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AWARENESS OF VRITING/THINKING/LEARNINGt
INTERCONNECTIONS FOR COLLEGE FRESHHBN

BY

Villiam Worden Palmer

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

1988

ABSTRACT

AWARENESS 0F VRITING/THINKING/LEARNING:
INTERCONNECTIONS FOR COLLEGE FRESHMEN

BY
William Worden Palmer

This study investigated theoretical and pedagogical
implications of helping college freshmen become more aware
of themselves as writers/thinkers/learners. The following
questions were examined: What awareness do students have of
their own composing processes, how does that awareness assist
them, and in what ways should teachers be concerned with
raising the self-awareness of students' own writing/thinking/
learning processes?

A review of recent research regarding awareness of
composing was presented, focusing on the dichotomy between
protocol and written self—report methodology. Theoretical
perspectives of modern psychologists, philosophers, and
composition specialists were examined: the interaction of
thought and language; the importance of active, personal
construction through reflection; the motivation of cognition
and awareness; the values and limitations of awareness; and
the interaction of intellect and intuition.

The investigator argued that the freshmen writing
course is an appropriate place for students to examine
interconnections between writing/thinking/learning. He
analyzed pedagogical implications of metacognitive writing,

concentrating on his experience with having students write

"learning logs"--informal explorations of problems, concerns,
realizations, surprises--before and after writing each essay
in a course designed to motivate students to think about
thinking in both critical and creative ways. The following
conclusions were discussed. The log method helped students
become more process oriented; promoted natural dialogue
between students and teacher; fostered discovery learning;
and enabled students to construct representations of rhetor-
ical concerns such as invention, purpose, audience. However,
many students admitted to fabricating responses in their
logs, telling the teacher what they thought he wanted to
hear, and basic writers had more difficulty investigating
their composing than did more advanced writers. Implications
for further research regarding metacognitive writing were
discussed.

A taxonomy of awareness of writing/thinking/learning
for college English teachers was presented, with seven
categories of awareness: interaction of concrete and
abstract; the process of inquiry; common thinking problems;
ambiguity; different functions and forms of language; dialec-
tical thinking; and metaphorical thinking. The study con-
cluded with a discussion of the ways metacognitive writing

can serve a liberal arts college curriculum.

Capyright by
WILLIAM VORDEN PALMER

1988

To Bon, Brenden, Ban, and Ryan

ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank Dr. Stephen Tchudi, my doctoral advisor,
for his wisdom and help; my students in English 100 College
Rhetoric for sharing their minds with me; and Dr. Ronald
Kapp, Provost of Alma College, for reducing my teaching load

so I could complete this dissertation.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES

INTRODUCTION

Chapter

I.

II.

III.

A REVIEW OF RESEARCH: AWARENESS OF WRITING/
THINKING/LEARNING . . . . . . . . . . . .

Research Methods and Findings . . .

The

Log Method and Implications for This Study

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES 0F PSYCHOLOGISTS
AND PHILOSOPHERS . . . . . . .
Defining Awareness and Consciousness

The
The
The
The
The

Interaction of Thought and Language . . . .
Importance of Active, Personal Construction
Motivation of Cognition and Awareness . .

Limitations of Awareness . . . . .
Interaction of Intellect and Intuition . . .

Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

PERSPECTIVES 0F COMPOSITION THEORISTS

The
The
The
The
The

Interaction of Thought and Language . .
Importance of Active, Personal Construction
Motivation of Cognition and Awareness

Values and Limitations of Awareness . . . .
Interaction of Intellect and Intuition . . .

Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . .

iv

Page

vii

101

IV.

PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF METACOGNITIVE WRITING

The Log Method and English 100 College Rhetoric
Student Evaluations of the Log Method . . . . .
Teacher Evaluation of the Log Method . . . .
Discussion: The Advantages and Limitations

of Pre- Logs .
Discussion: The Advantages and Limitations

of Post- Logs . .
Other Pedagogy Involving Metacognitive Writing
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Implications for Further Research . . . . . .

A TAXONOMY 0F AWARENESS 0F WRITING/THINKING/
LEARNING FOR COLLEGE ENGLISH TEACHERS . . . .

Awareness of Interaction of Concrete and Abstract

Attention to Sensory Details . . . . . .
Recognition of Distinctive Details . . .
Concrete Details and Abstractions

in Discourse . . . . . . . . .

Awareness of the Process of Inquiry . . .
Preparation . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Incubation
Illumination
Verification
Recursiveness . . . . . . . . .
Necessity of Error . . . . . . . . . . . .
Deliberate Inquiry .

Awareness of Common Thinking Problems
Egocentricity . . . . . . .
Preconceptions .

Awareness of Ambiguity
Positive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Negative . .

Awareness of Different Functions and Forms

of Language . . . . . . . .
Tacit and Explicit Awareness . . . . . . .
Not Being Aware and Being Aware . . . . .

Awareness of Dialectical Thinking
Contrast . . . . . . . . . . .
Change . . . . . .
Difference and Similarity
Contrary Thinking . . . . . .
Either/Or Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . .

107

108
113
121

132

141
152
161
164

166

170
170
170

172
174
175
175
176
176
177
177
178
179
179
180
181
181
182

183
184
185
185
186
187
187
189
192

(Pedagogical Implications
for Dialectical Thinking)
Awareness of Metaphorical Thinking

Hidden Similarities

Practicality and Imagination
Mind Metaphors

Conclusions

Metacognitive Writing Across the Curriculum

APPENDIX . .

LIST OF REFERENCES

GENERAL REFERENCES

vi

193
199
200
201
202
206
207

213
222
232

LIST OF TABLES

Table Page
1. Student Evaluation of Log Method . . . . . . . . 119

2. Taxonomy of Awareness
of Writing/Thinking/Learning . . . . . . . . 169

vii

INTRODUCTION

What awareness do college freshmen have of their own
composing processes, how does that awareness assist them,
and in what ways should teachers be concerned with raising
the self-awareness of students’ own writing, thinking, and
learning processes? Can students become too aware of what
happens intellectually in their minds—-hindered rather than
helped? At what levels of generality is it beneficial for
students to be aware of how they write/think/learn?

One of the better places to teach interconnections
between writing/thinking/learning is the college freshman
writing course. While students learn how to discover ideas
and specific evidence, how to organize and revise, how to
consider purpose and audience, they can explore the ways they
perform these processes. They can inquire about problems
they encounter as well as breakthroughs and surprises.

One method teachers can use to help students think
about their own writing is "learning logs": written records
of informal explorations in which students keep track of
their own writing process. In logs students describe prob-
lems, concerns, realizations, and surprises they experience

before, while, and/or after writing. When students share

2
their logs with teachers, a dialogue develops: teachers
become participants helping facilitate each student’s
intellectual development. By keeping logs, students can
become more aware of the ways they write/think/learn. But
can such subjective exploration be trusted? Do logs truly
reflect what goes on in students' minds when they compose?
Research has indicated that people often fabricate responses
concerning their mental Operations.

One of the major problems confronting English teachers
is helping students realize the value of writing for thinking
and learning. A college freshmen writing course can become
more than "just a course" when students learn how to write
in order to think and to learn--as well as to communicate
clearly. As such, the course can become a meaningful intro-
duction into the liberal arts.

In this study, I will examine theories regarding student
awareness of writing/thinking/learning. In Chapter I, I will
review recent research in this area, focusing on the advan-
tages and limitations of protocols and written self-reports.
In Chapters II and III, I will examine theoretical perspec-
tives concerning awareness of thinking/writing/learning by
first reviewing what major psychologists and philosophers
say and then reviewing what major composition specialists
say. In Chapter IV, I will examine the pedagogical implica-
tions of metacognitive writing such as learning logs for

facilitating awareness of writing/thinking/learning. In

3
Chapter V, I will present a taxonomy of awareness of writing/
thinking/learning for college English teachers and discuss

ways metacognitive writing can serve a liberal arts college

curriculum.

CHAPTER I
A REVIEW OF RESEARCH:

AWARENESS 0F WRITING/THINKING/LEARNING

The history of recent research regarding awareness of
writing/thinking/learning processes is complex, involving a
dichotomy within composition theory and research methodology.
Some researchers like Flower and Hayes have held a "scienti-
fic," explicit, formal model of composing analogous to
computer programming. With their method of composing aloud
protocols, they have sought to understand objectively the
"distinctive thinking processes" in writing ("Cognitive
Process Theory" 366). Other researchers like Graves (1975)
have held a more "naturalistic," implicit, informal model of
composing, arguing that the writing process is "variable and
unique" for each individual and cannot be understood in
completely objective terms (237). Instead of relying on
protocol analyses, they have used other means like case-
studies, personal interviews, and student written reports to
investigate composing processes.

The dichotomy between these distinct approaches to
research and the theories on which they are based has not

produced a synthesis. However, researchers of both methods

5
have shared this goal: to understand the ways students think
when they write. The relationships between thinking and
writing and the methodology used to investigate these proces-
ses raise critical issues: How do thinking and writing
relate to each other? What methods are most reliable for
gathering data on the ways students think and write? And
in what ways can English teachers help students think about
their own writing/thinking/learning processes?

A landmark essay on the relationship between writing/
thinking/learning was Emig's "Writing as a Mode of Learning"
(1975). Emig argued that writing is a unique languaging
process and distinguished it from talking: writing is usually
more "responsible and committed" than talking because there
is a product involved (332 125). Because writing represents
thinking visually, writers can re-scan and review. Thus,
writing more than talking offers learners "a unique form of
feedback" (127).

For Emig, writing corresponds to fundamental learning
strategies. Writing involves hand, eye, and brain; there-
fore, it "marks a uniquely powerful multi-representational
mode of learning" (126). Because writing involves both left
and right brain hemispheres, it is "integrative": connecting
reason and emotion, analysis and synthesis. Emig argued
that writing, like successful learning, is "engaged, commit-
ted, personal" (127) and "self-rhythmed"--"One writes best

as one learns best, at one's own pace" (128).

6
Emig did not, in her essay, try to separate thinking
from writing as did Rohman (1965) who wrote, "In terms of
cause and effect, thinking precedes writing" (106). Rather,

Emig stressed that writing is a unique method of thinking and

 

learning; she articulated interconnections between these
processes.

Emig was not the first composition theorist to explore
such connections. Participants at the Dartmouth Seminar in
1966 focused on the idea of language learning and personal
growth. The ways students personally write/think/learn
became a central concern. The emphasis on "product" shifted
to "process." Seminar members argued that teachers should
help students "conceptualize their awareness of language"
(Dixon 10).

In 1967 Stoehr wrote "Writing as Thinking" in which he
explored the value of writers being aware of their own
thinking process. The problem of trying to grab a fleeting
idea, he suggested, "seems to be somewhat eased by paying
attention to what is graspable in the mind--the thoughts and
feelings attendant upon the search" (411). He speculated,

If we keep notes on our mental life as we struggle
after words in this way, we begin to see more and
more clearly, from these scraps and fragments of
language, just what sort of notion we were after;
in this way we find words for our ideas; it is a
kind of thinking. (411)

Stoehr veered from the traditional notion that a writer

needs to think and plan ahead, as in outline form, in order

to write well. Most writers do not plan "minutely

7
beforehand" (420). Ideas get "fired off" from other ideas
unexpectedly. For Stoehr writing and thinking go together:
writing down thoughts enables one "to study them, to notice
their order and direction, to criticize and amplify them--
in short, to watch oneself think" (421).

Watching oneself think is a suitable definition of
"metacognition," a currently popular idea in cognitive
psychology, composition, and education. Basically, metacog-
nition is awareness of thinking processes along with an
ability to monitor and regulate them. Plavell, a developmen-
tal psychologist specializing in this area, defined the term
more fully:

"Metacognition" refers to one's knowledge concern-
ing one's own cognitive processes and products or
anything related to them, e.g., the learning-
relevant properties of information or data. For
example, I am engaging in metacognition (metamem-
ory, metalearning, metattention, metalanguage, or
whatever) if I notice that I am having more trouble
learning A than B; if it strikes me that I should
double-check C before accepting it as a fact; if
it occurs to me that I had better scrutinize each
and every alternative in any multiple-choice type
task situation before deciding which is the best
one; if I sense that I had better make a note of

2 because I may forget it . . . . (cited in Glaser
1978: 79-80)

Thus, metacognition is consciously thinking about thinking.
This ability to be aware of one's thinking is said to be a

sign of effective learning, as Holt explained in How Children

 

Fail:

Part of being a good student is learning to be
aware of the state of one's own mind and the
degree of one's own understanding. The good
student may be one who often says that he does not

8
understand, simply because he keeps a constant
check on his understanding. The poor student who
does not, so to speak, watch himself trying to

understand, does not know most of the time whether
he understands or not. (8)

Research Methods and Findings

Does Holt's definition of "a good student" apply as
well for "a good writer"? Most recent composition research
affirms it does. For example, Stallard (1974) analyzed the
writing behaviors of "good student writers" because "very
little is known about the actual cognitive processes involved
in writing" (206). He selected fifteen high school seniors
who scored high on the STEP Essay Writing Test, observed each
student composing an essay, and then interviewed each student
"about the things they remembered consciously attending to
and feeling concerned about while writing" (209). He con-
cluded that the good writers paused more frequently to read
their writing than did the random group of writers; they
paid more "conscious attention to communication problems"
(217) and, most importantly, they felt the need to contem-
plate repeatedly what they had written. Stallard's student
writers exemplified Holt’s description of good students:
they watched themselves trying to understand.

Researchers have used various methods to analyze what
goes on in students' minds when they write. Observational
studies have taken four main forms: 1) research based on

composing aloud protocols 2) research based on written

9
self-reports 3) research based on combinations of protocols
and written reports 4) research based on neither protocols
nor written reports but on other methods such as observations
(including videotape recordings) and interviews (as in
Stallard's study). But are these methods reliable?

Because research methodology reflects theoretical
assumptions of researchers, all four models need to be
evaluated. Protocols and narrative reports, however, have
generated the most controversy. They have polarized much of
the critical discussion of methodology and findings. Proto-
cols are meant to exemplify an objective and "scientific"
method of research while written reports exemplify a more
subjective and "naturalistic" method.

An early study concerned with improving student thinking

was Bloom and Broder's Problem—solving Processes of College

 

Students: An Exploratory Investigation (1950). Their study

 

foreshadowed major concerns in current theory and methodology
regarding metacognition. Bloom and Broder examined intro-
spection (narrative accounts gills students perform a certain
task) and retrospection (narrative accounts aftgg completing
a task) as primary methods of analyzing mental processes.
They pointed out common objections to these methods:

It is very difficult for a person to remember all
the steps in his thought-processes and to report
them in the way in which they originally occurred.
There is a tendency on the part of the narrator to
edit the report, to set forth the process in a
nicely logical order. Things seem to tie together
so concisely after the problem has been solved.
The narrator will usually omit errors and "dead

10
ends" in his thinking processes. He will not
remember the queer quirks and unusual circumstances
which surrounded his thinking. (6)

To avoid these problems of introspection and retrospec-
tion, Bloom and Broder had students "think aloud" as they
worked on problems taken from academic—aptitude and achieve-
ment tests. From these "think aloud's" the researchers drew
conclusions about how students think when trying to solve
certain problems. They found, for example, "that some
tension is necessary to keep . . . thoughts centered on the
problem at hand" (96). Although Bloom and Broder’s study
did not involve writing, it did examine the basic methodology
that many writing researchers were to use in the next three
decades.

One of the first major studies that legitimized the
"think aloud" method in composition research was Emig's
(1971). She investigated "how students behave as they

write" (5) by having eight students compose aloud into a

tape recorder. She assumed "that composing aloud, a writer's

 

effort to externalize his process of composing, somehow
reflects, if not parallels, his actual inner process" (40).
Not based on scientific evidence, Emig's assumption was a
hopeful educated guess. Yet she acknowledged that her
students found composing aloud "an understandably difficult,
artificial, and at times distracting procedure" (5).
Although she gathered much information, Emig's conclusions

were tentative: "the data are not full enough to substantiate

11
any generalizations" (4).

Metacognitive research using composing aloud methods
intensified with the research of Flower, an English profes-
sor, and her husband Hayes, a psychology professor. Since
1980 their model of the composing process and their method
of protocol analysis have generated much debate in academic
journals.

Flower and Hayes have developed their theories and
research methods by focusing on problem-solving. Flower

wrote a composition text called Problem-Solving Strategies;

 

Hayes wrote The Complete Problem Solver, a how—to-think-

 

better book. Problem-solving on many levels is their
paradigm of the writing process. Good writers continually
represent problems to themselves and go about solving them
by developing and monitoring explicit goal systems.

Flower and Hayes' cognitive process theory reflects
their problem-solving framework and goal emphasis: 1)
Writing is "best understood as a set of distinctive thinking
processes" that writers organize while composing. 2) These
processes are hierarchical with highly embedded organiza-
tions. 3) Composing "is a goal-directed thinking process,
guided by the writer's own growing network of goals." 4)
Writers continually generate high—level goals and sub-goals
and modify these goals or create new ones "based on what has
been learned in the act of writing" ("Cognitive Process

Theory" 366).

12
Flower and Hayes built their cognitive process theory
from thinking-aloud protocols: tape recordings of subjects
asked to verbalize everything going through their minds while
they write, for example, an article about their job for

readers of Seventeen magazine. The writers were directly

 

asked not to introspect or analyze what they said. An hour
session produced up to twenty pages of transcript called a
protocol, a "research tool . . . extraordinarily rich in
data" that combined with the writer's draft gave Flower and
Hayes "a very detailed picture of the writer's composing
process" ("Cognitive Process Theory" 368).

The protocol data Flower and Hayes collected helped
shape their writing model. They used their model to measure
whether writers define their rhetorical problem by analyzing
the assignment and audience, and whether writers plan,
translate, review, and monitor their thoughts being processed
into words (373—374).

From their cognitive process theory, writing model, and
protocol analyses, Flower and Hayes determined major differ-
ences between good and poor writers: 1) "Good writers
respond to all aspects of the rhetorical problem," building
representations of their audience, assignment, goals, and
persona; poor writers concern themselves with surface
features like spelling and required length. 2) Good writers
create a "rich network of goals for affecting their reader,"

goals which also generate new ideas; poor writers think about

13
their topic without considering broader rhetorical goals.
3) Good writers represent problems in more breadth and
depth, continually developing their image of reader, situa—
tion, and goals. Poor writers try to solve mechanical
problems that do not help them communicate their ideas; these
low-level problems fragment and block the composing process
rather than integrate it with a "rich network of goals"
("Cognition of Discovery" 29-30).

Flower and Hayes' model of writing and thinking appears
like a computer flow chart-—high1y rational, sequential, and
embedded with loops. For them, goals "provide the 'logic'
that moves the composing process forward" ("Cognitive Process
Theory" 379). Faigley et al. (1985) pointed out that Flower
and Hayes' research reflects the "methodology of researchers
in artificial intelligence, whose goal is to simulate human
thinking processes using computers" (8).

Despite Flower and Hayes' goal-driven, systematic model,
their point of view is not completely mechanical. They have
acknowledged that writing involves mystery and discovery:

The equally important act of making meaning where
none existed, of turning our experience into
ideas, is a discovery procedure fostered by the
freedom to explore by-ways and follow unmarked
paths that no plan could foresee. The practical
problem for us as teachers is how to resolve this
conflict; can we give students the power of

planning without denying the experience of discov-
ery? (Hayes and Flower, A Cognitive Model 55)

 

They concluded that good writers have the ability to plan

and to discover; these processes work together. For Flower

14
and Hayes, however, planning always seems paramount. For
instance, they have taught students to discover by conscious-
ly planning "To Discover Something" (56).

Cooper and Holzman, Bizzell, and Sternglass have criti-
cized Flower and Hayes. Cooper and Holzman (1983) pointed
out, "Rather alarmingly . . . Flower and Hayes often suggest
that their theory is an actual description of mental proces-
ses" (285). They questioned whether protocols are "extraor-
dinarily rich in data" or are essentially invented records,
and whether those writers who were protocoled would produce
different protocols at different times in different environ—
ments. They accused Flower and Hayes of generalizing too
broadly (291). Bizzell (1982) criticized Flower and Hayes
for seeming to have complete knowledge of the ways people
think when they write, as if Flower and Hayes see the whole
elephant "while other theorists are like blind men" (222).
She argued that Flower and Hayes need to consider problem-
solvers within the context of discourse communities, and she
distrusted their protocol analysis because protocols lead to
self-fulfilling prophecy: assuming that a subject's protocol
mirrors her thinking process "allows the researcher to claim
that certain thought processes have occured [sic] if certain
words appear in the protocol" (235). Sternglass (1986)
pointed out that the writing task involved in Flower and
Hayes' protocols (i.e., a description of the subject's job

for readers of Seventeen magazine) was likely meaningless

 

15
for the composer and therefore subverted the goal-making
that Flower and Hayes stressed. Sternglass also objected to
Flower and Hayes' research because researchers should analyze
several texts before evaluating a writer’s cognitive behavior
--one text does not provide enough evidence ("Commitment"
86).

The protocol method itself lies at the center of debate
concerning the validity of Flower and Hayes' work-—and the
validity of composing aloud research in general (Emig 1971;
Perl 1980; Berkenkotter 1981; Scardamalia, Bereiter, and
Steinbach 1984; McCarthy 1985). Flower and Hayes have
maintained that protocols, because they are immediate respon-
ses, supply more reliable information about mental processes
than do other kinds of verbal reports: "people's after-the—

fact, introspective analysis of what they did while writing

 

is notoriously inaccurate and likely to be influenced by
their notions of what they should have done" ("Cognitive
Process Theory" 368). Flower and Hayes also have pointed
out that people tend to forget goals and sub-goals once they

are accomplished (Hayes and Flower, Uncoveringnggnitive

 

Processes 13). Directed reports are not as valid, they

 

argued, because if writers are asked to answer specific
questions, the information will be invented or distorted
(17). With their method the writer being protocoled did not
analyze her responses; only the investigators did.

Some experts in cognitive psychology have supported

16

Flower and Hayes' methodology, and some experts have not.
Ericsson and Simon (1984) concluded that retrospective
reports often omit information contained in concurrent
reports like protocols (371). Steinberg (1986) claimed
that "a protocol adequately represents focused mental
activity during problem solving" (699). He acknowledged
that a protocol does not "precisely" represent mental
activity--it provides traces which are better than nothing
(700). However, Nisbett and Wilson (1977) expressed skepti-
cism. They presented research indicating that "people may
have little ability to report accurately on their cognitive
processes" (246), and that people often tell more than they
can know (247).

Flower and Hayes have acknowledged that protocols are
incomplete: "Some processes are conscious at times and
unconscious at other times" (Hayes and Flower, Uncovering

Cognitive Processes 18). In their rebuttal to critics

 

Cooper and Holzman, Flower and Hayes wrote that "protocols
show us only traces of the rich and complex phenomena of
thought. There is much they miss. However, this is true of
every observational method" ("Response" 97).1

No observational method is completely reliable. When

 

1 As their rebuttal comment shows, Flower and Hayes
eventually softened their position on the absolute value
of the protocol method. Also, despite their argument that
retrospective reports are "notoriously inaccurate" ("Cogni-
tive Process Theory" 368), Flower (1985) has recommended in
her textbook that students write introspective reports,
process logs, and retrospective accounts (41).

