior would win. David also paused and looked back during writing. On one occasion he paused to check the spelling of Awarrior@, and once he looked back to make sure that he was eliminating the different characters (to see if they had gone out of the game). David was his own audience, and was writing for himself. He often wrote for his mom, and in that case, would get feedback from her. David always used a title as part of his planning. His response was: AI like making up titles. You know what your story is going to be about.@

Process or Demand Writing?

Except for brief questioning at the beginning on the choice of topic, these are examples of Ademand@ writing in terms of directions, the independence of the child in writing, and the absence of drafts. But the results show that the children are heavily engaged in process: in planning, composing, revising, and editing. In fact, it would be impossible to prevent these children from engaging in process even if they were sitting in a classroom writing at their individual tables or even in an isolation booth. ADemand@ writing as defined in the Provincial curriculum cannot be separated from Aprocess@ writing. There is no independent reality for these curriculum terms. Yet, according to the Whorfian hypothesis, the results of such CRA items are interpreted as if there were. As Chase (1956) stated with respect to Whorf=s thesis, he showed Ahow language indeed can shape our innermost thoughts@ (p. v) and A...the structure of language one habitually uses influences the manner in which one understands his environment@ (p. vi). A big question is why the linguistic terms Ademand@ and Aprocess@ with respect to writing should exist and influence the manner in which educators understand curriculum and testing.

Experience Behind Language

Writing as process began to be widely promoted in the 1970=s (Emig, 1971; Graves, 1973). Frank Smith (1971) had earlier made a breakthrough in focussing educators and researchers on reading as process. The thrust of process in both reading and writing  was what Awent on behind the eye or the pen@, what was happening in the brain. Various methods were developed to try and determine the kinds of cognitive decisions that readers and writers were making as they engaged in these linguistic acts. The process of writing was generally accepted as including: planning, composing, transcribing, revising, and editing. As in the examples of the children given above, planning included such things as choosing a topic, deciding on an audience, using a title, etc. Composing entailed putting one=s thoughts together. An example comes from Brent who paused and said: AI wonder what I can write now. Almost everyone in the world has seen Batman, I mean the figure.@ Transcribing involves getting  one=s thought on paper. This is where editing can also take place. Again, an example from Brent. He wrote Aga@, then paused for a short while, and finally completed it as Agadget@. Revising can also occur at any point and involves changes in the message or content. Editing deals with attending to the technicalities of writing: spelling, grammar, capitalization, and punctuation. This may occur at any point but good writers usually leave it to the end. In fact some writers may use an editor for this part of the writing process. For some writers, planning, composing, transcribing and revising may occur simultaneously. A study by Hawryuk (1990) of fiction writers noted that these writers Atake great pains with creating (planning) the opening of a story. ... the opening paragraph, especially the opening sentence, is so important to the creation of a story that it must be written and rewritten until the writer is satisfied with it. ... (it) is a kind of doorway into the story@ (p. 146). Imagine the reality of Ademanding@ that these writers write independently of Aprocess@?

Once the construct of writing process had been established, educators set about making it part of curriculum. They were now focussing on curriculum methodology which supposedly was fostering the cognitive processing or decision making of writers. However, educators had to understand the relationship between curriculum and psychology. For example the word Adrafting@ came into common use. This simply meant that writers did not have to write a Aperfect@ text first time around, but could (if they so wished) try a second or third time. This was an instructional gimmick to engage the writers in the process of Arevising@, just as the use of titles, enabled the process of Aplanning@. The Aauthor=s chair@ also became another popular curriculum activity, in which children went to a special chair and read their compositions. Having children publish (put in book form) what they wrote also became popular. But somewhere along the way, the cognitive processes of writing and the curriculum decisions became interwoven so that charts now appear on classroom walls describing the writing process as:

Pre-writing                   Drafting               Revising              Editing                     Publishing

But pre-writing does not refer to a cognitive process but a time period. Drafting is a mechanism or support for engaging in revising. Publishing is a curriculum activity in which children may or may not engage; many writers do not publish their work. What has happened is that the cognitive processes of writing and the curriculum process or steps have become interwoven so that the information on the chart above reflects a hybrid that is a true form of neither.

Conclusion

The influence of language on framing reality is evident in curriculum and testing decisions and there is no doubt the reality of teachers and others with respect to writing  have been framed by the linguistic terms Ademand@ and Aprocess@. However, a problem arises when this reality differs from a reality of observing writers at work and engaging writers in reflecting on the decisions they make, the processes they engage in while they write. A person=s thinking or cognitive processing cannot be altered by a simple demand. The example of demand and process writing lends support for the Whorfian hypothesis on how linguistic terms influence one=s reality. It is unfortunate, however, when this reality is not the reality of actual writing.

It is important that curriculum developers, and education policy makers are informed of the research on writing and that the language of curriculum decisions, including methodology and testing, reflect this research. The teaching of writing must reflect the cognitive processes that writers engage in. One such program for adult learners is Fagan (2002), Writing for the Workplace: Writing Process with Workplace Content.

References

Chase, S. (1956). Foreword. In Carroll, J. B. (Ed.) Language, thought & reality: Selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf (pages v-x). Cambridge, MA: MIT.

Emig, J. (1971). The composing processes of twelfth graders. Urbana, IL: The National Council of Teachers of English.

Fagan, W. T. (2002). Writing for the to workplace: Writing process with workplace  content.  St. John=s, NL: Memorial University Printing Services.

Fagan, W. T. (1992). Monitoring literacy performance: Assessment and diagnostic tasks (Examiner=s Manual). Montreal, Quebec: Les Editions de la Cheneliere, Inc.

Graves, D. (Ed.). (1973). A case study observing the development of primary children=s composing, spelling, and motor behaviors during the writing process. Final Report, NIE Grant No. G78-0174. Durham, NH: University of New Hampshire.

Hawryluk, P. (1990). Imaginative writing and the composing process. In Wason-Ellam , L., Blunt, A,  & Robinson, S. (Eds.), Horizons of literacy  (pages 135-153). Winnipeg, MB: The Canadian Council of Teachers of English Language Arts.

Martens, P, & Poonam, A. (2004). Strengthening literate identities through retrospective miscue analysis. Thinking Classroom, 5 (3), 23-29.

Smith, F. (1971). Understanding reading: A psycholinguistic analysis of reading and learning to read. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.