Geri Murray Process Pedagogy 10/15/ 2010

I don’t want to date myself but I have to admit that my formal schooling did not include
the process method of writing until recent encounters in graduate school. I don’t remember how I
learned to craft an essay but it always seemed like a trial and error event, best left put-off to the
last minute. No one would review my writing or have a conference with me. I just turned in the
product and got a grade back with either a compliment or a negative remark. For this reason, I
may identify best with Lad Tobin, who seemed to have a similar experience.

The readings this week served to provide me with missing information and three unique
perspectives on the writing process, but Don Murray may not have helped me as much as the
others with his vague definitions of the components of process writing. Consider this line, for
instance: “Prewriting is everything that takes place before the first draft.” That’s awfully broad.
His defining it as three stages seemed to contradict Erika Lindeman’s idea that process writing
involves several processes, that it is recursive, and processes overlap (24). Murray also listed the
implications of using the process method, less vague, but somewhat troubling to me, especially
this line: “The text of the writing course is the student’s own writing. Students examine their own
evolving writing and that of their classmates, so that they study writing while it is still a matter of
choice, word by word” (5). This one also bothered me: “There are no rules, no absolutes, just
alternatives. What works one time may not another. All writing is experimental” (6). I see what
he’s saying in the first quote, but it horrifies me to think that my writing would be the text of a
course where I learn how to write, when I desperately want direction beyond myself. No rules in
public schools; I don’t see how that could ever work. His ideas seem to represent the Whole
Language philosophy, learning through discovery, which has been the subject of much debate and
consternation in reading. I realize, however, that Murray’s essay was written in ‘72 and it
represents new ideas not yet completely formed while Lindemann and Tobin write more than a
decade later.

Lad Tobin recalled his own personal experience with the transition from preprocess to
process to postprocess, and concluded that personally, a more eclectic approach incorporating all
three was best (16). That hit home with me. I recall reading about Engfish in my early adulthood,
a term Tobin ascribes to Macrorie (9), so I understand why there was a push to abandon
traditional methods which made writing such a mysterious practice. You either caught on or faked
it with Engfish, a sort of lifeless academic sounding collection of print on paper.

I see a similar rift in reading. Pure phonics with no books to read is pointless to a child.
Children with only skills training may miss the point of reading altogether. Authentic literature
and the rich learning that results from discussing texts, activating prior knowledge, and making
connections while learning whole words rather than word parts seemed to be the solution. Whole
Language made reading teachers focus on the point of reading – to find meaning in text – just as
process writers made writing teachers realize that students could not learn to write without
exploration, discovery, review, and revision. A few years down the Whole Language road,
however, the truth came out. There was a dramatic increase in the number of poor readers below
basic proficiency and the critical missing factors were decoding skills and phonemic awareness.
Geri Murray Process Pedagogy 10/15/ 2010

Similarly, writing became all process with no content, resulting in students with the same sort of
products as those found before process writing took hold. Tobin noted this early persistent
criticism of process writing, “Process pedagogies . . . fail to teach basic and necessary skills and
conventions” (11).

I think Erika Lindemann provided the most detailed, cogent view of process writing. She
left me with a clearer understanding of what goes on by describing her own writing process, how
she has rituals to get started and how processes overlap (23). She described writing as problem
solving, specifically knowledge, language, and rhetorical problems, and revision as a series of
redo processes – resee, rethink, reshape, resolve. She also satisfied the post-process need to
include the cultural context of the writer, reminding us that the purpose of writing, when all is
said and done, is social communication.