 

17
research subjects introspect or retrospect about their own
composing process, what they report may not be accurate.
Unless information about a person's composing is objectively
determined by an outside investigator, a researcher does not
know if the information is reliable or not. Yet because
thinking involves the subconscious mind, it is doubtful
whether a person's composing process can be objectively
determined completely. Without total conscious awareness,
subjects may tell more than they know; they may report what
they think happened when they discovered a new idea or a way
to organize an essay. Thus, in research based primarily on
written self-reports much of what subjects report may not
have happened as they think it did.

Sternglass (1986) defended the use of retrospective
reports, denying they are "notoriously inaccurate" as Flower
and Hayes claimed. To her, written self-reports are usually
based on long-term memory; students can recall important
events, thoughts, or feelings that occurred to them while
writing. Further, retrospective reports trigger intellec-
tual and emotional associations that play important roles in
writing and thinking, but such associations are "not re—
trieved in time-pressured and unnatural settings under
which most protocol analysis reports are collected" (Intro-

spective Accounts 3).

 

Sternglass and Pugh (1986) conducted an informal study

with a class of graduate students in English and education

 

18

who kept retrospective journals describing their reading and
writing strategies. These journals were written over
"'natural time'" (301) and "without close direction" (304)
by the instructors. Sternglass and Pugh found that the
retrospective journals provided a "richness of material"
that "illustrates the usefulness of such a methodological
approach" (322).2 In their journals students 1) gave "fairly
straight-forward" accounts of what they did while composing
2) reacted to texts, their own and others' 3) continued
projects: discussion about papers, drafts of papers 4) asked
questions, interpreted tasks, registered complaints 5)
analyzed themselves as writers, exploring harmonies and
dissonances with tasks 6) used images and metaphors to
describe their mind at work (304). The journal entries were
often like annotations: "In many cases, the papers and the
journal entries seem to represent two levels of thinking on
the same problem, demonstrating competence (the formal paper)
and metathinking (the journal entry)" (305). A study by
Kelly (1984) found similar conclusions.

Berkenkotter's study (1983) combined aspects of compo-
sing aloud and introspection. She investigated the composing

processes of Donald Murray, the composition theorist and

 

2 This description of retrospective journals providing
a "richness of material" is a curious echo of Flower and
Hayes' description of protocols being "extraordinarily rich
in data" ("Cognitive Process Theory" 368). It is interest-
ing, and perhaps natural, that researchers tend to find their
preferred method to be "rich."

19
professor. Her research method was unique, involving three
stages: 1) Murray wrote in natural settings (his study at
home) instead of in a laboratory or classroom, and while
pausing between composing episodes he thought-aloud, analy—
zing himself composing. 2) Berkenkotter had Murray think
aloud in a laboratory setting for one hour, giving him "a
task which specified audience, subject, and purpose" (158).
3) For two days Berkenkotter observed Murray compose at his
home and interviewed him. After analyzing over 120 hours of
tape, Berkenkotter concluded that Murray tended to monitor
and introspect simultaneously as he composed. He often
engaged in planning how to affect his audience, especially
when revising.

At the close of her study, Berkenkotter raised a call
for action: "We need to replicate naturalistic studies of
skilled and unskilled writers before we can begin to infer
patterns that will allow us to understand the writing
process in all of its complexity" (167). But what exactly
Berkenkotter meant by "naturalistic" is not clear. She
seemed to suggest that such studies like her own and like
Sternglass and Pugh's are natural because they allow subjects
to write in chosen environments and at their own pace--and
they allow subjects to explore and analyze their own writing
while writing, which Flower and Hayes forbid their subjects
to do. Naturalistic studies are not restricted to protocol

analyses performed exclusively by researchers and for the

20
primary benefit of researchers. By writing self—reports,
subjects naturally think about their own writing process;
thus, subjects can learn more about how they compose.

The fourth category of recent metacognitive research
does not involve protocols or introspection but uses other
methods. This research tends to be less formal than proto-
cols but not as informal or subjective as written self-
reports. The purpose of such research is primarily for the
benefit of the researcher, as with protocol research.

Graves (1975) examined the composing processes of eight
children who were seven years old, using the case-study
method primarily. He interviewed the children about their
views of their own writing and their concepts of "a good
writer." He interviewed parents and gathered developmental
histories. And he engaged in "the naturalistic observation
of children" (228) while they wrote in formal and informal
classroom environments. Concerned that his research methods
might invalidate his data, Graves spent over 250 hours
observing children within their classrooms, waiting for
them "to initiate writing in assigned or unassigned work"
(230). He examined students' writing folders over four
months.

Unlike Flower and Hayes, Graves did not seem over-
confident about his research. He did not claim to know the
exact composing processes of seven year old students. His

over-all conclusions indicated the complexity and ambiguity

21
of writing: 1) "At any given point in a writing episode,
many variables, most of them unknown at the time of compo-
sing, contribute to the writing process." 2) "The writing
process is as variable and unique as the individual's
personality" (237).

Another example of metacognitive research not involving
protocols or written reports is a study by Rose (1980).
Focusing on the problem of writer's block, Rose interviewed
five students, acknowledging that his procedure was "non-
experimental, certainly more clinical than scientific"

(390). He concluded that writers who block often have "rigid
rules and inflexible plans." Non-blockers, however, "operate
with fluid, easily modified, even easily discarded rules and
plans" (397). In light of Flower and Hayes' findings, Rose’s
findings seem paradoxical:
Students that offer the least precise rules and
plans have the least trouble composing. Perhaps
this very lack of precision characterizes the
functional composing plan. But perhaps this lack
of precision simply masks habitually enacted
alternatives and sub-routines. (397)
Although the evidence seems clear from Flower and Hayes that
good writers engage in extensive planning, would they
disagree with Rose? They have written that "good plans are
often only sketches in the mind" and much as "an artist

uses a sketch, a good plan must be detailed enough to test,

but cheap enough to throw away" (Hayes and Flower, A Cogni—

 

tive Model 56-57). While their research methods sharply

 

contrasted, Flower and Hayes and Rose seem to have arrived

22
at similar conclusions.

Other research studies concerning metacognition and
writing based neither on protocol nor written report
methodology are the following: 1. research using case
studies and interviews (Fox 1981; Selfe 1984; Steinbach
1984; and Thackeray 1985) 2. research using videotape
recordings and analysis of student writing (Pianko 1979;
Matsuhashi 1981; Rose 1983; Schumacher et al. 1984) 3.
other: Beach (1976) and Baiocco (1985) had students tape—
record themselves evaluating their own writing. Blau
(1983) investigated the need for writers to rescan by
having students write without being able to see what they
were writing. Williams (1983) investigated "covert language"
in college freshmen by using "electromyographs" that measured
changes in their "articulatory musculature" as reading and
writing tasks shifted from concrete to abstract (301).

Although recent studies in metacognition and writing
have used a variety of research methods, none of which is
completely reliable, protocols and written self-reports
have generated the most critical attention. Protocols, as
used by Flower and Hayes, reflect a formal, explicit, and
objective method of research. Written self—reports, as
used by Sternglass and Pugh, reflect a more informal,
implicit, and subjective method. This contrast between
research methods reflects a contrast in theoretical perspec-

tives of researchers also. While Flower and Hayes have

23
championed a "scientific" problem-solving paradigm of the
composing process, Sternglass and Pugh, Graves, and Berken-
kotter have favored a "naturalistic" paradigm.

Despite these differences in methodology and theory,
much of the research has produced similar conclusions. Good
writers, like Holt's description of good students, appear to
be aware of their minds working. They monitor their under—
standing, their plans for achieving goals, checking to see
if they are solving problems or not. In short, good writers
reflect. Before, while, and/or after they compose, effective
writers often consider what they are doing to see if they
can do it better. They consider their purpose and audience.
They consider their topic to see if it might be meaningful
or relevant to a particular discourse situation. They
consider their supporting evidence to see if their examples
and details communicate well. They consider organization
and coherence, diction, syntax, punctuation, grammar, and
spelling. Effective writers reflect while they compose:
they reflect forward to what they might do, and they reflect
backward to what they did. Although Flower and Hayes may
have overgeneralized when they stated that "good writers
respond to all aspects of the rhetorical problem" ("Cognition
of Discovery" 29), it seems clear from their research and
from much of the other recent research on composing that
good writers reflect.

Several studies that have focused on the pausal behavior

24
of writers found that good writers continually reflect and
make goals when they pause (Pianko 1979, Matsuhashi 1981,
Flower and Hayes Oct. 1981, Schumacher, et a1. 1984). Pianko

concluded that good writers possess and practice "the ability

 

to reflect on what is being written." Good writers pause

 

more often than poor writers, and when they pause, they
"take stock of what they have written" ("A Description" 20),
doing additional planning to achieve goals. In her study,
Lundsford (1979) also concluded that basic writers do not

take stock of what they have written; they are "not aware of

 

the processes they are using" (39).

 

A critical issue, however, which I will examine in the
forthcoming chapters, is whether awareness of composing
processes is explicit, implicit, or both. As they reflect,
are effective writers consciously or subconsciously aware of
composing elements such as affecting audience? Or do effec-
tive writers somehow combine both conscious and subconscious
awareness as they reflect? Does metacognitive writing such
as learning logs enable students to reflect and to formulate
explicitly their awareness? What effects does such formula-

tion have on tacit awareness?

The LogMethod and Implications for This Study

 

In my teaching for the last three years I have examined
this question: What awareness do college freshmen have of

their own writing/thinking/learning processes? To collect

25
information, I required students to practice metacognition
by writing "learning logs": informal explorations in which
students wrote about their own writing process. In logs
students described problems, concerns, realizations, surpri-
ses——any particular thoughts and feelings they experienced
before, while, and/or after writing. In addition, I devel—
oped the course, English 100 College Rhetoric, so that
students progressed from simple to complex writing activ-
ities which required them to think more about thinking in
both critical and creative ways. For example, early in the
course students wrote an essay examining a problem by using
the process of inquiry that I had presented drawing from

Young, Becker, and Pike's discussion of it in Rhetoric:

 

Discovery and Chang_. Midway during the course students

 

wrote an essay based on a contradiction or paradox. To
conclude the course students wrote "a mind essay" in which
they explored and explained how they think their minds work.
In my experience of using the log method in twelve
sectibns of English 100, I have found that logs helped
students become more process oriented as writers; promoted
greater dialogue between students and professor; fostered
discovery learning; enabled students to construct represen-
tations of rhetorical concerns such as invention, purpose,
and audience; enabled students to express themselves in both
affective and cognitive domains; and provided a place for

students to identify particular writing problems that could

26
be explored later in conferences. Writing logs seemed to me
to enable students to think more about how they write and
think than they normally would do.

My purpose in this dissertation is to investigate theory
regarding the advantages and limitations of helping students
become better writers by having them reflect about their own
writing. Several critical issues are involved, however.
Does metacognitive writing truly reveal what goes on in
students' minds when they compose? How much should students
investigate their own composing process? Can students be
taught to apply specific theories of thinking like the
process of inquiry to their own writing/thinking/learning
experiences? Can students be taught to think dialectical-
ly? If being a good student involves "learning to be aware
of one's own mind" as Holt said, can students become too
aware? At what levels of generality is it appropriate for
students to be aware? Might writing teachers and students
lose themselves in metaconfusion if they seek to understand
interconnections between writing/thinking/learning?

For some answers I will first turn to what twentieth
century psychologists and philosophers have said about

awareness of writing/thinking/learning processes.

CHAPTER II
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES

0F PSYCHOLOGISTS AND PHILOSOPHERS

Vygotsky, Piaget, Dewey, Bruner, Langer, Whitehead,
Polanyi and other modern theorists have emphasized the
importance of thought, language, and awareness. They dis-
cussed how social interaction produces higher levels of
cognition and awareness; how people personally construct
their own knowledge systems; how problems and differences
motivate cognition and awareness; how, although self-aware—
ness of thinking is important, too much awareness can
paralyze the way the mind naturally works; and how the mind
involves the full interaction of intellect and intuition.
Modern psychologists and philosophers have argued that the
mind cannot be reduced to an analytical process. Their
theories consequently are more naturalistic than formalis-

tic.

Defining Awareness and Consciousness

 

"Awareness" and "consciousness" are ultimate abstract
words that defy clear definition. Their meanings are more
tacit than explicit. Theorists often used these words

27

28

interchangeably and in tandem. Yet as Hayakawa pointed out,
meanings are in people, not in words. Although different
theorists see awareness differently, their definitions are
similar in that they all relate to the mind and how it works.

Vygotsky defined consciousness as "awareness of the
activity of the mind-—the consciousness of being conscious"
(lll 91). Luria, Vygotsky's student, said that "conscious-
ness is a transcendental process . . . of passing beyond
sensory experience to inner essences and categories" (20).
Langer focused her definition on feeling: "'feeling' in the
broadest sense . . . [is] consciousness" (Mind I 444).
Whitehead described consciousness as "the supreme vividness
of experience" (Hades 170). Polanyi related consciousness
to personal knowledge which be based on two kinds of aware-
ness: focal and subsidiary. Dewey related consciousness to
selfhood and rationality: "To be conscious is to be aware of
what we are about; conscious signifies the deliberate,

observant, planning traits of activity" (Democracy 121).

 

Yet Dewey also related awareness to attention which he
suggested is emotional: "attention means caring for a thing,
in the sense of both affection and of looking out for its
welfare" (217).

More recent theorists such as Tart defined awareness as
"an ability to know or sense or cognize or recognize that
something is happening" (14). For him, awareness and con—

sciousness are "parts of a continuum" with awareness being

29
a "basic ingredient" of consciousness (28). Johnson-Laird
argued that consciousness is undefinable and unexplainable:
"No one really knows what consciousness is, what it does, or
what function it serves" (448). Ornstein, basically agreeing
with Johnson-Laird, acknowledged being confused with circular
definitions of consciousness as "awareness of awareness."
He concluded that the definition of consciousness "must come
personally, experientially" (ix). And Jaynes stressed that
the problem of defining consciousness "has been at the very
center of the thinking of the twentieth century" (4). For
him, consciousness is a metaphor of how people think their
minds work.

Although no one knows definitely what awareness or
consciousness is, scholars can study what it does and how it
relates to writing/thinking/learning (Tart 14). In this
dissertation, I will use the term "awareness" and define it
by borrowing from Dewey and Vygotsky: Awareness is paying
attention to the activity of the mind and caring for its

welfare.

The Interaction of Thought and Language

 

My intent in this section is not to develop a comprehen-
sive analysis of the interaction of thought and language.
My intent is to summarize what major modern psychologists
and philosophers have argued concerning this matter, for the

relationship of thought and language pertains to

30
metacognition. Together thought and language enable intel—
lectual awareness. Without language, thought is tacit;
with language, thought can be formulated and made more
explicit. If English teachers are to help students become
more aware of how they write/think/learn, then we need to
understand how language--especially writing--helps develop
thought and awareness.

Most theorists agreed that cognition and awareness
depend on the interaction of thought and language. Although
Luria acknowledged that "thought" remains largely a mystery
in the field of psychology (150), he and Vygotsky believed
that social interaction produces thought and language.
Children use social speech to communicate their needs and
desires and to solve problems. They use this social speech
spontaneously and without awareness. As they grow older,
children begin to internalize their speech. With inner
speech comes greater awareness. The more people use inner
speech to think for themselves and use external speech to
interact with others, the more aware they become of their
thinking process. Vygotsky wrote, "Becoming conscious of
our operations and viewing each as a process of a certain
klgd—-such as remembering or imagining--leads to their
mastery" (Til 91-92). Here Vygotsky suggested that awareness
involves conscious classification. What enables people to
classify, view, or label processes is language.

For Vygotsky thought and language do not run in parallel

31

ways. They are not the same. Not all thought relates to
speech; the use of tools, for example, does not require
language (47). Vygotsky pointed out that thought contains
no separate units as language does, and thought passes
through meaning before finding expression in words (150).
Because language requires "sequential processing" while
thought does not (Mlgd 33), language is more analytical than
thought. However, thought and language do influence each
other: "Thought development is determined by language" (15E
51). To develop formal, scientific concepts, people need to
use language in order to analyze and synthesize informa-
tion. As such, thought and language work together:

The relation of thought to word is not a thing but

a process, a continual movement back and forth

from thought to word and from word to thought.

. . . Thought is not merely expressed in words;

it comes into existence through them. (125)
Thought, containing no separate units, helps generate
language which contains separate units, as Vygotsky showed
with this image: "A thought may be compared to a cloud
shedding a shower of words" (150).

Luria believed language helps develop higher levels of

thinking. He wrote, "By abstracting and generalizing the

property of an object, a word becomes an instrument of

 

thought" that helps people analyze their world (38). Words
are also the main instruments of "human conscious activity"
(41). Luria argued that written speech facilitates the

development of thought further than oral speech. Writing

32
clarifies thinking because conscious operations "can be
carried out at a far slower rate of processing than is
possible in oral speech, and one can go over the product
several times" (166). He concluded, "The idea that it is
often best to put things down in writing in order to make
oneself clear is completely sound. This is precisely why
written speech is of enormous significance for processing
thought" (166).

Like Vygotsky, Langer stressed the importance of how
social interaction develops thought. She wrote, "Language
can grow up only in communicative use, which for human
beings is the typical process of contact with one another"
(Mind II 355). For Langer, language helps produce thought.
"Real thinking is possible only in the light of genuine
language" (53y 63). Language enables thought to be made more
explicit and rational (103). Host importantly, language
involves symbolization, the basic process of the human
mind. For Langer what is most significant about symbols is

their "tremendous readiness to enter into combinations" (76).

 

Therefore, symbols allow people to think metaphorically-~to
think new thoughts.

While Vygotsky, Luria, and Langer maintained that
thought develops from social interaction, Piaget argued
that thought is first egocentric and then develops as
individuals interact with others, adopting points of view

other than their own. For Piaget, "thinking is a

33
self-regulating activity that begins before language and goes
far beyond language" (Furth and Wachs 19). Thinking does
not depend on language in Piaget's view; rather, thinking
depends on action-~on what people do with concrete and

abstract experience. Donaldson in Children's Minds explained

 

that for Piaget "even the highest forms of abstract reasoning
have their origins in action" (154). Piaget did not see
language as the only symbolic system, but he did feel that
language, like make-believe play, helps people "to represent
reality to oneself," which Donaldson says "is clearly of
great importance in the development of thinking" (151).
However, like Vygotsky, Piaget believed that social
interaction facilitates language and formal thinking opera-
tions used by mature learners. He wrote, "Only the habits
of discussion and social life will lead to the logical point
of view" (Language 240). Because immature learners, such as
children, are egocentric, Piaget argued that they are not
capable of seeing points of view other than their own. Yet
he felt that language helps develop children’s cognitive
abilities when children have reached a higher stage of
thinking in which they are able "to theorize about possibil-
ities and hypothetical situations" (Furth and Wachs 20).
Donaldson challenged Piaget, presenting new research
that contradicted some of his theories. She argued that
children are not as egocentric as Piaget claimed. Children

often adopt various points of view when they communicate with

34
others--although they are usually not aware of their ability
to shift perspective. She also argued that children are not
as limited in formal reasoning as Piaget claimed: they can
and do theorize. Donaldson suggested that Piaget simplified
children and adults too much by maintaining that children
cannot decenter while adults can. She pointed out that
adults never lose their egocentricity completely; many adults
have difficulty decentering, seeing different points of
view, and being objective.

Donaldson argued that children develop and use language
skills spontaneously before they are aware of these skills.
With children, "language is embedded" in action: "in the
flow of events which accompany it" (89). But if a child is
to develop a healthy mind and be a successful learner,

he must become able to direct his own thought
processes in a thoughtful manner. He must become
able not just to talk but to choose what he will
say, not just to interpret but to weigh possible
interpretations. His conceptual system must
expand in the direction of increasing ability to
represent itself. He must become capable of
manipulating symbols. (90)
If students are to control their own thinking, they "must
become conscious of it" (96). To become more conscious of
their thinking, they need to become more conscious of their
language--especially written language. Awareness of thought
and awareness of language seem to feed each other:
those very features of the written word which
encourage awareness of language may also encourage
awareness of one's own thinking and be relevant to

the development of intellectual self—control, with
incalculable consequences for the development of

35

the kinds of thinking which are characteristic of
logic, mathematics, and the sciences. (97)

According to Donaldson, successful readers and writers often
pause and think about what they are doing. When students
pause to reflect, they become more aware of their language
and thought.

Bruner also discussed the interaction of thought,
language, and awareness. He wrote that "language is a major
instrument of thought. When we are thinking at the far reach
of our capacities, we are engaged with words, even led
forward by them" (Toward 104). "The power or words is the
power of thought" (105). For Bruner, language enables
people to be aware of their thinking:

Language . . . provides an internal technique for
programming our discriminations, our behavior, our
forms of awareness. . . . If there is not a devel-
oped awareness of the different functions that
language serves, the resulting affliction will be
not only lopsided speaking and writing, but a
lopsided mind. (108—109)
Bruner’s point that people need to develop awareness of the
different functions of language is an important idea that
composition theorists have stressed, which I examine in
depth in Chapter III.

Whitehead and Dewey expressed similar interconnections
between thought and language. Whitehead argued that "lang—
uage is not the essence of thought" (Hades 49). Rather,
thought is the essence of language. For him, language

involves "systematization" of thought (48). Through lang-

uage, thoughts are cast into symbol systems which can be

36
studied. Also through language, "freedom of thought is
made possible" (49). Without language, people would be
less free to control their thinking. Dewey, who primarily
discussed how to think rather than how language affects
thinking, wrote that "language tends to become the chief

instrument of learning about many things" (Democracy 17)

 

and that language to communicate exemplifies the "principle
that things gain meaning by being used in a shared experience
or joint action" (19).

Vygotsky, Luria, Langer, Piaget, Donaldson, Bruner,
Whitehead, and Dewey examined relationships between thought,
language, and awareness. Vygotsky theorized that children
think by interacting with parents first, others, then them-
selves as adults through inner speech. Piaget theorized
that children think egocentrically before they gradually
learn to decenter as they grow older and use more formal
kinds of thought and language. Both views show how thought
and language interrelate as people grow older, how language
is critical for the development of thought, and how social
interaction develops higher levels of cognition and aware-
ness. As Vygotsky wrote, "consciousness and control appear
only at a late stage in the development of a function [such
as writing], after it has been used and practiced uncon-
sciously and spontaneously" (Til 90). Thus, metacognition
—-being aware of one's own thinking andtrying to control

it--seems an appropriate goal for freshmen in liberal arts

37

colleges.

The Importance of Active, Personal Construction

 

Another theory that psychologists and philosophers have
shared is that cognition and awareness involve active,
personal construction. When people write, think, or learn,
they construct for themselves their own knowledge systems.
Constructing or representing ideas enables people to experi-
ence them, which is necessary for learning them and using
them in the future. Whitehead wrote, "There is no royal
road to learning through an airy path of brilliant generali-
sations" (Alps 10). The royal road requires personal exper-
ience. "First-hand knowledge is the ultimate basis of
intellectual life," said Whitehead (79). Dewey wrote, "An
ounce of experience is better than a ton of theory simply
because it is only in experience that any theory has vital

and verifiable significance" (Democracy 169). And Vygotsky

 

wrote, "Practical experience . . . shows that direct teaching
of concepts is impossible and fruitless" (Ell 83).

Piaget’s theory of intellectual development is based on
construction and self-regulation. For Piaget, people follow
a sequence of intellectual development, constructing their
own mental structures or schemata throughout their lives:
from sensori-motor (0-2 years) to preoperational (2-7 years)
to concrete operations (7-11 years) to formal operations

(11—15 or older) (Wadsworth 26—27). Children construct

38
schemata based on their interactions with the concrete
world. As they grow older, children learn to construct
schemata based on interactions with the abstract world as
well. Piaget wrote, "There are no innate structures: every
structure presupposes a construction. All these construc-

tions originate from prior structures . . . " (Six Psycho-

 

logical Studies 149-150). The highest level of thinking is

 

formal operations, which Furth described as
a kind of thinking about thinking which permits
one to examine critically the thinking process
itself and to see the possibilities of different
combinations from those that are existing or
proposed. On the basis of formal operational
structures hypotheses can be formulated. Strict
logical deductions and scientific thinking based
on experimental verification become possible.
(218)

Thus, the highest stage of thinking operations involves

metacognition.

According to Piaget, what causes schemata to develop and
restructure is disequilibrium or cognitive conflict. When
people experience conflict, they naturally try to restore
equilibrium; Piaget called this process equilibration. This
intellectual process of adaptation is similar to biological
development, Piaget maintained. As the body tries to restore
damaged tissue from a cut finger, the mind tries to restore
equilibrium from cognitive conflict (Donaldson 139). Cogni-
tive balance is achieved by assimilation (when people incor-

porate or fit stimuli into schemata that already exist) and

accommodation (when people change their schemata to fit

39
stimuli). "Assimilation works for preservation of struc—
tures; accommodation works for variability, growth, and
change" (Donaldson 141). These opposed yet complementary
processes produce disequilibrium and equilibrium throughout
stages of cognitive growth.

Dewey stressed the importance of self-reflection as a
method of reconstructing personal experience. He argued that
reflection should be a major educational aim. For him,
reflective thinking consists of "turning a subject over in
the mind and giving it serious and consecutive considera-
tion" (Hg! 3). "To reflect is to look back over what has
been done so as to extract the net meanings which are the
capital stock for intelligent dealing with further exper-
iences. It is the heart of intellectual organization and of

the disciplined mind" (Experience 110).

 

Reflective thinking for Dewey involves two phases which
are similar to Piaget's equilibration theory. First, people
experience a conflict--"a state of doubt, hesitation,
perplexity, mental difficulty" (Hg! 12). Second, they use
inquiry to discover how to resolve the conflict. Most
problems are ambiguous "forked-road situations" that present
a dilemma of choice (14). For Dewey, education should
enable students to develop the habit of reflecting so that
they gain more control over their subsequent experience.
Such a habit involves "a process of detecting relations"

(77) between what a person tries to do when solving a

4O
problem and what happens as a result.
Construction based on self-reflection is an important

idea for Bruner too. "Intellectual growth involves an

 

increasipg capacity to say to oneself and others, by means
of words or symbolsL what one has done or what one will do"
(Toward 5). For Bruner reflection and notation become
"enormously important" as a person grows cognitively (19).
Reflection helps students organize information and reduce
its complexity "by imbedding it into a cognitive process a
person has constructed for himself" (On Knowing 95). Reflec-
tion thus involves simplification: "Learning to simplify is
to climb on your own shoulders to be able to look down at
what you have just done—-and then to represent it to your-
self" (101). For Bruner learning depends upon the develop-
ment of cognitive structures. "The degree to which material
to be learned is put into structures by the learner will
determine whether he is working with gold or dross" (123).
People develop intellectually by personally constructing
their own knowledge systems. Piaget argued that construction
of knowledge results from the process of equilibration:
resolving cognitive conflict. The highest stage of construc-
tion is formal operations in which hypothetical thinking and
metacognition are possible. Dewey argued that reflective
thinking involves solving problems and "detecting relations."
Dewey and Bruner both emphasized that reflection involves

awareness of the mind: constructing representations of what

41
one has done and will do. Peeple who reflect are aware of
their minds working, and they tend to be, as Holt argued,
good students. The ability to solve problems, to plan and
monitor goal systems, as Flower and Hayes have advocated,
involves reflection. Good writers, as Pianko concluded,

practice "the ability to reflect on what is being written"

 

("A Description" 20). It appears that reflection is a

primary element of metacognition.

The Motivation of Cognition and Awareness

 

As Piaget and Dewey stressed, problems motivate think-
ing. Psychologists and philosophers have strongly agreed
on this premise. Problems cause disequilibrium and activate
inquiry. Vygotsky argued that problems stimulate the
intellect "by providing a sequence of new goals" (Ell 58).
The process of identifying, exploring, trying to solve
problems, and verifying possible solutions to them is a
basic paradigm of cognition. Although the emphasis on
problem—solving lends support to Flower and Hayes' theories,
this group of major thinkers described a more informal,
natural kind of problem-solving.

Polanyi saw problem-solving as fundamental to cognition
and awareness. His view of problem—solving is identical to
Dewey's. It involves two stages: (1) perplexity (2)
action that dispels the perplexity. Polanyi emphasized

that problem—solving involves discovery. "To recognize a

42
problem which can be solved and is worth solving is in fact
a discovery in its own right" (Personal 120). Discovery
and problem-solving must be based on personal experience,
according to Polanyi: "Nothing is a problem or discovery in
itself; it can be a problem only if it puzzles and worries
somebody, and a discovery only if it relieves somebody from
the burden of a problem" (122). Thus, discovery occurs
during both stages of problem-solving.

Different theorists have used different terms loosely
synonymous with "problem." Donaldson focused on "incongru-
ity" and argued that education should encourage students
"to come to grips with incongruity and even to seek it out
in a positive fashion . . . . Equally, it should aim to
discourage defense and withdrawal" from incongruity (117-
118). In addition to his disequilibrium jargon, Piaget
discussed the importance of difference as a motivator of
thought. "Difference between objects . . . creates disadap-
tation, and this disadaptation is what occasions conscious—
ness" (cited by Gruber and Voneche 96).

Vygotsky discussed Claparede's law of awareness which
postulated that "awareness of difference precedes awareness
of likeness" because "dissimilarity creates a state of
maladaptation which leads to awareness" (l§l_88). Vygotsky
explained that "Claparede's law states that the more smoothly
we use a relationship in action, the less conscious we are

of it; we become aware of what we are doing in proportion to

43

the difficulty we experience in adapting to a situation"
(88). However, Vygotsky qualified Claparede's law. His own
research indicated that "awareness of similarity requires a
more advanced structure of generalization and conceptualiza-
tion" (88). Thus, although people may naturally notice
differences before they notice similarities, similarity is
more abstract and cognitive.

Bateson also believed that people notice "differences"

(451). For Bateson "a difference is an idea"; therefore,

 

when people notice differences, they are thinking. However,
Bateson warned playfully: "there is an infinite number of

differences . . . but . . . only a few of these differences

 

make a difference" (481). Ornstein wrote that people are
"specialized to notice change" (28). Dewey likewise wrote
that "what is moving attracts notice when that which is at
rest escapes it" (H3! 253). Mandler argued that people
become aware when an automatic structure fails: "Experienced
drivers become 'aware' of where they are and what they are
doing when something new and different happens" (60). Bruner
explained that "our attention is attracted to something that
is unclear, unfinished, or uncertain. We sustain our atten-
tion until the matter in hand becomes clear, finished, or
certain" (Toward 114). Polanyi believed that people crave
"mental dissatisfaction" because this activates inquiry
(Personal 196).

Should writers, thinkers, and learners embrace all

44
problems? Dewey wisely cautioned that not all problems
stimulate thinking. "Sometimes they overwhelm and submerge

and discourage" (Democracy 184). For him, the art of

 

teaching requires helping students experience new problems
"large enough to challenge thought" but small enough not to
overwhelm.

Is "desire" a problem? Langer, Piaget, and Vygotsky
argued that desire motivates thought. If people desire
something, it is a problem until they obtain it--or cease to
desire it. Langer wrote, "Our first consciousness is the
sense of need, i.e. desire" (Egy 148). An infant's basic
need to be fed is a desire. "Desire is only the power
behind the mind, which goads it into action, and makes it
productive" (148). Piaget quoted Claparede who said, "Nggd

creates consciousness" (Language 231). Awareness develops

 

when people feel the need to know or to have something, to
solve a problem, to regain equilibrium. Piaget wrote, "Each
time a subject wants to reach a new goal, he becomes con-
scious of it, regardless of whether success is immediate or
achieved only after trial and error" (£5252 333). And
Vygotsky wrote, "Thought itself is engendered by motivation,
i.e., by our desires and needs" (lll 150). Desire, then,

is implicit in the paradigm of problem-solving. Without
desire, people would have no need to try and solve problems:
they would have no need to think.

Piaget, Dewey, and Polanyi emphasized that problems

45
motivate cognition and awareness. Donaldson argued that
incongruity makes people think. Vygotsky discussed Cla-
parede's law that people notice difference before they notice
similarity. Bateson, Ornstein, Handler, and Bruner also
pointed out that differences stimulate thought and awareness.
It is interesting, however, that none of the theorists
discussed how congruity or beauty motivate thought by
stirring wonder. These qualities typically seem to be the
results of problem-solving rather than the motivators of

thought.

The Limitations of Awareness

 

The psychologists and philosophers I have examined have
stressed the importance of thought and language, of active,
personal construction, and of problems and differences in
motivating thought and awareness. They have emphasized the
value of thinking. Dewey and Bruner suggested that most
people do not think enough about thinking. Dewey wrote,
"Most persons are quite unaware of the distinguishing pecu-
liarities of their own mental habits. They take their own
mental operations for granted and unconsciously make them
the standard for judging the mental processes of others"
(Hg! 60). Bruner wrote that most people "show a tell-tale
lack of awareness of what they are doing" (Toward 144).
However, psychologists and philOSOphers have also discussed

the limits of self—awareness and have warned that too much

 

46
awareness of thinking impedes the natural process of think-
ing.

Preconceptions limit awareness, affecting what people
see and how they think. But effective writers/thinkers/
learners should be aware of their preconceptions and try to
control them. If students, for example, believe that
writing is mere busywork, they will resist writing logs and
journals for self-exploration. Nisbett and Ross, two
psychologists, wrote that "our preconceptions structure and
potentially distort what we see, understand, and remember"
(281), and they warned that self-awareness of processes is
good if the awareness is based on accurate theories and
observations (225). Polanyi believed that people have
difficulty knowing what their preconceptions are "and when
we try to formulate them they appear quite unconvincing"
(Personal 59). Ornstein argued that preconceptions often
limit thinking and awareness. He cited Bruner's experiment
of anomalous cards in which most observers did not notice a
red ace of spades and a black four of hearts because they
automatically "corrected" these cards based on their precon—
ceptions. Past experience "tunes" or conditions us to
expect "what should follow what" (26).

Self-awareness involves selection which limits full
awareness. The cognitive structures people generate are
selective and biased. People often choose what to be con-

scious of. As with the parable of the elephant, people see

47

the elephant in different ways, depending on their points of
view. Point of view is thus selective and limited. Ornstein
quoted Rumi, the Persian poet: "What a piece of bread looks
like depends on whether you are hungry or not" (37). People
select from their senses by noting changes, argued Ornstein,
and construct their awareness based on what they select and
construct in their minds. Dewey warned that people need to
watch the "tendency to believe that which is in harmony with
desire" (Hg! 28).

Polanyi believed that people are limited in awareness
of their thinking because thought is more tacit and subcon-
scious than explicit. He stressed the idea that "we can

know more than we can tell" (Tacit 4). What people cannot

 

articulate is their tacit knowledge. For Polanyi, all
problems involve tacit or hidden knowledge. To recognize a
problem involves knowing implicitly that a solution may
exist. "We can have a tacit foreknowledge of yet undis-
covered things" (23). Working on a problem involves "picking
out clues" many of which are unspecifiable (31).

Polanyi recognized two main types of awareness: focal
and subsidiary. He used the comparison of a bicyclist to
represent skilful action. Bicyclists do not know explicitly
how they maintain balance. While bicyclists focus on where
they go, they are subsidiarily aware of pumping pedals,
gripping handlebars, sitting comfortably, and so on. But

bicyclists cannot focus on all of these at once. "Our

48
attention can hold only one focus at a time" (Personal 57).
Therefore, according to Polanyi, subsidiary awareness is
greater than focal awareness in any skilful act, but "there
is no difference in the intensity of the two kinds of
awareness" (57).

What people select to focus on affects their perform-
ance. The act of knowing involves "pouring ourselves into
the subsidiary awareness of particulars, which in the
performance of skills are instrumental to a skilful achieve-
ment" (64). Thus, a pianist can paralyze his movement by
concentrating on his fingers. He needs to think subsidiarily
of his fingers as he plays, focusing on the whole piece he
is playing. Somehow, whether playing the piano or writing
an essay, a person needs to achieve a natural, working
relationship between focal and subsidiary awareness. But
such a relationship is ultimately more tacit than explicit.

Although Dewey and Bruner pointed out that most people
are unaware of their thinking habits, they and other theo-
rists have argued that too much awareness can hinder the
ability to think well. Dewey wrote,

To insist too minutely upon turning over habitual
dispositions into conscious ideas is to interfere
with their best workings. Some factors of familiar
experience must indeed be brought to conscious
recognition, just as transplanting is necessary

for the best growth of some plants. But it is
fatal to be forever digging up either experiences
or plants to see how they are getting along. (H21

269)

In other words, "If it isn't broken, don't fix it." For

49
Dewey, people should "make conscious the standing source of
some error or recurring failure" but should not "pry need-
lessly into what works smoothly" (282). "Where the shoe
pinches, analytic examination is indicated" (282).
Dewey's model of thinking emphasized rationality. For
him, skilful thinkers do not "waste time or material"; their
results are "firm and neat" (How 76). Too much awareness
can be wasteful:
in the degree in which they [students] are induced
by the conditions to be so aware, they are not
studying and learning. They are in a divided and
complicated attitude. . . . the pupil acquires a
permanent tendency to fumble, to gaze about
aimlessly . . . . Dependence upon extraneous
suggestions and directions, a state of foggy
confusion, take the place of that sureness with
which children (and grown-up people who have not
been sophisticated by "education") confront the
situations of life. (Democracy 205)

Thus, Dewey cautioned, if students become needlessly aware

of how they think, they become weak-minded.

Whitehead commented on the folly of too much awareness.
"It is a profoundly erroneous truism . . . that we should
cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The
precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by
extending the number of important operations which we can
perform without thinking about them" (cited by Johnson 51).
Bateson also discussed "the silly idea that it would be a
good thing to be conscious of everything of which we are

unconscious" (137—138). Becoming conscious of cognitive

behavior that is already habitual interferes with the mind.

50
Bateson argued that habit is "a major economy of conscious
thought. We can do things without consciously thinking about
them" (141-142).

Handler believed that people should try to be aware of
cognitive acts they are trying to learn, not behavior that
is already automatic. He wrote, "We are often conscious in
the process of acquiring new knowledge and behavior" (59).
Meichenbaum suggested that self-awareness is important for
learning new tasks "as a temporary aid to performance," but
with proficiency awareness is not needed as much and "may
even interfere with performance" (102). Bruner recalled the
ancient proverb of the caterpillar "who could not walk when
he tried to say how he did it" (Process 63). He advocated
that students not become "obsessively aware" of their intui-
tive thinking process because they might "reduce the process
to an analytic one" (63-64).

Jaynes, more than other theorists, argued that awareness
can interfere with how well the mind works. "Consciousness
is often not only unnecessary; it can be quite undesirable"
(26). Like Polanyi, he stressed that too much consciousness
of a pianist's fingers, a dancer's legs, or a writer's words
impairs performance. If students are too conscious about
whether their words are spelled correctly, their intention
of speech is destroyed (27).

Jaynes, moreover, argued that consciousness is not

necessary for thinking or learning. He gave the familiar

51

example that people who hear certain music while eating a
delicious meal will salivate the next time they hear that
music. "But the really interesting thing here," he wrote,
"is that if you know about the phenomenon beforehand and are
conscious of the contingency between food and music . . . ,
the learning does not occur" (32-33). In this case,
consciousness impedes learning, but I am not sure that Jaynes
is correct in generalizing that this behavior happens when
a contingency is between more abstract phenomena. For
example, if college freshmen know that clustering can help
them generate ideas because it taps their right brain
hemisphere, will this knowledge prevent them from generating
ideas by using the clustering method?

Jaynes argued that "consciousness does not make all that
much difference to a lot of our activities" (47). The
growth of thought and language does not depend on conscious-
ness because it is not possible to be truly conscious of
mental acts. "Our minds work much faster than consciousness
can keep up with" (42). According to Jaynes, thinking always
precedes being conscious of thinking; therefore, conscious-
ness itself is a hypothetical construction, hence a metaphor.
"Understanding a thing is to arrive at a metaphor for that
thing by substituting something more familiar to us. And
the feeling of familiarity is the feeling of understanding"
(:52).

The ideas of introspection and retrospection are

52
metaphorical, not based on reality. Jaynes pointed out that
these words are visual. Introspection means "to look into
one's own mind"; retrospection means "looking back on"

(Webster’s New World). But looking or seeing into the mind

 

is metaphorical: people do not literally look with their
physical eyes into their mind—-they look with figurative
eyes. And what is "mind" itself but another metaphor--a
representation of an abstract place where consciousness and
unconsciousness reside. What people see when they explore
their minds, therefore, is a figurative construction of what
they think or assume is happening in their minds.

Other theorists commented on the limits of awareness,
noting their skepticism of introspection as a way for people
to know how they think. Nisbett and Ross argued that mental
processes cannot be directly observed but only indirectly
inferred (205). Johnson—Laird pointed out that "we cannot
inspect fundamental cognitive operations" (1) and that
"introspections are at best glimpses of a process rather
than detailed traces of its operations" (2). Vygotsky felt
that "introspection is often unable to provide an accurate
description, let alone a correct explanation, for even the
subjective aspect of the response" (Mlgd 67). Piaget also
distrusted introspection. Furth, an expert on Piaget, wrote,
"Due to man's psychic complexities, his self-reflective
consciousness, his susceptibility to given social, cultural

or personally motivated norms, it is exceedingly risky to

53
rely on personal introspection for an answer to the nature
of knowledge or intelligence" (173).

Bateson argued that it is not possible to know complete—
ly how the mind works. Because awareness is selective,
people can only know what they select, but what they select
does not represent how the mind works in it totality: "the
yhglg of the mind could not be reported in a REEL of the
mind" (432). Thus, introspection is a mental map that does
not characterize the mind completely or truly. Tart argued
that people "habitually mistake the map for the territory"
and "prefer the map to the territory" because the map is
clearer (162). And Johnson-Laird, who examined how people
understand themselves and the world by constructing mental
models, wrote, "Since these models are incomplete, they are
simpler than the entities they represent" (10).

Are mental maps so bad? Johnson-Laird argued that
"small-scale models of reality need neither be wholly
accurate nor correspond completely with what they model in
order to be useful" (3). If college freshmen write learning
logs exploring their own writing process, what they report
may not be "wholly accurate." But logs may be useful if
they help students to identify and explore problems and if
logs help students to develop a curiosity about how they
write/think/learn. Maps of the mind may be useful, but
"one does not necessarily increase the usefulness of a

model by adding information to it beyond a certain level"

54
(4). When a certain level is beyond being useful, theorists
do not know and cannot say for sure. The level of useful
awareness is variable and personal, depending on each
individual.

Psychologists and philosophers have pointed out various
limitations of awareness of mental operations. Preconcep-
tions and selection naturally limit awareness. Polanyi
argued that tacit awareness is greater than explicit aware-
ness: people know more than they can formulate. Dewey
argued that people should not "pry needlessly into what
works smoothly"; too much awareness can be wasteful and
produce weak minds. Whitehead and Bateson argued that the
desire for total awareness is silly and unnatural. Jaynes
argued that consciousness is often unnecessary and is
always a metaphorical construction of how people think they
think. Other theorists argued that introspection is basical-
ly a mental map that does not truly represent the territory
it stands for. Nevertheless, mental maps--as well as
awareness--can be useful if they do not interfere with the

natural working of the mind.

The Interaction of Intellect and Intuition

 

As with my discussions of the previous sections of this
chapter, my intent is not to develop a comprehensive analysis
of the interaction of intellect and intuition but to summa-

rize what theorists have argued concerning this topic. This

55
topic relates to awareness of writing/thinking/learning
because awareness, as Polanyi stressed, involves intuition:
a tacit dimension commonly considered to be based in the
right brain hemisphere. Also, as I will discuss in Chapter
IV when I analyze the log method, metacognitive writing
involves the interaction of intellect and intuition. Pre-
writing logs, for example, in which students generated many
possible topics for essays, involved hunches and free
association. When students described how they discovered
ideas, they often mentioned experiencing "eurekas"--moments
of illumination characteristic of intuition.

The psychologists and philosophers I studied agreed
that the mind involves the interaction of intellect and
intuition. Most notably, they have argued that intuition is
undervalued in education. To stress intellect at the expense
of intuition is to make a map that distorts how the mind
works.

With her emphasis on symbolization as a constructive,
metaphorical act, Langer stressed the power of intuition and
imagination in helping people combine thoughts in new ways.
She combined intellect and intuition when she wrote, "Intui—
tion is the basic intellectual function" (Mind I 128).
According to Langer, intuition empowers the mind: "Thinking
employs almost every intuitive process, semantic and formal
(logical), and passes from insight to insight not only by

the recognized processes, but as often as not by short cuts

56
and personal, incommunicable means" (148).

Dewey believed that intellect and intuition should work
in productive balance. "Some such rhythm of the unconscious
and the conscious . . . is involved in all fruitful thinking"
(pr_281). Dewey equated consciousness with intellect,
rationality, "command and control"; he equated unconscious~
ness with intuition, creativity, "spontaneity and freshness"
(283). But he cautioned, "No rules can be laid down for
attaining the due balance and rhythm of these two phases of
mental life" (281).

Whitehead believed that education too often deadened the
construction of knowledge by not celebrating the intuitive
mode of thinking. Instead of knowledge containing life, it
often becomes "inert." He warned that education needed to
guard against "mental dryrot" (Alps 2) and recommended that
education involve a dialectical movement which he called
"The Rhythm of Education" based on "a natural sway" of
freedom and discipline. He equated freedom with "romance"
and discipline with "precision." Like Dewey, Whitehead
called for a balance between these extremes: "The real point
is to discover in practice that exact balance between freedom
and discipline which will give the greatest rate of progress
over the things to be known" (54). Whitehead also empha—
sized the importance of seeing connections between different
things. "Connectedness is of the essence of all things of

all types" (Modes 13); "The connexity of existence is of the

57
essence of understanding" (46).

Bruner championed intuition and right brain thinking.
Intuitive thinking, the training of hunches, is a
much-neglected and essential feature of productive
thinking. . . . The shrewd guess, the fertile
hypothesis, the courageous leap to a tentative
conclusion--these are the most valuable coin of
the thinker at work, whatever his line of work.
(Process 13-14)

Bruner argued that intuitive thinking should precede analyti-
cal thinking. Intuitive thinking, like Polanyi's tacit
dimension, involves "implicit Perception" and does not
advance in clearly defined sequences. This right-brain
thinking also does not involve much awareness. "The thinker
arrives at an answer, which may be right or wrong, with
little if any awareness of the process by which he reached
it" (58).

Analytical thinking, according to Bruner, should be
used to test hypotheses generated from intuition. Analysis
tends to make people more aware of their thinking:

Analytic thinking characteristically proceeds a
step at a time. Steps are explicit and usually
can be adequately reported by the thinker to
another individual. Such thinking proceeds with
relatively full awareness of the information and
operations involved. (Process 57)

Therefore, intuition and intellect should work together,
and Bruner stressed that "the complementary nature of intui-
tive and analytic thinking should . . . be recognized"

(58). He characterized intuition and intellect as two

modes of knowing: 1) comparing intuition to the left hand,

the dreamer, and looking sideways 2) comparing intellect

58

to the right hand, the doer, and looking directly (92
Knowing 2). Other theorists have supported Bruner's two
modes of knowing. Ornstein discussed the left brain hemis-
phere as being rational, verbal, and sequential, and the
right hemisphere as being intuitive, tacit, and holistic
(x). He compared the left brain to day and the right brain
to night (76). And Bateson discussed how advances in

science "come from a combination of loose and strict think-

 

ing" (75). He argued that "we ought to accept and enjoy
this dual nature . . . and be willing to value the way in
which the two processes work together to give us advances

in understanding of the world" (86).

Conclusions

 

In this chapter I discussed the difficulty of defining
"consciousness" and "awareness" and chose a hybrid definition
drawn from Vygotsky and Dewey: Awareness is paying attention
to the activity of the mind and caring for its welfare. If
English teachers want their students to become more aware of
their own mental operations, then we need to help students
2353 about their minds.

The psychologists and philosophers I examined have paid
attention to the mind, to metacognition. From their theo-
retical perspectives, I concluded the following. Social
interaction develops higher levels of cognition and aware—

ness. People personally construct their own knowledge

59

systems. Reflection helps people construct knowledge.
Problems and differences motivate cognition and awareness.
There are limits of self—awareness such as preconceptions,
selection, tacit knowledge, needless prying, and metaphor—
ical representations. The mind involves the full interac-
tion of intuition and intellect: intuition needs to be
recognized as a legitimate kind of thinking.

These conclusions support the log method pedagogy yet
also provide reservations. Logs—-informal exploratory
writing about a student's own composing--exemplify personal
construction based on reflection, social interaction between
student and teacher, and interaction of intellect and intui-
tion. However, because logs are like maps of how students
think they think, logs may not be accurate. Logs may invite
students to pry needlessly into what already works well for
them. Also, if what Jaynes argued is correct--that awareness
is often unnecessary and undesirable-—then the awareness
that students might gain from writing logs might not help
them learn how to become better writers/thinkers/learners.
Nevertheless, I would argue that logs may be useful if they
help students identify and explore genuine problems and if
they help students develop a genuine curiosity about how
they write/think/learn.

In the next chapter, I will examine what composition
theorists have said about awareness of writing/thinking/

learning.

CHAPTER III

PERSPECTIVES OF COMPOSITION THEORISTS

My purpose in this study is to investigate theory
regarding the advantages and limitations of helping students
become more aware of themselves as writers/thinkers/learners.
My hypothesis is that the college freshman writing course
is an appropriate place for students to do this and that
metacognitive writing such as learning logs is an appropriate
methodology for this purpose.

Britton, Moffett, Berthoff, Kinneavy, Young, Becker,
and Pike, and other composition theorists have appeared to
draw much of their theory from Vygotsky, Piaget, Polanyi,
Langer, Dewey, Whitehead, and Bruner. Composition theorists
have examined how thought and language interact, how people
construct their own personal knowledge systems, how problems,
differences, and dissonances motivate cognition and aware-
ness, how awareness of thinking can be both helpful and
harmful, and how writing/thinking/learning involve the
interaction of intellect and intuition. However, more than
the psychologists and philosophers of Chapter II, composition
theorists have examined functions and forms of language and

thought.

60

61

The Interaction of Thought and Language

Britton and Moffett have related functions and forms of
language with thought. Both theorists emphasized the dialec-
tical relationship between thought and language. Both
stressed the importance of students writing from personal
experience and moving toward greater levels of abstraction.
And both stressed language diversity: the more forms of
language students engage in and the more they have to adapt
to different purposes and audiences, the more students will
think and learn.

Influenced by Vygotsky, Britton has argued that thought
and language have a "dialectical interrelationship" (Develop—
mggl 39): "Thought derives from language just as much as
language derives from thought" (40). He has also referred
to "the dialectical interpenetration of language and thought"
(47). There is always a give and take between words and
thoughts. They nourish each other.

For Britton, the development of thought and language,
of writing in particular, depends on "a process of dissoci-
gllgg, a process of progressive differentiation, of learning
by dividing" (231 197). Britton's theories of language and
thought involve his differentiation between functions of
language--expressive, transactional, poetic—-and between
two types of behavior: spectator and participant roles. The
more a person can engage in these different functions and

roles, the more a person will develop intellectually.

62

Britton focused on expressive language as the basic,
central function of language. It is personal, "close to the
self" and verbalizes a speaker's "consciousness" (gel 90).
It is informal, exploratory, often tentative and unstruc-
tured. It is often "an expression of the way things eeee to
us, the way we feel about things, the way things might be or
we should like them to be" (ll 216). Expressive language
usually involves a close relationship with a listener or
reader.

Expressive language branches off into two directions:
transactional and poetic. Transactional language is refer-
ential; it is "language to get things done," to inform,
advise, instruct, or persuade people (25! 88). This language
requires explicit, clear, organized communication. Unlike
expressive language in which the sender is most important,
with transactional language the receiver of information is
most important. The other branch of language growing away
from the expressive is poetic language which functions as
art. "A piece of poetic writing is a verbal construct" with
the aim to please writer and reader (90). With poetic lang—
uage, form and content are inseparable (93).

How people use language depends on how they act in
discourse situations. In this regard Britton has differen-
tiated between spectator and participant roles. When people
behave as spectators in their use of language, they contem-

plate and evaluate experience (ll 110). Free from social

63

demands, a spectator "pays attention to forms . . . the

 

forms of language used, the pattern of events in a narrative,
the dance—like movement of thought and, in particular, the
pattern of feelings expressed" (gel 80-81). Thus, a spec-
tator relives the past by reflecting on it. "Only when we
recount the past, or imagine a future or a conceivable
experience--past, present or future-~for the pleasure of
doing so and for no further end, are we taking up the role

of spectator" (91).

A participant acts in present experience. Action
triggers thoughts and emotions (221 81). The participant
uses language "to recount or recreate real or imagined
experience in order to inform or teach, or to make plans or
solicit help or to achieve any other practical outcome"
(92). Thus, practicality helps define the participant role,
and pleasure the spectator role. While Britton compared the
spectator role with play, with language used as an egg in
itself, he compared the participant role with work, with
language used as a eeeee to get things done (81).

How do the spectator and participant roles of behavior
correspond with Britton's functions of language? Expressive
language is a bridge between both roles: it moves freely
across "a shadowy" boundary (221 92). Britton explained,
for example, that if a person describes--for pleasure-—a
holiday in retrospect to a friend, he takes on the spectator

role of his past experience; however, if this person begins

64
to plan ahead for a future holiday and asks his friend
questions in order to gather information, he takes on the
participant role--his motive is practical. Good writers,
according to Britton, engage in both spectator and partici-
pant roles at different times.

Expressive language is more "relaxed" than transactional
and poetic language. Expressive language involves fewer
demands than the other two functions. It is therefore more
natural and appropriate for students to use in metacognitive
writing such as learning logs. Britton wrote, "Expressive
writing, whether in participant or spectator role, may be at
any stage the kind of writing best adapted to exploration
and discovery. It is language that externalizes our first
stages in tackling a problem or coming to grips with an
experience" (221 197).

Writers need to be aware of different functions and
forms of language and thought: "from awareness of differ-
ences can grow, without anything of the sort necessarily
being formulated, the habit of adapting speech to suit
different purposes and occasions" (ll 134—135). That
awareness of differences does not need to be formulated is
significant. Such awareness therefore is intuitive or
tacit as Polanyi argued. Britton seems to argue here that
if students actively practice using language in a wide
variety of functions and forms, this is more important than

whether students can theorize about their awareness of

65
differences.

Yet Britton also argued that students need to define the
nature of what they are doing when they write: "In every
kind of writing, defining the nature of the operation,
devising ways of tackling it, and explaining its meaning and
implications to oneself, are essential stages in which the
mind engages" (Rey 30). He seems to argue here that students
should explicitly formulate an awareness of each writing
situation. However, according to his other argument,
students do not need to formulate an awareness of different
functions and forms of language. This seems paradoxical
but makes sense. Although students may not need to formulate
an awareness of adapting language for different functions so
long as students frequently use language in varied discourse
situations, students do need to formulate for themselves an
awareness of each discourse situation. While awareness of
different functions and forms of language may be tacit,
awareness of each discourse situation should be explicit.

Moffett has been more outspoken about the value of
awareness of writing/thinking/learning processes. According
to Moffett, the interaction of thought and language deter-
mines intellectual development. Language enables people to
use abstractions, to symbolize. "To be the master, and not
the dupe, of symbols, the symbol—maker must understand the
nature and value of his abstractions. This takes conscious—

ness" (Universe 25). Moffett equated the ability to think

66
well with the ability to be aware of abstracting (27). He
stressed that "a student should learn to play freely the
whole symbolic scale, and to know where he is on it at a
given moment" (28).

Social interaction helps produce growth in cognition and
awareness, according to Moffett. Drawing from Vygotsky,
Moffett maintained that most thinking is inner speech, but
inner speech grows from differentiating itself from social-
ized speech (Universe 65). "Outer and inner speech recipro-
cally determine each other; they are a serpent with a tail
in its mouth. What needs emphasis, however, is the proba-
bility that thought is the internalization of social proces-
ses" (65). Thus, to help students grow intellectually,
Moffett argued that schools need to foster lots of inter-
action. Dialogue is vital for mental development: "dia—
logue is the major means of developing thought and language"
(73). Dialogue between students and teachers is important,
but equally important, if not more so, is dialogue between
students. "Peer talk can further the most serious kinds of
mental and verbal development" (99 61). When students
interact verbally, they naturally learn to qualify their
thoughts (Universe 73).

Like Britton, Moffett has emphasized the importance of
differentiation in thought and language. Students need to
experience different forms and functions of language to

become able writers/thinkers/learners. "Growth, then, is

67
toward a differentiation of kinds of discourse to match the

differentiation in abstraction levels of thought" (Universe

 

50). In the spirit of Claparede's law of awareness, Moffett
argued that schools need to maximize differentiation because

"it is difference that teaches, not similarity. Having to

 

talk across language differences, to accommodate differences
in thought and speech, is excellent education" (Moffett and
Wagner 40).

Moffett has maintained that writing and thinking are
closely related. Although he has not focused exclusively
on writing in his theories of language development, he has
emphasized all the language arts and the ways they feed
into each other and promote learning. He argued, for
example, that talking is the best form of pre-writing (e!
19). But he stressed how writing and thinking are intercon-
nected. He argued that his series of writing activities
"externalize thinking processes . . . . Writing reflects
inner mental structures" (14). He compared writing to
"composing the mind" (15). "A series of writing assignments
is a series of thinking assignments and therefore a sequence
of internal operations" (145).

Kinneavy, like Britton and Moffett, has argued that
thought and language closely operate together with different
kinds of thinking correlating with different aims and modes
of discourse: "there are different kinds of thinking relevant

to different uses of language" (A Theory 32). For Kinneavy,

68
aim is the key to understanding different kinds of thinking
and language. Aim or purpose determine each form of
discourse: reference, persuasive, literary, and expressive.
Kinneavy has used a metaphor of glass to show what he means:
Language is like a windowpane. I may throw bricks
at it to vent my feelings about something; I may
use a chunk of it to chase away an intruder; I may
use it to mirror or explore reality; and I may use
a stained-glass windowpane to call attention to
itself. Windows can be used expressively, persua-
sively, referentially, and artistically. (39-40)
Kinneavy maintained that each form of discourse "has its own
processes of thought" (40). Each has its own logics, organ-
izations, and styles. There are no hard, fast lines between
these forms; they shade into each other. The aims or func—
tions of language overlap as do forms of language. Expres-
sive language can contain referential or literary aims;
referential discourse can contain expressive aims.

Kinneavy argued, as has Britton, that expressive dis—
course is the matrix from which other aims develop. "Expres-
sive discourse is, in a very important sense, psychologically
prior to all the other uses of language. It is the expres-
sive component which gives all discourse a personal signifi-
cance to the speaker or listener" (396). Expressive dis—
course focuses on the speaker or writer more than on the
message or on the receiver. Kinneavy, moreover, argued
that a person's being or soul is largely determined through

expressive discourse. Through language a person discovers

himself, others, and the world: "language is the

69

instrumental root of . . . being" (403). Expressive dis-
course helps "to beget and develop personality" (418).

Rinneavy stands out among major composition theorists
in that he has not stressed dialectical relationships between
thought and language or between aims of discourse. Only
occasionally in his book did he mention dialectical relation-
ships, as when he wrote, "Man is frequently intuitively
logical long before he can consciously analyze his own
logical processes" (106). Neither did Kinneavy stress the
importance of metacognition, although he has argued implicit-
ly that if people are to think and write well, they need to
be aware of the different aims of discourse.

Martin et al. (1976) argued that language involves a
central paradox of facing two ways: outward and inward
(144). Outward language involves "common" or public forms

and meanings; inward language involves "unique meaninge" of

 

an individual. The interaction of outward and inward forms
of language helps people develop intellectually:

We are pushed and pulled both towards the outward
'models’ we encounter, and towards the new mintings
which reflect our individual meanings and our life
histories. The successful resolution of these
oppositions is an individual 'voice' which can
confidently share its meanings with others . . .
and is able to move towards a more public voice or
a more individual voice according to the demands
of different purposes or people. Both directions
are necessarily part of one's education-—in school
and out--but in school they tend to be seen as
polarisations instead of contraries which nourish
each other. (145)

These outward and inward kinds of language usage help develop

7O
people's thinking abilities. Metacognitive writing such as
logs encourages students to express their own inward language
and thought, their own "new mintings" regarding their own
composing process.

Britton, Moffett, Kinneavy, and Martin et al. have
argued that people grow intellectually by actively using
different functions and forms of language. Although Britton
maintained that awareness of different uses of language need
not be formulated if students frequently engage in varied
types of discourse, he did argue that writers should formu—
late awareness for each discourse situation. Moffett has
argued more broadly that awareness of different functions
and forms of language and thought should be consciously

formulated.

The Importance of Active, Personal Construction

 

Like the psychologists and philosophers examined in the
preceding chapter, composition theorists have argued that
cognition and awareness involve active, personal construc—
tion. Constructing ideas enables people to experience them
first-hand which helps in learning ideas and using them in
the future.

Britton in Language and Learning examined the importance

 

of personal construction. He argued that as people grow
they construct representations of their experience, and

these representations characterize the unique way each

71
person sees the world. Representations are constructed from

"internalizing" and "externalizing" experience (14). What

 

makes representations so important is that while events in

experience come and go, representations can stay in the

mind. Representations accumulate and change as people

assimilate and accommodate their experience:
Our representation of past experience constitutes
a frame of reference by means of which we recognize
familiar aspects of the present . . . . Moreover
what remains in consciousness is there to go back
to and modify in the light of the fresh encounter:
it is a continuing sense of the world that is
continually brought up to date. (18)

Language, therefore, symbolizes experience: "we symbolize

reality in order to handle it" (20).

Britton stressed the importance of classification and
hierarchy in personal construction. Language enables people
to classify and organize their representations of experience.
Without the ability to classify, people would not be able
"to handle experience at all" (ll 25). According to Britton,

the ability to classify requires "synonymity" and "opposite-

 

eeee" which he described as "categories of meaning" inherent
in language (27). Constructing representations is thus a
dialectical process: "The cutting into segments of the
stream of sense experience and the recognition of similari-
ties between segments enables us to build up a representa-
tion" (26). Hierarchy is vital to cognition because through
it a person can classify his classifications or generalize

about his generalizations. Hierarchy involves "different

72

levels of generality" (27). Because categories of experience

 

can exist at different levels of generality, there can be a
range of lower to higher levels of thought. Formal reasoning
and the ability to engage in metacognition exemplify such
higher levels of thought.

Constructing representations is fundamental to the
learning process. Without the ability to construct mental
representations, people would not be able to learn: to
classify, to generalize, and to elaborate. Britton stressed,
as did Dewey and Bruner, that most learning takes place when
people reflect upon their experience. An often quoted line

of Britton's is, "An essential part of the writinglprocess

 

is explaining the matter to oneself" (ley 28). Explaining
matters to oneself enables students to reflect, to construct
representations which they can store and modify in their
minds. According to Britton, reflection takes two main
forms: prospection and retrospection. "It seems to be part
of the nature of man's experience that both in prospect and
in retrospect he can respond to the quality of events in a
way he is unable to at the time of their happening" (ll
102).

Martin et al., who worked with Britton in the Schools
Council Writing Project, affirmed the importance of personal
construction in learning. They argued that impersonal,
transactional writing stressed in schools inhibits learning:

such writing does not enable students to make "links between

73
what is already known and the new information" (26). Such
writing does not enable students to use their own everyday
language, the expressive language necessary for knowledge
construction. As did Britton, Martin et a1. called for a
change in educational philosophy-~to develop the spectator
role of language as well as the participant role:
'What is known must be brought to life afresh in
every knower’; unless we are given the opportunity
to reconstrue and to assimilate gradually what is
new, for us the information will remain inert, a
scatter of facts which have no real significance
because they have not taken shape within our own
consciousness. (68)
Martin et al. argued that students need to reconstruct for
themselves rather than reproduce for teachers (80). To
learn, students need "to use language more widely rather
than more 'correctly'" (166). Martin et al. and Britton
also discussed the value of talk in the classroom as an aid
in helping students construct knowledge. Talking aids
writing—~both active language arts go together, as do their
complementary, more passive language arts of listening and
reading.

Moffett discussed the importance of active, personal
construction of knowledge. For him, construction works best
when students engage in all the language arts: "people learn
better . . . if speaking, reading, listening, and writing
are closely interwoven" (e! 74). The sequence he has recom-

mended for language and cognitive development is similar to

Piaget's: moving from the personal egocentric self to "a

 

74
public universe of discourse" (145). "Growth seems to be a
movement from the center of the self outward" (Universe
59).
Differentiation and integration are key terms for
Moffett. They are the essence of construction. Moffett has
related them metaphorically with embryology:

a simple cell becomes a complex organism by differ-
entiating itself into specialized parts at the

same time that it maintains integrity by continu-
ally interrelating these parts. Mental growth,
too, consists of two simultaneous progressions--
toward differentiation and toward integration.

We build our knowledge structures upward and
downward at the same time. (Universe 29)

Thinking and learning depend on the ability to climb the
ladder of abstractions as well as to dig down into concrete
particulars, to synthesize parts into wholes and analyze
wholes into parts (Moffett and Wagner 525). Moffett's view
of cognition is dialectical:

The more differences the mind distinguishes, the
more relating it must conceive in order to coordi-
nate the parts as a whole. The mind must see the
unlikeness of things existing in their unique
state of concreteness and yet see likeness among
things as reordered out of time and space into the
abstract realm of thought. In his original global
state of mind, the child was no more aware of
similarity than of difference, because perception
of one depends on perception of the other.
Analysis and synthesis together create the complex—
ity, the higher organization, that characterizes
growth. (525)

In discussing construction of knowledge systems, Moffett
has focused on abstraction. Abstraction is a process of
"mentally mapping reality," of symbolizing experience

(Moffett and Wagner 526). Abstraction involves the

75

dialectical interaction between generalizing and elaborating.
Generalizing involves similarity and synthesis; elaborating
involves difference and analysis. Abstraction, wrote
Moffett, "is a tension between the two processes" (526).
While generalizations are implicit, elaborations are expli-
cit. Both go together in order for people to construct
knowledge.

Moffett, like Britton, discussed the importance of
hierarchy in abstraction. Abstraction enables the mind to

construct "hierarchies of classes and sub-classes, superor-

 

dinates and subordinates" (Universe 19). Moffett also
discussed selection. When people abstract or construct
representations, they select what to construct: "selective
reduction is the point of abstracting" (Moffett and Wagner
528). Thus, abstracting is a process of making symbolic
maps, and as several theorists in Chapter II stressed, maps
are not the territories they represent. According to
Moffett and Wagner, when people abstract, they trade "a
loss of reality for a gain in control" (528). What people
construct is often what they want to construct.
Egocentricity affects people's abilities to abstract
and to construct knowledge. Like Piaget, Moffett and
Wagner stressed the problems of egocentricity. They defined
the term as "assuming too much"; "thinking that something
couldn't be any other way"; "unawareness of one's limited

point of view" (531). They argued that egocentricity is

76
the main cause for poor thinking and poor communication.
Students need to learn to decenter, to consider different
perspectives other than their own. Egocentric writers have
trouble imagining themselves as readers; they assume that
what they think and write is clear. To reduce egocentrici-
ty, Moffett has recommended "constant comparison" (99 68).
The more the egocentric student interacts with peers and
teachers, the more aware he will be that other people do
not think the same as he does. Thus, for Moffett, the
ability to decenter involves awareness of thinking or
metacognition:
The more one becomes conscious of his own abstract—
ing, the more he understands that his information
is relative and can be enlarged and modified. By
perceiving, inferring, and interpreting differ-
ently, he enlarges his behavioral repertory, sees
new possible courses of action, and knows better
why he is acting as he does. (Universe 27)

Like Britton and Martin et al., Moffett has stressed
that students need to construct for themselves. Personal
choice is critical if students are to learn. Students need
to generalize and elaborate for themselves, to structure in
school and not be "structuree" by school (ll 24). Moffett
emphasized this idea in relation to writing: "The subject
matter of student writing needs to be material not previously
interpreted or abstracted by others" (143). Moffett has
advocated a complete language arts curriculum in which

students write with authentic, active voices in a wide

variety of creative, popular, and critical forms for

77
different purposes and audiences.

For Berthoff, writing/thinking/learning involve "form-
ing." Forming is the key in her theory of composing. All
the language arts, she has maintained, involve forming
structures in the mind. What constitutes forming is "seeing

relationships" (FTW 6):

 

The composing process is a continuum: seeing and
thinking and writing are all ways of forming. We
begin to make sense of the world in the very act
of perception. The process of selection and
differentiation is implicit in seeing; forming is
dependent on seeing how one thing is like another,
how it is different from others. . . . Thinking
is a matter of seeing relationships--relationships
of parts to wholes, of items in a sequence, of
causes and effects; composition is a matter of
seeing and naming relationships, of putting the
relationships together, ordering them. (70-71)

Vygotsky expressed the same point in Thought and Language:

 

"Every thought tends to connect something with something
else, to establish a relationship between things" (125).
Forming is a dialectical process, according to Berthoff.
She often has discussed the value of seeing oppositions and
the various ways they go together. For example, forming
requires disorder-~ordering is "a dialectic of chaos and
form" (Fl! 65). Berthoff has used analogies to explain how
composing is dialectical. She compared a paragraph to a
hand that gathers because it has an "opposable thumb": an
idea and its support function like a thumb in opposition to
gathering fingers (158). She compared composing to a
double helix spiralling with continuous "acts of mind":

naming, opposing, and defining (ll 7). And she compared

 

78

composing to
a Scottish sheep dog bringing in the sheep: she
races back and forth, driving the flock in one
direction signaled by the shepherd, but acting in
response to the developing occasions, nudging
here, circling there; rushing back to round up a
stray, dashing ahead to cut off an advance in the
wrong direction. When you compose you are the
shepherd and the sheep dog and it's up to you to
decide whether you want the sheep in fold, fank,
or field and to know how to get them there. (FTW
49)

Essentially, according to Berthoff, composing involves
simultaneous cognitive activities based on construction:
forming/thinking/writing all happen at once (ll 6). Like
Britton and Moffett, she has stressed the importance of
personal construction: "What you really learn, you teach
yourself. If you only learn what you are told, then you are
only keeping in mind, for a longer or shorter interval, what
was put there by somebody else. What you really learn is
what you discover" (FTW 9).

Perl (1980) also expressed a dialectical view of con-
struction. She focused on the recursive quality of construc-
ting ideas: "recursiveness in writing implies that there is
a forward—moving action that exists by virtue of a backward—
moving action" (364). When people write, she argued, they
experience a "felt sense" of ideas, images, and feelings

based on bodily sensations. This felt sense occurs in what

Perl called "retrospective structuring" which involves

 

writers taking what is felt inchoately, structuring it with

language, and then looking at their writing to see if it

79
matches their intended meaning (367). For Perl this repre-
sents the process of discovery for writers. A different but
complementary form of structuring works in conjunction with

the retrospective. "Projective structuring" involves "the

 

ability to craft what one intends to say so that it is
intelligible to others" (368). This kind of structuring
requires writers to role-play themselves as readers. Perl
argued that both retrospective and prospective structuring
"are two parts of the same process" (369). They alternate,
"shuttling back and forth," moving "from sense to words and
from words to sense, from inner experience to outer judgment
and from judgment back to experience" (369). In this way
writers continually construct and reconstruct meaning.
Britton, Moffett, Martin et al., Berthoff, and Perl, as
the psychologists and philosophers I examined in Chapter II,
stressed the importance of active, personal construction.
Students need to construct and modify representations of
their own experience in order to learn. They need to con—
struct knowledge for themselves rather than reproduce what
teachers and texts have already given them. Without active,
personal construction, students go through the motions of
education; they tend not to learn how to write/think/learn
for themselves. This emphasis on personal construction
lends support to metacognitive writing. When students write
logs, they construct their own representations of what they

plan to do and what they have done. They formulate

80

representations of topic, purpose, audience, and problems.

The Motivation of Cognition and Awareness

Many composition theorists have agreed with psycholo-
gists and philosophers about what causes cognition and
awareness: differences, dissonances, and problems. Yet
some theorists have strongly objected to problem-solving as
a paradigm of writing and thinking, arguing that this model
is too mechanical and simplistic to characterize the whole
mind.

The major proponents of the problem-solving paradigm,
besides Flower and Hayes whom I discussed in Chapter I, are
Young, Becker, and Pike, Odell, Elbow, Graves, Lauer, and
Horton.

Young, Becker, and Pike, in Rhetoric: Discovery and

 

Change, argued that rhetoric should improve the quality of

a writer's "intellectual life" (xiv). They emphasized that
people write because they encounter problems. When people

feel puzzled or disturbed, this causes thinking and writing
to occur.

The heart of their book is their presentation of the
process of inquiry, which they elaborated from Graham Wallas'
model (1926). This process has four main stages: 1) prepara—
llee in which a person discovers an "uneasiness" or disso-
nance, formulates it into a question, and then consciously

explores it by asking more questions and looking at it from

81

different perspectives 2) incubation which involves subcon-

 

sciously exploring the problem, "putting it on a back

burner" 3) illumination when a possible solution or hypothe-

 

sis presents itself--a moment of eureka 4) verification

 

which involves informally or formally testing the hypothesis.
Although this process is explained in a linear sequence, the
authors stressed that in practice the process is recursive
and undulatory. They noted that both the conscious mind and
the subconscious mind alternately work on a problem, and

that mistakes are not sinful but natural and useful: "effec-
tive inquiry often proceeds by a series of increasingly
intelligent mistakes" (135).

Young, Becker, and Pike emphasized the importance of
differences in motivating cognition. "Human differences are
the raw material of writing-—differences in experience and
ways of segmenting them, differences in values, purposes,
and goals. They are our reason for wishing to communicate"
(30). "Difference" here seems synonymous with "contrast" or
"problem" and echoes Piaget's idea of disequilibrium. Young,
Becker, and Pike wrote later in their book, "The motive for
communication arises from an awareness of difference and a
desire to eliminate it or at least to modify it" (172). It
is interesting that these authors point out "awareness of
difference." Britton did also: "from awareness of differ-
ence can grow, without anything of the sort necessarily

being formulated, the habit of adapting speech to suit

82
different purposes and occasions" (ll 134-135). This idea
is important. In Chapter V, I discuss strategies teachers
can use to help students develop greater awareness of differ—
ence.

Odell (1973) wrote "Piaget, Problem-Solving, and
Freshman Composition" in which he articulated the intercon-
nections between the elements in his title. He reviewed
Piaget's equilibration theory and referred to it as "problem-
solving" (36-37). He stressed that "whether reading or
writing, one is always engaged in the process of identifying
and trying to resolve some sort of dissonance, in his own
or in a reader's mind" (38). Note Odell's unqualified use
of "always." He did not argue that this process is neces-
sarily conscious; neither did he suggest it may be uncon-
scious-~dissonance is simply inherent in composing. Elbow
(1986) also discussed the importance of recognizing disso—
nance. He argued that "everyone has cognitive dissonances,
contradictions between various elements of what he or she
knows or perceives. . . . the force that makes the student
learn things is his own itch, his own dissatisfaction, his
own problem" (Embracing 95).

Graves (1984) has often discussed writing/thinking/
learning as natural problem-solving. He related learning to
balancing: "The learner perceives a gap, a problem to solve,
and goes about trying to solve it. . . . losing balance,

regaining it, and going on, is the substance of learning"

83
(Writing 231). Graves pointed out that sometimes writers
are not aware of problems they try to solve: "the discrepancy
or uneasiness is slight" (233). Other times the problems
are overwhelming and students feel lost. Nevertheless, the
ability to see and solve problems relates to intellectual
growth, Graves has argued.

Lauer and Horton have also argued that problems motivate
cognition. Lauer (1980) preferred to use the term "exigen-
cy." "Writing, like all creating, begins with an exigency,

a sense of dissonance, an awareness of ambiguity, the urgency
to know something unknown" (56). She contended that students
need to write about their own "personal exigencies" if they
are to learn to value writing (56). Horton in her book

Thinking through Writing (1982) stressed that writing essays

 

"explain, solve, or explore problems; as often as not, they

create a problem or generate and then answer a question

 

where none existed before" (18).

 

Not all composition theorists have embraced the idea of
problem-solving. Berthoff equated problem—solving with
"information processing or signal detectability or protocol
analysis" (ll 61). In a heated exchange with Lauer on the
value of the problem—solving paradigm, Berthoff argued that
problem-solving has "psychological inadequacies and political
dangers" ("The Problem" 92). Most adherents of problem—
solving, she said, undervalue creative thinking and overvalue

scientific thinking. Right answers and explicit rules govern

84

such thinking. Politically, problem-solving represents the
kind of thinking "that our bureaucratized society needs

. . to prepare citizens for life in a technological
society" (93). Lauer responded to Berthoff, accusing her
of dichotomizing problem-solving unjustly when, according
to Lauer and Young, Becker, and Pike, the paradigm involves
both scientific and creative thinking, the conscious and
subconscious mind.

Ohmann (1976) shared Berthoff's concerns. He saw
problem-solving as extolling "a series of routines" (160).
He defined problem as "a chunk of reality distanced from the
self and made objective. There it can be manipulated, and
a solution found. To cast something as a problem is to
remove conflict from it" (161). His view contrasts with
adherents of the paradigm like Odell who have argued that
problems by their nature embody conflict. Ohmann disliked
this paradigm because it reduces the real complexity of
thinking (196). Using the Vietnam War as his main example
of the mentality of problem-solving, Ohmann argued that the
paradigm "makes people into elements of the problem, to be
manipulated conceptually as well as physically" (202).
Thus, problem—solving, according to Ohmann, is evil.

Coles (1974) countered this view. In explaining his
series of writing assignments based on "a set of problems"
for students to explore, he acknowledged that "problem" is

misleading if it "implies providing students with an

85
intellectual jigsaw puzzle to fit together--some carefully
disassembled construct to which every piece was equally
relevant and all the pieces relevant in only a certain way"
(2-3). Rather, in his view, students formulate their own
problems and address them on their own, following no pre-
scribed method.

Winterowd (1975) neatly summed-up the problem-solving
problem by arguing that it should not exist. The paradigm
of problem-solving is "totally neutral":

problem solving can solve the problems of a techno—
logical society, but it can also (possibly) solve
the problem of the student who is isolated within
his or her selfhood, unable to bridge the gap
between the self and others simply because he or
she does not know what to say. (90)
Seeing and consciously identifying problems can help students
find meaningful ideas to write about. Winterowd suggested
that because the problem-solving paradigm involves heuristics
—-strategies of seeing different perspectives such as Young,
Becker, and Pike's tagmemic grid--this actually encourages
creative thinking which "could well be subversive of the
goals of a technological society" (90).

Another perspective on the motivation of cognition and
awareness is the relationship between dissonance and revi-
sion. Della-Piana and Sommers argued that dissonance
motivates thinking. In his study on revising poetry,
Della-Piana (1978) hypothesized that when poets sense an

incongruity between their preconceptions of what they want

a poem to do and what they find the poem doing, then this

86
causes dissonance which motivates poets to revise in order
to eliminate the incongruity. Della-Piana pointed out that
this process of revision is not always conscious or linear.
His theory is similar to Piaget's equilibration theory,
although he did not mention Piaget.

Sommers (1980) argued that sensing dissonance helps
writers discover meaning. "At the heart of revision is the
process by which writers recognize and resolve the dissonance
they sense in their writing" (385). She concluded from her
research that experienced writers seek out such dissonance
because they know that resolving it will help them achieve
their intentions; however, student writers tend not to seek
out dissonance as such. "Students need to seek the disso—
nance of discovery," Sommers advised (387).

It is significant how similar the views of Young,
Becker, and Pike, Odell, Elbow, Graves, Lauer, Horton,
Della-Piana, and Sommers are with the views of Piaget,
Vygotsky, Dewey, and Polanyi who argued that problems,
differences, or dissonances motivate cognition. Yet it is
also significant that Britton, Moffett, and Kinneavy have
not appeared to embrace these views. They have not discussed
"problem-solving" much, although Moffett has discussed the
value of trial and error in language learning. Berthoff
and Ohmann stand out among composition theorists as the
major opponents of the problem-solving paradigm. Yet, what

about the opposite of dissonance or problems? No

87
theorists--psychologists, philosophers, or composition
specialists--that I studied discussed interrelationships
between harmony and cognition, the idea that harmony or
beauty motivates cognition and awareness. Rather, theorists
by and large follow Piaget's equilibration theory: the
process of recognizing cognitive conflict and working to
restore equilibrium. But equilibrium itself tends not to
produce thinking. Thinking, according to most theorists,

is usually an effect of dissonance.

The Values and Limitations of Awareness

Composition theorists as a group have extolled the
values of awareness of cognitive processes more than psycho—
logists and philosophers have. Yet many theorists also have
discussed the limitations of awareness; like Dewey and
Whitehead, they fear that too much mind-probing can interfere
with natural and habitual thinking behaviors. A few composi-
tion theorists have advocated "invisible" and "automatic"
thinking, whereby students learn to become better writers
without worrying about following standard conventions of
language use.

More than any composition theorist, Moffett has stressed
the importance of awareness. He argued that students need
to be aware of their own egocentricity and that this will
reduce most of their communication problems (Universe 195).

Awareness of egocentricity also helps students become aware

88
of ambiguity: "that things may not be as they seem" (Moffett
and Wagner 537), which is a mark of intellectual growth.
Most important, he argued, is that students need to be
aware of abstracting (Universe 24): "what educators mean by
'teaching students to think' is in reality making them
conscious of abstracting" (27).
Moffett has argued that writing and awareness are
closely related: "Writing both requires self-awareness and
induces self—awareness" (e! 30). Such awareness or con-
sciousness is crucial in the process of learning:
The more people at the same time make unconscious-
ness conscious, the more they identify with the
world they are incorporating. . . . Instead of
merely "projecting" himself unconsciously into
what he sees or reads, the fulfilled individual
deliberately reflects the world in his mind.
Consciousness makes the difference between confu-
sion of mind with world, and fusion of mind with
world, and that difference is the most important
thing a teacher needs to know about growth in
discourse. (Moffett and Wagner 561)

Moffett argued for metacognition when he wrote, "The most

important thing a writer needs to know is how he himself

does think and verbalize and how he might" (pg 145).

Berthoff also has favored awareness of cognitive proces-
ses. She wrote, "The more you can learn about what goes on
when you compose, the more you will learn about how to
compose" (FTW 9). She argued that writing and thinking are
similar forms of composing, and she suggested that conscious—

ness is a form of composing as well (11). For Berthoff,

composing means putting together, and metacognition involves

89
putting together ideas about putting together ideas: "Writing
. . involves you in thinking about thinking" (11).
Thinking about thinking is not the same kind of
operation as thinking about how to serve in a game
of tennis or what to do with your lips when you're
learning to play an instrument . . . . In such
cases, self-consciousness is what you have to get
over. . . . For the student of composition,
however, concentration on what you're doing in
making meanings is the best way of learning to
write. (13)

Berthoff frequently has used circular language to
describe metacognition. She advocated that people observe
their observations, explain their explanations, and
interpret their interpretations (FTW 9-10). Much like
Moffett, Berthoff has wanted students to follow a metacogni-
tive journey of their minds. She also stressed epistemic
awareness, arguing that students should ask themselves these
questions: "How do I know? What do I know? How do I know
I know? Do I know my knowledge?" (38).

Several other theorists discussed the importance of
awareness of cognition. Graves saw value in the "edge of
consciousness": when students have "a partial understanding"
of a problem and are frustrated over it. This is when
students need a teacher's help. The more students can tread
this edge or go beyond the edge into full understanding, the
more they will solve problems and gain control of their
writing/thinking/learning. Students need to act, to write,

to experience problems in composing before they become aware

of their composing (Writing 234-235).

9O

Coles, Miller and Judy, and Irmscher related awareness
of thought and language to self-awareness. Coles (1974)
encouraged students to be aware of how they use language so
that they will "masters of language, not slaves to it" (5).
His assignments promoting metacognition were concerned not
so much with thinking as with "a language about thinking"
(11). He wanted students to develop "consciousness of the
ways in which their lives are composed by language" (pre-
face). Miller and Judy (1978) had similar goals. They
sought to enable students to "develop consciousness" of
their own writing process, and they argued that the best
way for students to do this was by writing about their
personal lives (xii). Irmscher (1979) argued that "through
writing, we learn by becoming aware of ourselves" (242),
that writing enables "an internal communication" to occur,
and that writing "is a way of engaging the world by becoming
aware how our minds perceive it" (243).

Bereiter and Scardamalia (1982) focused on awareness of
thinking strategies. They tried to make students more aware
of how they think and write by their methods of "procedural
facilitation" such as giving young students ending sentences
toward which they write stories (53) or having students list
key words they might use before writing on a topic. They
also had students during different phases of composing
select cards that contained cues such as "I'd better give an

example," "I'd better leave this part out," or "I'd better

91
change the wording" (38). Such cards reportedly helped
students become aware of how to revise. Bereiter and
Scardamalia stated that one of their metacognitive goals
was to make "normally covert processes overt" (57).

In The Writer's Mind: Writing as a Mode of Thinking
(1983) Goldberg and Odell pointed out the value of metacogni-
tion and writing. Goldberg argued that teachers should want
students to understand "their own most intimate thoughts and
their most intuitively regular mental operations, qualities
that they know so well that the conscious effort to recognize
them is extremely demanding" (36). She also asserted that
"students can become aware of some structures of their own
thinking" (38) and that teachers need to help students do
this. Odell was optimistic that "we can teach student
writers to make conscious use of certain intellectual proces-
ses [such as seeing contrasts and changes] as they try to
formulate their ideas" (64).

However, Britton, Mandel, and Elbow have shared misgiv-
ings about awareness: too much awareness can hinder writing/
thinking/learning more than aid it. Britton and Mandel in
particular seem to agree with Dewey that people should not
"pry needlessly into what works smoothly" (Hey 282).

Britton has not appeared to favor metacognition.
Regarding the problem of awareness, he wrote,

How much is a writer, in general, aware of his own
processes? In talking and in reading, one is

probably very rarely troubled by any such thing.
In writing, the possibilities for wondering about

92
what we do are very much greater. We can think
about our writing because it stays there while we
think about it; sometimes its difficulty may make
us reflect, and that reflection can include some
concern or interest about how it came to be written
at all. Moreover, we can go back on it, alter,
reject, rearrange, and consider alternatives, and
these editing procedures may prompt us to be
curious about how we came to write it as we did,
so that if we are asked we may be able to give
some kind of account of how we went about it.
But generally we don't pay much attention to
these things. (Dev 40)
Britton explained that when people first learn to write,
they are aware of the difficulty of producing letters and
words on a page, but this "grappling with the difficulty" is
not synonymous with "awareness of process." Although calling
his explanation of awareness of process "a great over—simpli—
fication," Britton wrote,
awareness is quite likely to have an inhibiting
effect on getting on with the job. Conscious and
deliberate choosing would appear to play a very
limited part in what a fluent writer does. It is
only when there is a difficulty to be resolved
that the need to choose becomes conscious. (40)
Thus, Britton's view is similar to Dewey's. Students should
think about how they write when they encounter problems:
when the shoe pinches. Too much thinking about writing
while in the process of writing can impede natural fluency.
Britton has not urged that writers seek out and discover
dissonance or problems.
Mandel in "The Writer Writing Is Not at Home" (1980)
strongly argued that awareness interferes with the mind in

operation. Like Jaynes, Mandel saw consciousness as a

metaphorical construction, an "illusion--the make-believe-—

93
we call reality projected upon the screen we look at"
(371). When people write, Mandel maintained, they are not
at home in their consciousness; rather, they are busy
writing. One cannot be conscious of writing and truly
write at the same time. When writers think about their
writing—~such as after they write--then they are at home.
Then they "need consciousness to ponder what has been
written" (372). But writers write best when they are not
aware of themselves writing:
Just as sitting and breathing are simple--when
they are not conscious--so writing simplifies as
the writer disappears into the act itself. What
slows up the writing process and makes it a burden
is the time devoted to thinking and worrying about
it, just as trying to get comfortable in a chair
makes it very difficult to be comfortable. (373)
According to Mandel, consciousness keeps a record of what
happens in the mind. Consciousness "does not create or
generate" (374), and writing theorists should not pretend
that it does. Mandel rejected the emphasis on conscious
rationality and problem-solving as the best way for students
to learn to write. He favored Lonergan's theory that
insights develop from intuition. For Mandel, "all genuine
writing originates in intuition" (376). Yet what he meant
by "all genuine writing" is open to wide interpretation.
For Elbow, writers should be aware of when awareness is
helpful and when it is not. Awareness is not helpful in what

Elbow has called "first-order thinking" which is intuitive,

undirected, and unconscious. But awareness is helpful during

94
"second—order thinking" which is rational, directed, and
conscious (Embracing 55). Thus, awareness is not helpful
during "careless" thinking such as freewriting: "trying to
think about thinking while also thinking about something
else . . . often leads people to foolishness" (56). But
awareness is helpful during "careful" thinking as when
writers revise rough drafts.

In his article "Teaching Writing by Not Paying Attention
to Writing" (1983), Elbow argued that students can use
writing to learn any subject area like biology without
needing to care about organization or correctness. Not
paying attention to writing, he claimed, is "just as impor-
tant" as paying attention to writing:

When we pay attention to our writing, it is as
though we are looking out the window but focusing
our gaze on the pane of glass. Imagine the relief
that comes from letting our focus pass through the
pane to the green scene outside-—the relief that
comes from doing lots of writing in a course but
not thinking about it as writing. (234)
Thus, paying attention to the pane of glass--language--is
helpful at times but certainly not always. Elbow suggested
that teachers see writing in two ways: 1) as output of
information "from a writer to the world," a process which
requires focusing on the pane of glass or careful considera-
tion of standard conventions of language 2) as input of
information "from the world to the writer," a process which

does not require such careful consideration (234). For

Elbow, most learning happens when writing is seen as input

95
of information.

In a recent article (1987) Elbow and Clarke argued that
too much awareness of audience hinders the production of
writing more than helps it. They advocated that writers
learn to ignore audience when they first compose but after
composing should then be aware of audience. "The ability to

turn off audience awareness-—especially when it confuses

 

thinking or blocks discourse" is a higher-order thinking
skill (27). Thus, when writers know (are aware) when aware—
ness is helpful and when awareness is not helpful, they
productively engage in metacognition.

Tchudi (1988) has recently advocated "invisible think-

 

ing" which he defined as "integrated, imaginative, sponta-
neous, responsive critical analysis that is inseparable
from its content and thus does not call attention to itself"
(25). Tchudi suggested that metacognition is important but
should be invisible or tacit. His view is similar to
Britton's idea that awareness of different functions and
forms of language need not be formulated and to Elbow's
idea that awareness of language often blurs and impedes
writing more than enabling and clarifying it. Students do
not need to be consciously aware of thinking, of seeing
differences and similarities, for example, in order to
think well; students should think in action as they explore
their inner and outer experience through language. For

Tchudi, invisible thinking is natural and is best developed

96
by teachers who function as coaches. Paying too much
attention to the mind can make writing/thinking/learning
unnatural.

Bereiter (1980) argued for an idea similar to Tchudi's
invisible thinking: automaticity. For him, development of
writing is a series of natural stages, with each progressive
stage being subsumed into a preceding one. Each stage

becomes automatic: the writer does not have to pay attention

 

to it. Associative writing, for example, which involves
association of ideas with written language (is writer-based)

becomes subsumed into performative writing which adds an

 

awareness of mechanics and style; this stage becomes subsumed

into communicative writing which adds awareness of audience

 

(is reader-basedl); the fourth stage is unified writing

 

which involves critical judgment; and the last stage is
epistemic writleg when "writing comes to be no longer merely
a product of thought but becomes an integral part of thought"
—-this last stage is "a kind of dialogue with oneself"
(88-89). According to Bereiter, mastery of these stages
"requires little or no conscious attention" (89). Thus,

when writers naturally develop and embed these stages, they
do not need to pay attention to how they think——they are

therefore free to focus on the immediate writing task at

 

1 Linda Flower coined the terms "writer-based" and
"reader-based" in her article "Writer-Based Prose: A Cogni-
tive Basis for Problems in Writing." College English 41,
1979: 19-37.

 

97
hand. Writers write best when their thinking is automatic,
when their goal-making and monitoring are automatic as
well. Expert writers have automatized lower level skills
like spelling, punctuation, and associative writing, enabling
them to deal with higher level demands.

Composition theorists have not agreed on the value of
students being aware of how they write/think/learn. Moffett
and Berthoff have raised the strongest support for metacogni-
tion; Britton and Mandel have raised the strongest objection.
Elbow, however, expressed a paradoxical synthesis of pro and
con views by advocating that writers should be aware of when
awareness is helpful and when it is not. His view is similar
to Bruner's view that intuitive thinking is best left
unexamined while analytical thinking naturally benefits from

self-examination or metacognition.

The Interaction of Intellect and Intuition

 

Throughout this chapter I have discussed fundamental
dialectical movements in the theories of Britton, Moffett,
Berthoff and others regarding the interaction of thought and
language, the importance of active, personal construction,
and the motivation of cognition and awareness. In this last
section I want to discuss what composition theorists say
about the relationship between intellect and intuition.
Their views closely resemble those of Bruner, Dewey, and

Whitehead.

98
Most composition theorists have argued that intellect
and intuition go together. Intuition, however, is deempha—
sized in education at the expense of intellect. Too many
people dichotomize these two types of thinking and consider
intellect as cognitive and intuition as affective. Moffett
argued that this dichotomy is misleading because metaphor-
ical thinking is cognitive too (92 33). Creative thinking
is thinking possibly more colored by emotion than critical
thinking, but creativity is not an emotional frill. The
notion that thinking should always be objective is reductive
and simplistic. Most thinking begins as subjective and
personal, then develops toward being objective. Both left
and right brain thinking are cognitive in different ways:
The human brain cognizes in two main modes. One
is analytical, intellectual, verbal, and literal
and processes data serially. The other is synthe-
sizing or holistic, intuitive, nonverbal, and
metaphorical and processes data simultaneously.
One strikes a note at a time; the other, a resonant
chord. They are different but equally valid and
should collaborate on many tasks (such as reading,
which combines linear processing with the metaphor-
ical nature of words). (El 101)
Writing is certainly another task which actively involves the
whole brain, as Emig (1977) has discussed. Writing is linear
yet recursive, analytical yet metaphorical.
Berthoff repeatedly has asserted that the discipline of
English must reclaim imagination. Because imagination has
been relegated to the affective domain, English teachers

need to put it in the cognitive domain as well. Imagination

should be "returned to the center of all that we do" (Ml

99
28). For Berthoff, imagination means forming-—finding forms
of thought and language, seeing relationships. She wrote,
"Central to all is the analogizing capacity: it is a
fundamental law of mind that we see one thing in terms of
another" (El! 152). Imagination generates symbolization
that makes possible abstraction and intellectual awareness;
imagination generates critical as well as creative thought.
While Flower and Hayes argued that goals "provide the
'logic' that moves the composing process forward" ("Cognitive
Process Theory" 379), Berthoff has argued that imagination
provides the elemental fuel. Martin et al. also pointed
out the importance of imagination, arguing that it is "that
mental process which enables a person to make his own
connections, whether this happens to be in the sciences or
in the arts." They suggested that if schools do not provide
opportunities for students to use their imagination, then
"their knowledge will remain inert" (86).

Britton warned that there is a danger in separating
cognitive and affective modes of representation: "We need to
recognize the value and importance both of the discursive
logical organization and at the same time that of the undis—
sociated intuitive processes, the organization represented
in its highest form in works of art" (ll 217). Murray
(1982) also discussed the relationship between affective and
cognitive thinking. In his essay, "Teaching the Other

Self," be united both kinds of thinking:

100

The deeper we get into the writing process the
more we may discover how affective concerns govern
the cognitive, for writing is an intellectual
activity carried on in an emotional environment,

a precisely engineered sailboat trying to hold
course in a vast and stormy Atlantic. The captain
has to deal with fear as well as compass readings.

(142)
Elbow has united intellect and intuition, embracing

them as contraries that nourish each other. In Writing

without Teachers he advised that writers exercise two con-

 

trasting types of thinking which he called "the believing
game" and "the doubting game." The believing game is like
an open muscle, not limp or tight; it involves growing ideas
and support, trusting that what is being generated makes
sense and has value. The doubting game is like a clenched
fist; it involves criticizing ideas and support, not trusting
what has been generated, "seeking error" (148) and developing
"the sensitivity to dissonance" (162). Elbow argued that
"both games should be seen as dialectics" (170). They are
interdependent: "the two games are only halves of a full
circle of thinking . . . people cannot learn to play well
either the doubting game or the believing game till they
also learn to play the other one well" (191). For Elbow,
good writers/thinkers/learners know how to use these opposing
types of thinking productively.

The Dartmouth Seminar in 1966 rekindled the progressive
education debate on whether the field of English should be
content—centered or student—centered. The view that English

should be student-centered assumes the interaction of the

101
whole person: right and left brain thinking or intuition and
intellect. Most composition theorists today, notably
Moffett, Britton, Berthoff, Elbow, Young, Becker, and Pike,
Graves, Emig, Murray, Tchudi, Odell, and Lauer have argued
that writing/thinking/learning intimately involve both
kinds of thinking. Their views are similar to Whitehead's
Rhythm of Education idea in which he argued that education
should involve "a natural sway" of "romance" or freedom
(right-brain thinking) and "precision" or discipline (left-
brain thinking). As Whitehead encouraged educators "to
discover in practice that exact balance between freedom and
discipline which will give the greatest rate of progress
over the things to be known" (Alfli 54), writers themselves
need to discover in practice a balance between their own

powers of intuition and intellect.

Conclusions

 

The composition theorists I have examined in this
chapter have not reduced writing/thinking/learning to an
analytical process. Their theories are more naturalistic.
On the whole, composition theorists are divided on the
question of whether awareness of one's composing process is
helpful or harmful. Their answer is that metacognition can
be both.

In this chapter I have examined the following conclu-

sions of composition theorists. 1) Thought and language are

102
dialectical; they derive from and generate each other.
Britton, Moffett, and Berthoff stressed this idea. 2)
Awareness of difference is vital for writers/thinkers/
learners. Writers need to be aware of different functions
and forms of language and thought. This awareness, however,
can be tacit or explicit. 3) Personal construction of mental
representations involves the ability to classify and to
create hierarchies of thought. Britton argued that classifi-
cation requires "synonymity" and "oppositeness"; Moffett
argued that differentiation and integration characterize
mental growth; and Berthoff argued that "forming" or con-
structing knowledge is a dialectical process of seeing
relationships. Thus, seeing differences and similarities
is a fundamental act of thinking.

4) While events in experience come and go, what people
construct personally can stay and change in their minds.
People can respond more thoughtfully to events in retrospect
and in prospect than events happening in the present. 5)
Students need to construct knowledge for themselves rather
than reproduce what teachers and textbooks have already told
them. 6) Egocentricity is the main cause of poor thinking
and poor communication.

7) Differences, dissonances, and problems motivate
cognition and awareness. While Flower and Hayes, Young,
Becker and Pike, Odell, Elbow, Graves, Lauer, and Horton

supported the problem—solving paradigm of writing/thinking/

103
learning, Berthoff and Ohmann have not. Della—Piana and
Sommers argued that dissonance motivates revision. 8)
Moffett and Berthoff stressed the value of awareness of
writing/thinking/learning. "Being conscious of what we are
doing is the way to find out how to do it," Berthoff argued
(ll 44). Coles, Miller and Judy, and Irmscher argued that
metacognition leads to self—awareness. However, Britton and
Mandel asserted that metacognition can interfere with writing
more than facilitate it.

9) Elbow argued that writers should be aware of when
awareness is helpful and when it is not. Generally, aware-
ness is not helpful during creative thinking, but awareness
is helpful and necessary during critical thinking. 10)
Intuition and intellect naturally complement each other.
Writers should be aware of this interaction.

What composition theorists have argued about awareness
of writing/thinking/learning is surprisingly similar to what
psychologists and philosophers have argued in Chapter II.

The major differences between both groups is that composition
theorists have examined functions and forms of language and
thought; more composition theorists-~Berthoff, Ohmann,
Britton, Moffett, and Kinneavy-—have not embraced the
problem-solving paradigm; and more composition theorists have
extolled the values of awareness of cognitive processes.

Among both groups of theorists, there is no grand

agreement that people should try to be as aware as possible

104
of the ways their minds work. Awareness is a doubleLbind,
both positive and negative depending on the individual and
when specific awareness occurs. Paying attention to the
activity of the mind and caring for its welfare--this defini-
tion of awareness is positive if it means that awareness
does not interfere with the mind's natural operation.
Awareness is positive if it helps students identify, explore,
and solve problems and if it helps develop curiosity about
writing/thinking/learning. But awareness is negative if it
makes writing/thinking/learning too unnatural--if it makes
students behave like the proverbial caterpillar who cannot
walk when he tries to explain how he does it.

Central to the issue of awareness of mind is that
awareness is both tacit and explicit. When Vygotsky wrote,
"Becoming conscious of our operations and viewing each as a
process of a certain glee--such as remembering or imagining
--leads to their mastery" (lll 91-92), he suggested that
consciousness should be formulated and made explicit.
Moffett and Berthoff clearly have supported Vygotsky's
position. But Britton has not.

In Language and Learning, Britton concluded that formu-

 

lating awareness through words creates a rough map of the
mind. People are usually not aware of their cognitive
behavior because they tacitly know they cannot be truly
aware.

By going back and analysing a situation we may be
able for the first time to formulate, to make

105
explicit, some of these [cognitive] processes. We
may, for example, realize that we made a particular
remark out of a growing uneasiness. But such an
analysis always seems, in the attempt, to reach a
frontier that cannot be crossed: the processes
grow more difficult to 'pin down', until we give
in to a sense that the rest must remain unex-
plained.

Thus, I believe there will always be a gap
between our total response to what confronts us
and any formulation we can make of what was there
and what took place. (277)

Britton argued that a formulation of awareness is like any
verbal formulation: a reduction of what is real. Although
he suggested that the frontier of awareness cannot be
crossed, I would argue that it is worthwhile for people——
especially college freshmen--to journey into the frontier a
little, to approach the edge of the gap, to see how vast
and complex the mind is, and to speculate about what they
think is going on.

Both Vygotsky and Britton are correct. Together their
views suggest a paradoxical balance. Since it is impossible
for people to be fully aware of mental operations, perhaps
the more operations people can classify and know, the more
control they will have over the ways they write/think/learn.
Vygotsky wrote that "all the higher functions have in common
awareness, abstraction, and control" (T&L 97). If English
teachers want to enable students to develop as stronger
writers/thinkers/learners, we need to help students think
more about how they think. Yet we need to be careful not to

harm their natural development of tacit awareness.

In my experience of having college freshmen write

106
learning logs about their own writing, I have tried to
straddle such a balance. I have found that logs helped many
students become more aware of their thinking operations.
Logs enabled students to construct formulations of their own
composing process. Yet logs also helped students realize
that they could not always formulate their awareness and
that they often had little desire to explore how their minds
worked. In the next chapter I will examine in detail the

pedagogical implications of metacognitive writing.

CHAPTER IV

PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF METACOGNITIVE WRITING

It's funny, but I discovered something about how
I write. My physical location directly correlates
with my level of creativity as well as my desire
to be creative. I do most of my homework at my
desk in my room. This has become a very tiresome
spot. I can sit there and try to force myself to
be creative, but it just won't work. On the
other hand, all kinds of ideas come to me if I go
somewhere away from my everyday schedule. I went
to MSU last weekend, and I sat in my friend's
room just kinda staring out the window. So many
ideas rushed through my mind that I had to get a
piece of paper and write down some notes. My
friend, of course, thought I was nuts.

****

When thinking of how to write about the pain of
running I had to put on a pair of shorts and knock
out the dust from my running shoes. Then I ran
for two miles. This helped me remember the emotion
pain. When I finished I began writing. I feel
after experiencing the topic one is going to write
about will help them remember concrete details.
This is true about all topics; for example, how
can someone discuss love if he has never experi-
enced it. I really think this works, maybe its
weird.

These two excerpts of learning logs written by college
freshmen are examples of metacognitive writing. In their own
natural language, without worrying about usage or spelling,
these students wrote about their own writing and thinking
process. The logs exemplify what happened in many logs in

my English 100 College Rhetoric course: students reflected

107

108
on how they wrote essays, sharing their reflection with
their teacher who became a dialogue participant.

In this chapter I will examine pedagogical implications
of metacognitive writing, as well as metacognition in
general, in light of the theoretical perspectives I discussed
in Chapters II and III. I will examine the log method
pedagogy I have used, and I will examine pedagogy other
teachers have used--notably directed process questions

developed by Faigley et al.

The Log Method and English 100 College Rhetoric

 

What awareness do college freshmen have of their own
composing process and how does that awareness assist them?
I tried to find answers to this question by having students
write a log before and after writing each assigned essay.
The following is a description of the log assignment that I

gave students the first day of class:

Learning Logs

Will writing about your own writing process help
you become a better writer and thinker? In this
course we will find out.

I will often ask you to write a learning log
regarding your thoughts and feelings--any confusions,
concerns, questions, surprises, realizations, insights
--about writing a paper. Basically I want you to try
to describe anything unusual or interesting going on
in your writing. I want you to explore/describe any
problems or breakthroughs you experience.

Webster's Neleorld Dictionary sheds light on the
meaning of a log: "daily record of a ship's speed or
progress; in it are usually entered the ship's position
and any notable events of the trip . . . any record of

 

109

progress or occurrences, as on a journey, in an experi-
ment." Our writing course will be like a series of
ship journeys--of your own mind, of how you think when
you use words.

Before and after you write a paper, record your
thoughts about writing. You don't need to write pages
for each log entry; a paragraph or page will suffice,
but if you want to write more, feel free. Writing a

re-lo before you write an assignment can help you
find a topic and figure out what you want to do and

say. Writing a ost-lo after writing an assignment
can help you eprore any problems or surprises you
experienced.

If you write a ost-lo , try to do so when the
writing process is still fresh in your mind or when
you're not too tired. Don't frantically write a log
five minutes before class just to hand one in. The log
likely will not be meaningful. However, feel free to
add last—minute thoughts to your logs while you're
waiting for class to begin. Experiment and see when
the best time for writing a log is for you.

Also, please try not to BS in your logs. Don't
tell me what you think I want to hear. Write about
your own explorations with writing--with using language:
words. If you feel lost and don't know what to write
in your log, try to analyze why, or talk to me about
it.

Let's keep the logs flexible. Just handwrite in
ink or marker on regular paper (legal pad or looseleaf
--not pages torn out of a spiral notebook), and attach
this paper to each final copy of an assignment. Don't
worry about sentence skills or spelling. I will not
"mark" any errors. These logs are meant to be informal.
I am interested in the content of your logs.

As the course moves out to sea, I will be able to
describe the logs better—-which ones are working well
and which ones are not. Let's see where the winds take
us.

To complement the purpose of logs, I developed English
100 College Rhetoric so that students increasingly had to
think more about thinking. I tried to apply Graves' idea
that learning involves "losing balance, regaining it, and

going on" (Writing 231). To help students grow as writers/

thinkers/learners, I presented students with various problems

110
that required both critical and creative thinking.

For the first assignment I asked students to "write an
essay such that it's not a waste of time for yourself or for
your readers (your fellow classmates and me). I want you to
try to figure out how to write an essay that has meaning--so

readers won't ask 'So what?'"1

This first assignment posed
two main problems for students: 1) writing their first pre-
writing log about finding topics for this essay 2) writing
an essay that has "meaning." Many students wrote comments
in their pre-logs expressing their disequilibrium:
It's hard trying to think of something to write for
this [pre-log] let alone trying to come up with an
THE; for a meaningful essay. I wish you hadn't
put it quite that way--now I'm going to be super
conscious of what ideas I even come up with.

The second essay concerned the process of inquiry and
problem-solving. In class I explained the process of inquiry
as Young, Becker, and Pike explain it: how dissonance helps
writers find ideas, how exploration involves both conscious
and subconscious thinking in alternation, how eurekas occur,
and how possible solutions can be verified. Throughout the
term I tried to help students see writing and learning as a
process of inquiry. Invention, arrangement, style--inquiry

applies to every process of composing from discovering a

significant idea to discovering the correct way to spell a

 

1 This assignment is a modification of an Elbow idea,
taken from Embracingllontraries, 74. For complete descrip-
tions of the writing activities that provided-the context
in which learning logs were written, see the Appendix of
this dissertation.

111
word or to use a semicolon.

For the third essay I asked students to write about a
contrast, contradiction, or paradox. During this activity
I tried to teach students how to see different perspectives,
to see differences and similarities, to think dialectically.
Piaget, Vygotsky, Dewey, Polanyi, Bateson, and Donaldson in
Chapter II and Britton, Moffett, Berthoff, Young, Becker,
Pike, and Elbow in Chapter III discussed the importance of
awareness of difference and incongruity as motivators of
thought. I also had students write an analogy; we discussed
creativity: how to think new thoughts by seeing hidden
similarities between previously unrelated things (Koestler).

For the fourth essay students explored the interaction
of thought and language by defining a word or a phrase of
significance to them (For a description of a class dialectic
on the word "quality," see Palmer "Exploring Quality"). We
discussed the notion that meanings are in people not in
words, and that the map (word) is not the territory it
stands for (Hayakawa).

The fifth essay was the traditional argument paper in
which students had to present both sides of an argument and
try to persuade their audience to change their mind. This
paper required that students decenter enough to understand
a view that opposed their own. This activity also involved
discussions of logic: especially unqualified generalizations

and either/or thinking. The sixth essay was the research

112
paper, and I encouraged students to use the process of
inquiry to find a topic or to investigate a contradiction or
paradox in any area that interested them.

For the last paper students wrote a mind essay explor-
ing, for themselves and for their peers, how they think they
think. This activity also involved discussing the advantages
and limitations of using analogies to describe the mind
since one of the best or easiest ways to describe something
abstract is to compare it to something more concrete.2

I also gave students the option not to follow the
assigned writing activities. If they had a need to write
something else, they could--provided that they explained why
in their pre or post-log. Moffett has stressed the impor-
tance of student free-choice. He described the "first
cardinal rule" of instruction: "Give students some real
choice of assignments so that they want to do them and you

can be sure that any problems will result from true

 

2 Would my students’ metacognitive writing have been
different if I had chosen a different array of topics? Yes
and no. If I had not emphasized certain ideas--such as
meaning, the necessity of qualifying generalizations with
specific and concrete evidence, the process of inquiry
(dissonance, incubation, eurekas, verification), the value
of seeing differences and similarities for critical and
creative thinking-~students' logs would not have been the
same. The concepts I stressed in class that students
practiced in essays provided students with a vocabulary of
metacognitive ideas with which to reflect. If I had students
write primarily descriptive and narrative essays, the
content of their logs would have been different. Yet, no
matter what the array of topics, logs would be similar in
that students would naturally rehearse, explore problems,
and vent frustrations.

113
compositional difficulties, not from poor motivation" (e!
25). Free choice within a required course like freshmen
composition is a necessary contradiction in order for
students to motivate themselves to write well. Also,
because I encouraged students to express themselves freely
in their logs, I felt it necessary to give them free choice
with essay topics.

This sequence of writing activities including learning
logs, as well as in-class activities based on sensory and
perceptual awareness, created an overall context that rein-
forced the idea that English 100 College Rhetoric was not
only about writing but was also about thinking and learning.
During the first day of class I told students that like an
essay our course would have a thesis: "Learning how to write
helps you learn how to think and how to learn." My job was

to try to enable students to experience this idea in action.

Student Evaluations of the Log Method

 

At the end of the course I had students evaluate the log
method. To insure more honesty and reduce fear that whatever
students said would not affect their grades, I instructed
them not to sign their names to the evaluations.

When asked what they liked about doing logs, many
students wrote comments like the following:

I like being able to ask questions and having them
answered on my log by the professor.

114

I didn't feel limited, like when I write a formal
paper.

Logs helped me follow the natural pattern of my
thoughts.

I was more aware of how I would come up with a
topic for a paper.

Pre—logs forced me not to procrastinate. I had to
begin thinking about my paper in advance.

At first I didn't like the idea of doing them but
since they were required I had to. Soon I relied
on them and wanted to do them because I learned
that they helped me.

They helped me get a grip on what and how I wanted
to write. They saved me a lot of frustrated
moments.

In logs you could be as creative as you wanted.
There was no such thing as a crazy idea because
anything was possible. Logs made you really get

going on a paper. . . Post-logs gave me a
chance to clear my head of any last uncertain-
ties.

Everytime I was writing my paper and came across

a problem, I would put it in the back of my mind
or jot it down so I would remember it for my

logs. It brought these problems--and good points
—-to my attention.

I liked post-logs because they more or less helped
me get a total picture of my reasons for writing
the paper.

However, logs had limitations. Not all students liked
facing the "looser" problems of writing logs in addition to
the usual "tighter" problems of writing essays. Logs did
not appear to help some students grow intellectually. Logs
required more work than some students were willing to do.

They required students to reflect often and to share their

reflection with me. After a month or so, writing logs

115
became a routine that some students disliked, found boring,
or unnecessary. When asked what they disliked about doing

logs, students wrote comments like the following:

Although logs were fairly "free," they usually had
a necessary direction. I found them a chore, and
seldom was moved to put enough into them to get
anything out.

Logs were not always helpful, because I did not
always have problems, or even eurekas. Sometimes
I just want to start writing. Having to do a pre-
log beforehand got to be a chore in these cases.

Sometimes they were only busywork because my ideas
were very clearly organized in my head. I didn't
need to write them down.

When I have an idea I like it is impossible to
think of other possible topics.

There were many times when I had finished a paper,
and I didn't really feel like writing a log.

It was a pain in the ass trying to figure out what
to write when there was nothing upstairs.

In the majority of them [logs] I was pretty general
because I forgot about them and had to write them
in class just before they were do.

I don't really care for the post-logs. I always

felt if I wrote bad things about my paper in it

then you would lower my grade.

I don’t see how a post-log would enrich the paper

already written. I just did them because you made

us.

Post-logs served no purpose for me. They didn’t

really get me to evaluate my paper. I just didn't

really see what they were supposed to help with.
Although through the term I periodically tried to explain my

purpose in having students write logs, and the page of log

directions addressed this, some students, as the last two

116
excerpts indicate, had trouble seeing the purpose and there—
fore saw little value in writing logs.

One of the major problems that psychologists, philoso-
phers, and composition theorists discussed was the relia-
bility of what people report concerning their mental opera-
tions. The reliability of logs was difficult to measure.
Were students expressing truth as they saw it or fiction-~did
they tell me what they thought I wanted to hear so I would
think they were wonderful students and subconsciously grade
their essays higher? Did logs truly reflect what went on in
students' minds when they composed essays?

I did not know for certain. But my overall impression
was that many, if not most, students tried to reflect
honestly most of the time. Many students tried to explore
genuine problems and describe authentic realizations. Yet
in the log evaluation peel students acknowledged that they
did "BS" in logs--either a little or a lot. I asked students
to comment on Flower and Hayes' observation that "people's

after—the-fact, introspective analysis of what they did

 

while composing is notoriously inaccurate and likely to be
influenced by their notions of what they should have done"

("Cognitive Process Theory" 368). Students responded:

Sometimes, if I didn't realize what I had learned
from an assignment, I made something up. I guess
it was because I wanted to continually feel as if
I was learning and growing.

Did I BS in my log? How could I? I just wrote
down what my mind was thinking and the different

117
ideas for the certain subject. Is that BS?

It is true that sometimes—-maybe often--that I
wrote what I thought you would want to hear.
Post-logs for me were usually BS--not always
though. I agree w/ their statement because in
writing post-logs I was usually doing them quickly
to get them out of the way so I would write what

I thought you’d want to hear.

I never said anything simply because you wanted to
hear it, but I often (for lack of better topics)
found myself refering back to your lectures and
handouts for topics to address in my logs.

I probably wrote comments you wanted to hear in
most of my post-logs because I had nothing else to
say.

No. No. No.

No, I don't agree with this statement. You assured
us enough that you wanted to hear the truth whether
it was good or bad. I think for the most part the

logs were honest. It might be a different story

if the English professor intimidated the students.

Then they might write just to please him.

No, no, sort of. People may write about what they
should have done, but more than likely will write
what they felt they did.

When I look back at logs they often appear to have
said what I would have wanted to hear were I an
instructor. Of course their evaluation of their
own performance is influenced by notions of what
they're supposed to do. That's called "learning."
I tried not to BS, but I often doubted what I had
written, so I would downplay what I thought as to
not appear "proud" about something full of errors.

I only put in what I thought you wanted to hear.

What does this mean if most students sometimes or often
padded their logs with fabrications? Were logs then a waste
of time for students and for me? Fabricating responses

about cognitive operations is analogous to making distorted

118
mental maps or touching-up photographs of peOple to make
them look better or worse than they actually appear.

Is the act of making phony mental maps all bad? Is it
better than not thinking about thinking at all? If students
were aware that when they wrote post-logs they were making-
up responses, then by contrast they may have realized a
little more about what did happen in their minds when they
wrote-~they did not formulate this awareness explicitly but
may have realized it tacitly. Psychologist Johnson-Laird
argued that "small-scale models of reality need neither be
wholly accurate nor correspond completely with what they
model in order to be useful" (3). Yet what really happened
in many students' minds was possibly nothing-~as the student
who wrote, "I had nothing else to say."

Assessing reliability is difficult. A teacher needs to
develop an attitude that not all students will tell the
truth. Truth about cognition is slippery, as many resear-
chers and theorists have argued. Undoubtedly, many students
in English 100 told more than they could possibly know; many
students knew more than they could possibly tell--and some
students did not care either way.

During winter term 1988 at Alma College I taught two
sections of English 100 College Rhetoric. I had twenty-one
students in one section and twenty in the other for a total
of forty-one. In the log evaluations completed the last day

of class, students answered five questions by circling

119
either "yes," "no," or "not sure." The advantage of circling
responses was that they could be tabulated and used as group

data, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1
Student Evaluation of Log Method

1. Did you give the process of doing logs a fair
chance-~did you take logs seriously?

yes: 32 or 78% no: 1 or 2% not sure: 8 or 19%

2. Did doing logs help make you more aware of your
own writing and thinking process?

yes: 23 or 56% no: 3 or 7% not sure: 15 or 36%

3. Did writing pre—logs help you think--did they help
you discover tapics for essays?

yes: 28 or 68% no: 7 or 17% not sure: 6 or 14%

4. Should I continue to have students in English 100
write logs?

yes: 31 or 75% no: 0 not sure: 10 or 24%

5. My central thesis for College Rhetoric has been
this: Learning how to write helps you learn how
to think and how to learn. Has your experience in
this course supported this thesis?

yes: 28 or 68% no: 2 or 5% not sure: 11 or 262

This group data suggests that despite many students
disliking logs and despite the fabrication factor inherent
in logs, most students thought the log method was worthwhile
and should be continued. Question # 2, whether logs helped
make students more aware of their writing/thinking process,
shows the lowest response of yes answers and highest response

of not sure answers. This suggests that the value of logs

120
for many students was not that logs made them more aware of
their composing but that logs provided other benefits: such
as regular personal dialogue with teacher, a way to generate
and evaluate ideas for topics, and a way to vent feelings.
In their comments to question # 2, many students said that
pre-logs helped make them more aware but post-logs did not.

Other comments students made were

I don't know because before I wrote logs I kind of
formed them in my mind anyway.

I know they made me more aware of my thinking
process but I really don't know if they did
anything for my writing.

Yes, logs made me more aware. I never realized I
reacted so emotionally until I wrote down post-
logs.

I never really think about how I think. It just
comes easy to me so I don't analyze it.

Instead of just sitting and thinking about a
paper, I went through it on paper. This really
helped me think because I actually saw some
progress in front of me. It was sort of a tran-
sition between thinking and writing.

I don't necessarily need to be verbal to under-
stand/be aware of my own writing & thinking
process.

I felt pretty aware of it before this class and I
don't know if it was this class that helped or
college in general.

I already know how I think and write is constantly
changing.

121

Teacher Evaluation of the Log Method

When Emig conducted her 1971 study having students
compose aloud, she acknowledged that although she had
gathered much information, "the data are not full enough to
substantiate any generalizations" (4). Based on my informal
research of using the log method of written reports over
three years in twelve sections of English 100, I have
arrived at generalizations concerning the advantages and
limitations of learning logs. Yet I need to be careful to
avoid, as much as I can, common problems of thinking such
as preconceptions, selecting biased evidence, and the
notion that the map is not the territory it represents.
Whatever happened in logs is more than I can say in words.
Learning logs were not objective exercises. They involved
personal, subjective dynamics such as dialogue and discovery
learning.

The major advantage of the log method was that logs
involved natural dialogue. Students engaged in dialogue
with self and teacher on a regular basis. Logs enabled
students to communicate more with me than they would have
normally. Students often wrote comments and questions that
they would not have told me in person. I developed closer
working relationships with students. Because students
identified problems in their logs, this helped me become
more aware of how I might help them; consequently, I often

asked students to see me for short conferences to discuss

122
their writing. The dialogue between students and me helped
students become more process oriented as writers.

Several theorists have emphasized the value of dialogue
in education. Bruner argued that intellectual development
depends on systematic interaction between a student and a
teacher. He wrote, "Consider the dependence of growth upon
a contingent tutor-learner interaction, and the failure of
growth when this is absent. . . . With Socrates, we know
somehow that a dialogue can lead people to discover things
of great depth and wisdom" (Toward 19). Bruner believed
that students develop their own cognitive structures with
the aid of teachers, and he stressed that theories of intel-
lectual development "must be linked" to theories of instruc-
tion (21).

Vygotsky discussed the importance of dialogue between
students and teachers. His emphasis that social interaction
develops cognition applies here. Vygotsky argued that a
"zone of proximal development" exists in each student: "lle
distance between the actual developmental level as determined
by independent problem solving and the level of potential
development as determined through problem solving under
adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers"
(glee 86). Dialogue with teachers helps students develop
their intellectual potential; dialogue is necessary before
students can internalize their developmental processes

(90). Vygotsky wrote, "What the child can do in

123

cooperation today he can do alone tomorrow" (lll 104).

Britton argued that teachers need to be dialogue
participants who interact with students on a personal
level. When students engage in dialogue with teachers,
students use expressive language which satisfies "the
writer's desire to verbalize his thought and feelings to
someone willing to be interested in them and him" (ley
103). Expressive writing helps a teacher better understand
how a student thinks: such writing may "be used to follow
the ebb and flow of the writer's consciousness, to articu-
late the concerns and interests of the writer, free of
external demands, in the same informal and implicit way as
is characteristic of supportive talk" (141). Britton has
pointed out that in order for expressive writing to have
value, the teacher must "be interested in the writer and
what he writes: without that relationship such writing is
inevitably a 'dummy run' and a particularly pointless one"
(193). Britton has also asserted that "writing within the
teacher-learner dialogue" represents the function and form
of language that best enables students to learn, but such
writing steadily declines after the first year in high
school (121). This is a reason why the freshman writing
course is a suitable place for students to engage in meta-
cognitive writing that nurtures dialogue between students
and teachers.

Martin et al. also argued that teachers should become

124
dialogue participants who invite students to "write what
they really think without being constantly criticised about
it" (81). As such, teachers can learn from their students.
The dialogue between students and teachers not only helps
students reflect and learn, but it also helps teachers: "If
he is attentive to how his pupils reach out towards new
knowledge, the teacher will himself continue to learn about
learning" (84).

Dialogue has helped me become a better teacher. In logs
students often voiced their concerns about the course and my
teaching. Because teachers can be egocentric, they can
benefit from seeing points of view of students. Heather
voiced her dissonance about the course and made me think:

This class puzzles me. We write things like a
writer would write, like in books or essays which

I bet more than half of this class won't become.

I would really like to spend more time learning

how to do research and write memoes or other

things we will need in the business world. I

don't understand how this [writing an essay explor-

ing a contradiction] pertains to any fieldsexcept
an English teacher or professional writer.

 

3 How did I select log excerpts? During the term I
Xeroxed student logs that I thought might illustrate points
concerning metacognitive writing. For this dissertation I
have selected certain logs because I hope they illustrate my
generalizations. I have tried not to pick and choose
examples to suit any bias. I am not trying to prove that
the log method was fabulously successful. It was not--as
the student log evaluation data shows in Table 1 on page
119. I have tried to be objective in selecting log excerpts
that reflect both the weaknesses and strengths of the log
method and the sequence of writing activities I used in
English 100.

To maintain confidentiality, I have changed the names
of students.

125
Heather's log helped me realize that I needed to appeal more
to students like her who want a "practical" education within
a liberal arts college. As an English teacher I do not want
to alienate students majoring in business; rather, I want to
help them gain more awareness and control of their writing/
thinking/learning. Although this awareness necessarily
involves ambiguity and metaphorical thinking, Heather helped
me realize I was emphasizing this kind of thinking more than
critical or "practical" thinking.

In their logs, students helped me remember feelings and
problems I had forgotten or taken for granted. Kim wrote
about her dislike for description:

I think I did alright, nothing exceptional. I
don't do well with descriptive writing. I don't
really like reading that kind of writing because
it bores me, it seems too fake. You're just
reaching for something that's not really there.
I guess it's hard for me to write this kind of
paper because I don't really believe in it. I
like some of my descriptions but I think most of
it sounds like I'm just trying to hard to make
something work.
Kim did not know she expressed an idea I considered impor-
tant. I wrote on her log, "These are honest comments. I
know what you mean. Sometimes description does sound fake.
I don’t want you to write in a fake way. Yet I want you to
use concrete details to help you express meaning." Kim's
log helped me realize that assignments based on pure descrip—
tion often lack real purpose and meaning. Her log made me

wonder about ways I could help students be descriptive

without concentrating only on description.

126

Another reason why I found logs useful was that logs
involved a double dialogue. Many students were not aware of
this; many assumed that their logs were interactions between
themselves and me. But occasionally a student observed what
Barry did: "Writing logs helped me to work through problems
as if I were talking to someone else and 'hearing' their
reply. We were supposedly writing them to you, but in
reality, though some may not have realized it, we were
actually writing them to ourselves."

Murray (1982) discussed the importance of self-dialogue
in his article "Teaching the Other Self: The Writer's First
Reader." Every writer has an "other self" that is tacit.
For Murray, the other self is the explorer that the writer
needs to come to know.

The act of writing might be described as a conver-
sation between two workmen muttering to each other
at the workbench. The self speaks, the other self
listens and responds. The self proposes, the
other self considers. The self makes, the other
self evaluates. The two selves collaborate: a
problem is spotted, discussed, defined; solutions
are proposed, rejected, suggested, attempted,
tested, discarded, accepted. (140)
Murray suggested that the other self is the writer's aware-
ness of mind. As such, the other self monitors what happens
in the mind when a person writes. "The other self articu-
lates the process of writing" (142). Murray argued that
teachers should help students become more aware of their

other self because the other self can "assist in the teaching

of writing." The teacher can then collaborate with the

127
other self "so that, after the student has graduated, the
other self can take over the function of teacher" (143).

Freire criticized education that does not utilize
dialogue. Dialogue is the best way to break the traditional
master/slave relationship between teachers and students.
Dialogue means that students and teachers together practice
reflective thinking which involves what Freire calls "prob-
lem-posing education" in which "acts of cognition" are more
important than "transferrals of information" (67). "Problem-
posing education regards dialogue as indispensable to the
act of cognition which unveils reality" (71). Such a
paradigm of education means that students, teachers, and
knowledge itself are always in "the process of becoming"
(72). And Freire maintained that dialogue involves critical
thinking-—"thinking which perceives reality as process, as
transformation, rather than as a static entity--thinking
which does not separate itself from action" (81).

Discovery learning was another advantage of learning
logs. In English 100 I did not use a textbook on rhetoric.
Influenced by Moffett's argument that texts pre-teach
students how to avoid problems without letting students
experience them first-hand (Universe 199), I wanted students
to discover as much about writing as they could on their
own and through dialogue with me. (I did use a handbook,
however, as a reference tool for the research paper and for

sentence skills.)

128
Bruner stressed the importance of discovery learning:
"Insofar as possible, a method of instruction should have
the objective of leading the child to discover for himself"

(On Knowing 123). He classified two types of teaching: (1)

 

"expository" characterized by the lecture approach in which
students are "bench-bound listeners" (2) "hypothetical" in
which students and teachers cooperate more, with students
actively formulating what they learn (83). The hypothetical
mode encourages discovery learning which enables a student
"to be a constructionist, to organize what he is encoun-
tering," and it helps the student "to learn the varieties of
problem solving, of transforming information for better use"
which "helps him to learn how to go about the very task of
learning" (87). For Bruner, education should enable students
to go beyond information-—to hypothesize and discover
insights.

As a teacher, I perceived other benefits from learning
logs in addition to the value of dialogue and discovery
learning. Logs enabled students to express themselves in
both affective and cognitive domains. Students often
explored their feelings. Using creative and critical
thinking, students generated and evaluated ideas, learned
to consider audience and purpose, and learned how to plan
in natural ways. Writing logs required students to think
more about how they write and think than students normally

would do; logs showed many students actively and personally

129
constructing their thought, language, and awareness. More-
over, the log method helped unify English 100 College
Rhetoric. The course had more purpose and value than when
I taught it emphasizing only writing. Logs reinforced the
idea that the course concerned writing/thinking/learning.
I found myself surprisingly willing to write comments on
logs. Logs did not create any burden but rather lightened
the regular burden of grading essays without knowing much
about why or how students wrote them. In short, since I
started using learning logs, English 100 College Rhetoric
has become more meaningful.

The greatest limitation of the log method was that logs
seemed to work best with students who already wrote well.
Mark, for example, consistently wrote logs in which he
reflected on possible topics and on the idea behind the
assignment. Logs did not seem like chores for him; they
often became expressive essays in themselves. In this pre-
log excerpt Mark explored a possible topic concerning the
idea of seeing similarities and differences:

The complexity of the human body fascinates me.
I am in awe of the incredible number of muscles,
tendons, bones, and organs that we all possess.
It is also amazing how easy it is to upset the
careful balance that exists in the human body.
How is it that all of us are the same in basic
structure yet due to genetics we all have body
characteristics that make us unique. I have not
even begun to scratch the surface as far as
internal respiratory, nervous, pulmonary, and

limbic systems are concerned.

This log reflects Mark's natural curiosity; he did not seem

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to mind wondering on paper about the human body. His

specific diction suggests that he already knew much about

this topic. Later in his pre-log he formulated his awareness

of the concept of similarity and difference:

It is very true that observing similarities and
differences is the essence of thinking and learn-

ing. If we could not see how things were different

or the same we would be in limbo. All subjects
rely heavily on the ability of the student to

distinguish between things. Geology, for instance,

demands that students know what makes one mineral
different from another. Calculus students must
be able to determine similarities and differences
between properties, postulates, theorums, and
formulas in order to have any degree of success.
Besides school, where would we be if we didn't
know the differences between Billy Joel and Van
Halen? Where would we be if we couldn't tell the
difference between an African lion and a Siamese
cat? What if we couldn't tell the difference
between our mother and Joe Schmoe's mom? The
list is endless. The more similarities we can
discern between two things, the more knowledge we
have transferred from past experience and applied
to new situations.

In explaining this idea to himself and to his teacher, Mark
showed that he understood it well. Through his interaction
of thought and language, he showed his awareness of the
concept.

I often perceived this relationship: excellent writers
like Mark tended to write excellent logs——logs that showed
genuine reflection, curiosity, analysis, synthesis, and
metacognition. Excellent writers/students showed that they
were intellectually aware of ideas and could explain their
significance in their own words. Excellent writers wrote

longer logs that were naturally detailed and organized. In

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his logs, as in his essays, Mark naturally supported his
generalizations with specific, concrete evidence. Excellent
writers displayed a willingness to spend time and energy in
productive reflection.

Did mediocre writers write mediocre logs? Did poor
writers write poor logs? Yes and no. Writing ability is
more complex than these simple categories. There were many
exceptions: excellent writers occasionally wrote poor logs;
poor writers occasionally wrote excellent logs--logs that I
perceived as more thoughtful and inquisitive than what
certain students usually wrote; mediocre writers did not
always write mediocre logs.

My perception was that students who took time and
energy, as Mark did, to reflect also tended to write mean-
ingful essays. Students who did not take such time and
energy to write logs usually did not write meaningful
essays. Yet there were too many exceptions to challenge
the either/or quality of this correlation. Many students
whose logs were not consistently reflective did sometimes
probe their writing and thinking process. Although I had
hoped that logs would help basic writers more than they
did, some basic writers wrote logs that suggested keen
awareness of composing-~such as the second log excerpt that
began this chapter in which the student formulated his
realization that experiencing the pain of running helped him

write about it. Not all students could express their probing

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in complete, interesting ways. Some students consistently
wrote shallow or mediocre logs yet their essays generally
improved. My perception was that most students seemed to
learn more about themselves as writers/thinkers/learners
than they would have if they had not written logs on a
systematic basis. Through writing logs regularly through a
semester, all students were exposed to the idea that writing
enables thinking and learning, that these processes of

construction interact and have value.

Discussion: The Advanteges and Limitations of Pre-Loge

Pre-writing has been considered a common stage and
technique of the writing process since Rohman coined the
phrase in 1965. Many writing teachers have students pre-
write. Macrorie and Elbow reinforced pre—writing by having
students "freewrite" for tapics: writing spontaneously for
ten minutes or more without stopping and without worrying
about spelling or grammar. Murray (1978) wrote "Write
before Writing" in which he argued that pre-writing is an
essential stage that precedes a first rough draft. Graves
(1984) argued that pre—writing is a necessary process of
"rehearsal" and can take many forms such as listing, drawing,
daydreaming (221). In rehearsal writers talk to themselves
and try to figure out what they are going to do.

Students wrote a pre—log for each major essay assigned.

I usually required students to write two pages of

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exploration. I told students that even if they felt they
already had a topic, I wanted them to generate more in case
that topic did not work. My purpose here was to encourage
students to generate and evaluate several ideas, to speculate
or plan how they might write their essay, and to consider
their purpose and audience. While some students felt that
my requiring two pages was unfair and cruel, most students
willingly wrote two or more pages.
Jenny entered English 100 as a capable writer and a
conscientious student. Her first pre-log showed her trying
to come to terms with the first essay assignment and with
her first log. She wrote about what interested her but
expressed her fear that most readers would not share her
interest:
I really don't know what to write about that would
not be a waste of time. I mean I'm sure that
plenty of things I think are worthwhile, are
boring to others. I have concerns that many
people never think about. I like to write about
things concerning ecology such as--the future of
the ecosystem and what we can do about it, and how
I perceive human intent. But I don't think the
other students will be interested at what I have
to say. I have a lot of radical thoughts on
medicine and technology that many people don't
like to listen to because if what I think will
happen does, well it is a fearful prospect.

Jenny continued, focusing on the possibility of writing

about a recent oil spill. Then she raised some questions

about other topics and the nature of writing a meaningful

essay itself.

Why do I have to write about the ecosystem etc. at
all? I guess there are other things of interest

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to write about. I can't think of any but I'm sure
there are. I'm not into sports. I could describe
a scenic area I know, or one I wish I knew. Does
this have to be nonfiction? Does it have to be
something I have encountered? Can it be from my
imagination--a story of good and evil where
unicorns rome free. Somehow I think not. How
could that interest my readers, even though it
would certainly interest me.

Well, I guess I'm starting to ramble so I may
stick to my first idea about the oil spill. That
should interest many because I can look at it from
a scientific point of view, an economic point of
view and a perzonal (how we will be effected)
point of view.

Jenny's pre-log showed her thinking about basic rhetorical
concerns that good writers consider: topic appeal, audience,
purpose. She wondered if she should write about a lighter
topic but talked herself out of it. The writer communicated
with herself in this log as well as with the teacher. Jenny
seemed to have a need to write about her concern for ecology.
Although she began the log doubting that other students

would be interested in ecology, by the end of her log she
felt that the oil spill "should interest many." The log
showed Jenny's tentative train of thought naturally develop-

ing, contradiction and all. It is noteworthy also how she

 

In excerpts of student logs I have retained and
will retain all errors in grammar and spelling without
signifying them by using "[sicl." Students were aware that
they did not need to concern themselves with these matters
when they wrote logs. Unpolished language characterizes
expressive writing. This has pedagogical value in itself.
The inherent contrast of freer language used in logs compared
to the more disciplined language used in essays helps
students differentiate between functions of language.
Perhaps the regular alternation between logs and transac-
tional writing helps produce an awareness of differentiation
that Britton has stressed.

135
naturally planned how she might approach her essay from three
different points of view. I wrote her, "Feel free to write
about your interests in ecology. You could help teach your
peers and me." She did write about the oil spill and later
submitted her essay as a letter to the editor of the college
paper, the Almanian, and had it published.
While Jenny's pre-log is an example of one that worked
well, some students wrote brief, shallow logs like this:
I am trying to figure out what exactly we are
supposed to put in this [pre-log]. I think I will
mix feelings and writing to play it safe.

Right now I am off to play cards at the Chi
house. Later.

I just got back, 1:25 A.M. I won $12 so I'm
happy. Good night.

This student, in a developmental section of English 100, did
not know how to write his first pre-log. He spent little
time on it. He did not try to explore his confusion about
writing it (as the learning log page of directions sugges-
ted). Although he said he would mix his feelings and
writing, he mixed little. Unlike most students who gradually
learned to probe their composing process in more depth,
this student continued to write short logs that showed little
reflection. Not all students were willing to reflect about
their composing.

For pre—logs I encouraged students to try to be aware
of invention--of how they personally discovered topics.

Moffett has argued that "people should know where their

ideas come from" (A! 47). Many students found topics after

136
hearing or seeing something that caught their attention.
For the definition essay, Amy mentioned attending a
basketball game and hearing someone say "red-neck." This
word produced dissonance for her: "It's such a stupid
sounding word," she wrote. Many students explored topics
based on dissonance, incongruity, and problems. Because I
presented the process of inquiry early in the course, I
encouraged students to explore topics based on dissonance
throughout the term. These pre-log excerpts show students

thinking about such topics:

An idea that causes dissonance-~the unending

notion of pride-~the cycle of modesty and pride in

one's own humility.
* * * *

One contradiction that comes to mind right away is

when people say--like my friends or brothers and
sisters--it must be nice to be so smart. Inside,
I feel that no, it would be easier to be dumb or

less intelligent. It seems that the more a person

does--work, athletics, academics, leadership

roles, etc-—the more is expected of him or her.
* * * *

The one thing that keeps going through my head

just now is the situation with my parents. Things

are so screwy with the divorce right now. But
actually the whole scandel is a contradiction.
mean, when a man lives two separate lives, with
two different women, two different houses, they
contradict one another. . . . Now that I think
about it, I think I’ll do it on my father. How
when I talk to him I'm very cold and reasoning,
but let him see me cry? No way! But the minute
I hang up the phone I cry for hours and pray for
him. Trying to figure out how I can help him.
But, I'm not sure if I can make it fit this
assignment. I'm not sure if I could get through
writing it.

Although many students found topics by consciously looking

137
for dissonance, often dissonance naturally found students
as the last log suggests. It is natural for students to
explore conflicts in any kind of writing. However, one of
the purposes of metacognitive writing like pre-logs is to
help students become more aware that they can deliberately
use the idea of dissonance to help them discover other ideas
that might generate meaningful essays.
Yet dissonance is not the only force that generates
ideas. Students reported discovering topics when something
stirred their wonder, something less tense than topics based
on harsh or painful conflict. Todd wrote about the word
"quiescently" that is often printed on popsicle cartons to
describe "frozen." It was the first word he remembered
wondering about as a child. For her definition essay pre-
log, Robin told how she found her topic:
I looked at the list of words and immediately
started freewriting on the ones of interest to
me. Then I realized that to write a whole essay
on one word, I'm going to have to think of a word
that has had a significant impact on my life.
Either music, God or learning. I finally decided
on music as my topic because that word generated
the most ideas and I felt I could share a lot of
myself through that one word.

As Todd and Robin did, many students naturally found topics

by wondering:
Eyebrows. Why do we have them? I was sitting
here in my room talking to two friends of mine
when all of a sudden they were the only things I
could focus on their faces. Now that I think of

it, I find eyebrows to be very odd. Its funny how

I've never taken notice of them before.
* * * *

138

Many things are contradictory--How my parents give
me so much freedom to do the things I want to do,
and even those things that they probably don't
want me doing but I still don't use that freedom.
They kind of have me in an invisible vice. I care
about them too much to do something that would
hurt them, even though they give me the freedom to
do it. In this way I do what they want me to
w/out them really imposing their will upon me.

* * * *
"Absurdity"—-that's a wonderful word! It brings
to mind so many different pictures. Absurd is my
niece asking me if she can have everything pink I
own when I die. Audrey is four--if I did will
anything pink to her it would probably be very
useless. Absurd is my friend Kim and I blowing
soap bubbles in the halls of Mitchell. . . .

One could argue that the first two topics contain dissonance:
the oddity of eyebrows and the mystery of an invisible
vice.5
Whether students explored topics based on dissonance or
wonder or some mysterious in-between, my perception was that
most students enjoyed the opportunity to choose their own
topics. Many students mentioned in logs that they were
denied this in high school: i.e., "In school I have always
been given a topic to write on, so there was no need to

discover any ideas to write about." Tracy wrote,

 

5 Although this is an oversimplification, it seems that
writers discover topics in two main ways: from an awareness
of dissonance, incongruity, problems or from an awareness
of what stirs their wonder. William Carlos Williams sug-
gested these two extremes of invention in his long poem
Paterson in which people love to gaze at torrents of a
waterfall. But Williams suggested that dissonance motivates
most thinking. He wrote, "Dissonance/ (if you are interest-
ed)/ leads to discovery" (176). Ultimately, perhaps these
extremes go together. Dissonance stirs wonder, yet there
are different kinds of dissonance and likely different kinds
of wonder.

139

It's funny because I always thought English was
boring, but letting us come up with any topic we
like makes it much more enjoyable and I like to do
it. Also, because of this, I find ideas coming to
me with no warning just by things that happen
during the day, or I remember something that
happened and think "that would be a good idea for
a paper!" I'm glad of this because I like to
write, I just didn't like the formality.

Besides exploring tapics in pre-logs, some students
wrote about the challenge of the assignment, expressing
what they liked about writing. I always tried to share
these logs in class (without saying who wrote them), hoping
the student's own enthusiasm might invade the room. Here
Ann described the value of writing a research paper:

Unlike most of the rest of the class, I do not
loath the idea of writing a research paper.

Maybe this is because through experience since my
graduation from high school I have realized that
writing a research paper doesn't mean simply
restating the facts but it involves sifting
through information searching for the key issues
and principles and then evaluating and analyzing
this for its validity and relevence. In a way
it's like digging for buried treasure. You never
know exactly what you are going to find or if
you're even looking in the right place. I think
what is important though is picking something
that you have an interest in. That way the
reading and research doesn't seem such a drag.
You finally have an excuse to find out more about
a topic that has been in the back of your mind.

If a teacher had said this, many students might have consid-
ered it another sermon. It meant more when a student, a
fellow peer, formulated the value.

Pre-logs helped most students regularly generate and
think about ideas as ideas that might actually be used for

some purpose and intended audience. They helped solve the

140

problem of what to write about by requiring students to
consider various tapics and possible strategies for
development. Often pre—logs seemed more thoughtful than
essays. The natural inquiry and expressive voices of
students made them informative and interesting to read. In
pre-logs students were not burdened with trying to be
polished and carefully organized. As Elbow described the
language of writing to learn, students did not look at the
pane of glass (language) but what was beyond it. While
engaging in metacognitive writing they practiced what
Tchudi called "invisible thinking." In writing essays,
students were more self—conscious of trying to be organized,
clear, correct--but in logs students did not need to "mind"
these problems. LuAnn wrote, "Maybe writing the log is
easier because I'm just writing how I think, how I talk in
my mind."

Pre-logs did not work for all students. Some students

saw them as extra work that received no credit.6 Some

 

6 Rewards of writing/thinking/learning need to be
intrinsic. Bruner argued, "The will to learn is an intrinsic
motive" (Toward 127). Donaldson explained that if an
activity like writing "is rewarded by some extrinsic prize
or token--something quite external to the activity itself-—
then that activity is less likely to be engaged in later in
a free and voluntary manner when the rewards are absent,
and it is less likely to be enjoyed" (121). With my experi-
ence of using learning logs, I did not give students grades
or checkmarks. I wrote brief comments, questions, exclama-
tion marks, and answered questions that students raised for
me. Yet logs were required. My policy was that if students
did not write logs then I would ask them to withdraw from
the course. Although some students did not write a log on
occasion, I would let it go but usually note on the student's

141
students disliked writing pre-logs if they already knew what
their topic would be or if they ended up not using a topic
from their log. My impression was that pre-logs--such as
Mark's log concerning similarity and difference--needed to
generate intrinsic value in order for students to benefit
from doing them. Mark appeared to enjoy thinking about
ideas: reflecting about the nature of similarity and differ-

ence and sharing his knowledge with his teacher.

Discussion: The Advantages and Limitations of Post-Loge

Many of the theorists I examined in Chapters II and III
wrote about the value of reflection--of looking ahead to
consider what might happen, of turning around to see what
did happen along a journey of thinking. Dewey recommended
that people practice " re-reflective" thinking that "sets
the problem to be solved"--forming a question, and "peel-
reflective" thinking that lets a person experience "mastery,
satisfaction, enjoyment" (Hey 107). Britton discussed the
value of reflecting "in prospect and in retrospect" (ll
102). That reflection enables people to construct useful

knowledge is a key point Bruner made: "Intellectual growth

 

involves an increasing capacity to say to oneself and others,

 

essay "Why no log?" One semester I experimented with
having logs be optional but this did not work: students did
not write them. Without the regular expectation of a pre
or post-log with each essay assignment, students forgot
about doing logs. To help students reflect and realize
intrinsic rewards, I needed to require them to keep logs.

142

by means of words or symbols, what one has done or what one

 

will do" (Toward 5). Theorists argued that students learn
more if they reflect because reflection leads to personal
construction of ideas.

Writing post-logs seemed to help many students learn
more about what went on when they composed. I did not
require a certain length for post-logs as I did for pre-
logs. I felt a set length requirement would encourage
students to fabricate-—to tell me what they thought I
wanted to hear. With post-logs, I gave students little
direction. I asked them to write about how they wrote an
essay and to comment on any problems, concerns, confusions,
or surprises they experienced while writing.

Post—logs provided students with a means to went their
frustrations in writing an essay. Post-logs often showed
that affective concerns govern the cognitive, as Murray

argued ("Other Self" 142). Some students wrote

I didn't enjoy writing this. My writing always
seems so superficial, boring, meaningless, mundane,
etc. The other peoples' papers I read seem to
have substance and meaning. They try to portray
a message, idea, or feeling. My papers, this one
for example, are about useless topics.

* * * *
I have come to the conclusion that I'm never going
to write a paper about myself again. I had too
hard of a time with this one. I must have rewrote
it a million times.

* * * *
I find it very difficult right now to think about
how I think. I guess that I have just always
thought--I never thought about it. Thinking comes
very easily to me so why should I think about it?
Isn't it kind of foolish to fool around thinking

143

about something that works? Isn't it better to
concentrate on problems and things that don't work?

In these cases, I tried to lend a supportive ear and listen,
make a comment or two suggesting direction, or ask a student
to come in and talk more about particular feelings or writing
problems.

In post-logs students often formulated their awareness
of themselves as writers, engaging in the process of inquiry
and using the vocabulary of inquiry: "dissonance," "problem,"
"incubation," "eureka." They often reviewed what happened
when they wrote their essay; they analyzed rough spots,
described serendipities, and did what Dewey suggested problem
solvers do: they detected relations between what they tried

to do and how they thought they did it (How 77).

Not having the required 2.0 grade point average has
prevented me from pledging a fraternity and this
causes dissonance since most of my friends are and
I'm not able to join in with their fun.

* * * *
I noticed with this paper once again how important
it is to have mini-incubation periods in my
writing. If I write it all in one sitting I am
not happy with what I write. If I take breaks
and write when I feel ready I am sometimes amazed
at the results.

* * * *
I had never thought that my subconscious mind
worked on problems for me; I'd always considered
it necessary to actively think about and seek out
solutions. Then, this morning, as I was drying my
hair, I hit upon a terrific idea related to the
idea of past experiences--how perceptions in the
beginning (first impressions) can and often do
change, and as a result change us-—or more precise-
ly change the way we view future and present
problems. This was the click, the insight, the
third stage. I'd found my idea.

144

****

As I sat here, trying to brainstorm a topic, I
heard an old song that I’d forgotten about. The
main line was "You get a maximum pleasure from a
minimum love." Eureka! Just then, I knew what
that song really meant. It's the little things
you do for someone that mean the most. A smile
can mean more than a dozen roses sometimes,
depending on which one is really sincere.

Lori formulated an awareness of herself as a writer
trying to be different. In her post—log she explained why
she chose her topic: "Writing on this topic was really
important to me because I get so annoyed when I hear people
say, 'I don't like cats. They're so boring. They have no
personality.’ How can they be so blind?" To write her
essay, she chose the point of view of her cat. In her log
she commented,

What ever possessed me to write in that viewpoint?
I just felt like doing something different. I've
been writing from my viewpoint since as long as
I've been writing--I needed a change from that
monotony. Writing this felt . . . refreshing. .

. . Is this essay too far-fetched? Maybe I got
too carried away? I mean, who knows for sure what
goes on in a cat's mind? But putting myself in
the cat's place, I felt these feelings and thought
these thoughts-~and they sure seem to fit with any
cat I've met.

In post-logs students often expressed realizations
concerning writing and thinking, and in class I would share

excerpts, with the authors always anonymous:

I learned that you can realize something means
more to you after you write about it than you
thought it did before.

* * * *
The more critical or detail noticing you are, the
easier it is to put things into categories.

145

****

I don't know if this is a correct thought or not
but--I think the ideas that are "flung" out of my
mind are in some kind of order and when I put them
down in that order they usually make more sense
than if I write things down in the order I "think"
they should be.

* * * *
Maybe it's easier to think negetively than it is
to think in a positive way. Why look at the good
side of things when we already have them?

* * * *
I think that maybe it's another blow-out. Not
just a flat tire--a blow out. If it were a slow
leak, I could probably repair it. But not this

one.
I'm still having trouble breaking old habits.
And when I thought about it, I realized that
that's what they are. The type of formal writing
that was drilled into me in 11th grade is still
etched distinctly and breaking the old mold is
difficult. In this essay I think I chose a "per-
sonal" topic and put it in that old formal form.

Yuck.
* * * *

When my wonder is stirred, it seems like the
discomfort of the oyster with the grain of sand.
Does my dealing with this discomfort produce a
pearl? I believe it does. And if I avoid the
discomfort I avoid the pearls. But I think it's
important to produce pearls. I like them. They
have quality.

When I shared logs, I would discuss them a little and
invite student reactions. I found that by sharing excerpts
such as the ones above, students, in effect, helped teach
each other about writing/thinking/learning. Students could
hear metacognitive comments by fellow students. For example,
I shared with classes the two log excerpts that began this
chapter. After reading the one about the student who visited

M.S.U. and found herself thinking of so many ideas for essays

that she felt compelled to write notes, I pointed out that

146
writers often find ideas by a contrast like this. A differ-
ent place or situation often makes people think because daily
routines and preconceptions are broken. By sharing logs in
this way, I tried to reinforce their importance in the
course.

Often students pointed out problems for themselves in
post-logs, problems I might have pointed out, but it was
better that students formulated them. Ken wrote,

One of my biggest problems when I write is that I
tend to jump from one subject to the next too
quick which in turn causes lack of support and
broken or "choppy" sentences.

Another problem I've run into is the misuse of
commas. I never really had a problem using commas
before, but now I'm hesitant as to where they
should be used. I don't understand why I'm exper—
iencing this problem.

Ken consistently wrote post-logs analyzing his writing; he
exemplified Holt's description of a good student who "keeps
a constant check on his understanding" (8). Yet many
students did not investigate their composing. For example,
This paper was easy to write because I love my
job. I worked at Hartley for a year and three
months before school started. I'm still considered
an employee because I am going to work over vaca-

tions and during the summer. Hartley is like a
family not a job.

In this post-log for her first paper, Dawn commented further
on her job at a hotel rather than analyze how she wrote her
paper.

In many logs, students were both specific and vague.

Susan wrote,

147

As I was writing this I ran into more trouble than
I thought I would. With my corn detassaling
paragraph my descriptions were easy to come up
with. (Probably because I didn't think about it as
I was writing it.) With this essay I ran into all
sorts of problems--I wish I knew how to write
without trying so hard.

 

Although Susan expressed an important point that often it is
good not to think too much while writing, she did not probe
her reference to "all sorts of problems." "Like what?" I
wrote on her log. I often needed to remind students in
logs, as in essays, that they could have supported their
generalizations with some specific evidence. My hope was
that if students probed more specifically, they would learn
more about their own composing process.
Another student who had trouble investigating his own
composing revealed interesting information in his post-log:
I didn't have any real problems writting this paper
althought I do think I could be more describtive,

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel
though.

My 3rd paragraph definetly needs more detail to
make it better, but it was one of those paragraphs
that really isn't true, just made up. The best
part of this paper is that I supported the thesis
statement well.

This log revealed a basic writer who said, with no awareness
of contradiction, that he needed to be more descriptive yet
he supported his thesis well. He did not know that fabricat-
ing support in an essay about his real life did not make
sense. "Rick, let's talk about this," I wrote.

I considered logs valuable if they contained thoughts

or observations that showed students paying attention to

148
rhetorical concerns such as audience, purpose, and style.

These post—log excerpts indicated student awareness of

audience:

I think that maybe you will say that in my fourth
paragraph, where I am listing benefits for atten-
ding college, I should give more examples and
details.

* * * *
Maybe I could organize my paper into some sort of
pamphlet to be available to future pre-med
students.

* * * *
I really feel I've accomplished something. If
people ask "So what?" to this, all I can say is
"So what?" back. Not every paper is for everyone,
obviously and one can't please everybody. My goal
for my writing is to please myself because I'm my
own worst critic, so I concentrate on pleasing
myself.

Although the last log excerpt revealed the student's
pride of ownership, it also revealed the student's egocen-
tricity through her consideration of audience. Rationalizing
herself into a circle, this student was more concerned with
her own point of view than any other. Logs frequently
revealed egocentricity. Here is another example:

Waitll Hold the phone!! Another question has popped
into my head!! If an issue does have two sides,
do we have to address both? I always felt that
was dumb. You should only have to prove your own
side not disprove another side that you don't care
about or think is wrong!!
When students freely expressed their own points of view, I
could then try to help them see points of view other than

their own.

Piaget and Moffett stressed the importance of people

149
learning to decenter in order to engage fully in formal
thinking operations: to hypothesize, analyze, and synthesize.
While some logs revealed student egocentricity, other logs

revealed student awareness of decentering:

I learned that I can get my point across without
having to hurt feelings in anyway. It is just a
matter of thinking things out and more or less
trying to figure out how I would want someone to
approach me in a similar situation.

* * * *
On this paper, I did something quite interesting.
You know how we're supposed to look at the problem
from the other person's angle? Well I did, as a
matter of fact. I wrote a letter to myself preten-
ding it's from Vicky. That way I could get a
better perspective of her side. It did me some
good. For instance, I didn't like how my habits
were bothering her until I wrote about it. I
literally stepped outside myself and looked at her
point of view.

In their logs I encouraged students to discuss their

purpose in writing essays, and students frequently did:

My main purpose was definately for self-explora-
tion. I had been having many problems with running
lately--I hadn't been enjoying it and it seemed so
much of a chore.

* * * *
I tried to write the paper so that it informs. I
want my readers to think about neutering or spaying
their pets, to act wisely if they do have an
unwanted litter and take them to the pound, and to
think about their pets habits. Is he gone for
long periods of time?--does he wander? Do other
dogs hang around? Is it possible my dog is causing
unwanted litters?

I have found what Flower and Hayes have stressed: that the
more students build representations of their purpose and

audience, the better they write ("Cognition of Discovery"

150
29-30). Logs seemed to help students naturally pay attention
to these essential rhetorical concerns. I did not need to
test students by having them list various purposes in
writing.

Logs also showed many students paying attention to style
and correctness of language. I encouraged students to
explore these concerns as they arose.

Writing this essay, I was very conscious of dashes,
colons and especially semi-colons. However, as I
was conscious of this, I was not thinking of the
coordinate and subordinate clauses. Well, as I

look at the essay, I used clauses (indep. and

dep.) without realizing it.
* * * *

I have a problem with how to word sentences that
say something like Jeff and I or me and Jeff. I

don't know which one is correct.
* * * *

I noticed that in the course of the paper I changed
my method of address twice. I started out with
"I", then switched to "you", and ended up using
"one." The changes seemed necessary in order to
make the prose flow. Is it appropriate?
Usually I did not need to respond in detail to these con-
cerns. I wrote comments such as, "Your sentences are in
fine shape," or "It depends on how you use the phrase;
let's talk about it," or "Why did the changes seem necessary?
Usually it's best to be consistent and stay with one method
of address. I'd recommend staying in the first person."
Like pre-logs, post-logs had variable effects. They
did not work for all students. Many logs were short and

general while many were two or more pages of detailed evalu-

ation. Some short logs contained important information: "I

151
found this paper easier to write than others but I believe
I still have the fear that you will put a see me at the
bottom." In this log the student wrote what he probably
would not have told me--that he was afraid I would ask him
to confer with me. I wrote back, "I'm glad you wrote this.
Tell me about this fear. Is it a good fear? Is the fear
helping you write better or is it making you afraid to
write?"

As with pre-logs, students whose post-logs showed
evidence of metacognition--analysis and synthesis, a willing-
ness to spend time and energy to check their understanding
-—tended to write the strongest essays. Yet for many
students who did not or could not engage fully in metacog—
nition, post-logs helped vent frustrations and identify
some problems, even if students did not examine their
problems in depth. Overall, post-logs were not as successful
as pre—logs. Pre-logs were freer; students could freely
explore possible topics. But in post-logs students focused
on what they did when they wrote a paper, on what worked
well and what did not. Post-logs required more critical
thinking than did pre—logs. My perception was that for
many students when the "product" was finished, the process

of writing/thinking/learning ended.

152

Other Pedagegy InvolvingMetacognitive Writipg

 

 

In Chapter I, the review of research concerning writing
and metacognition, I argued that recent models of composing
could be loosely divided into two main types: naturalistic
and formalistic. Theorists such as Britton, Moffett, Graves,
Elbow, Murray, and Tchudi hold a naturalistic model of
writing that values the subjectivity of personal construCtion
and tacit thinking as well as the importance of critical
thinking. Flower and Hayes hold a more scientific and
formal model of composing that seems to value objectivity
and explicit thinking more than subjective, tacit thinking.
While Elbow has examined general thinking processes such as
believing and doubting (creating and criticizing), Flower and
Hayes have tried to examine "distinctive thinking processes"
such as planning, translating, reviewing, and monitoring
("Cognitive Process Theory" 373—374).

Most pedagogy in the last twenty—five years has been
more naturalistic than formalistic. While protocols are
suitable for the laboratory, they are not meant for classroom
use. Several composition theorists have developed explora-
tory pedagogy with the purpose of helping students think more
about how they think and write.

Rohman (1965) advocated that students use heuristics
like journals, meditation, and analogy to help themselves
discover ideas. Miller (1972) invited students to think

about thinking by writing about how they write. Coles

153
(1974) had students write about their own language--"a
language about thinking" (3). Miller and Judy (1978) asked
students to write about their own thinking and writing
processes in what they called "The Rhetoric of the Imagina-
tion" (19). Coe and Gutierrez (1981) had students write
"to define their own writing problems, set their own goals,
and evaluate their own progress" (262). Elbow (1981)
encouraged students to freewrite about "stuck points,"
"breakthroughs" and "final reflections" (97-98). Judy and
Judy (1981) have had students write a page of "pleasures
and pains" after a writing activity (34). Murray (1982)
advocated that students "write, after completing a draft, a
brief statement about the draft" (145). Rossi (1982) had
her high school English students write "process journals"
in which they described their own writing processes. Flower
(1985) recommended in her textbook that students write
introspective reports, process logs, and retrospective
accounts (41). Winterowd (1985) assigned "the composing
process paper" to "make students aware of their own writing
processes, to teach important problem-solving skills, and
to demystify the writing process" (26). Dodd (1987) had
her college basic writers compose weekly writing logs in
which they noted progress and problems.

In Fulwiler's The Journal Book (1987) teachers reported

 

using metacognitive writing in the form of process logs and

journals. Summerfield required his college writing students

154
to write a text and a meta-text or commentary on it. He
explained,
When students think aloud on paper about their
performative acts as writers, revealing the inner
ebb and flow, the fluctuations of confidence,
certainty, tentativeness, and so on, they are in
effect writing a history--a "natural history"--of
their own minds. (38)
D'Arcy encouraged students to write to learn, to "use journal
writing as a kind of running commentary on their other work
--a way of thinking onto paper" in which students could
"confess confusion without guilt" (42). For example, in my
course Tom confessed his confusion about writing his mind
essay:
After completing this final paper of this class,
I am really quite confused. You told us at the
beginning of the year that you were going to put
us off balance somewhat, and then help us to feel
more steady again. Well, you surely did do that,
and I started to feel much better about the two
papers previous to this one--especially my research
paper. I was unsure of my writing at the beginning
of the year, and then I slowly improved and thought
I was much more confident. Then, you give us this
paper on our mind, and I feel like I'm right back
where I started. I am unsure of myself and not
very happy with my paper.

One of the reasons journals have been widely used in the
last twenty-five years is that they promote natural inquiry
through expressive language. Students can learn more about
any subject if they take the role of spectator and express
their personal observations, concerns, questions, likes and
dislikes. Fulwiler wrote, "When people write about something
they learn it better" (Journal 9).

Journals and learning logs are the primary forms of

155
naturalistic metacognitive writing. Fulwiler argued that
these forms are basically the same but that different
teachers adapt "writing to learn" to suit their own teaching
preferences. Thus, while one teacher may collect journals
twice a term, skim them, and make a few comments, another
teacher may require logs twice a week and read them carefully
and write comments. Logs and journals have natural diver—
sity, taking various forms. Calkins wrote, "Sometimes logs
will be in looseleaf notebooks, sometimes in spirals,
sometimes they will consist of a collection of letters to
the teacher, or of files on a subject. The form eeee
matter, but there is no one, supreme form" (264).

Besides learning logs and journals, another method
encouraging metacognitive writing is to ask students directed
questions about their writing/thinking/learning process. By
contrast, this method can help point out more advantages and
limitations of learning logs. While logs as I used them
were relatively undirected and open-ended, directed process
questions can help students focus on specific aspects of
composing. Many teachers like Calkins, Faigley et al.,
Murray, Odell, and Elbow have recommended that students
answer process questions such as "How did you go about
writing this? What problems did you run into while you were
writing this piece? How did you go about finding a topic?
How is your process of writing changing? What will you do

next? What are your options?" (Calkins 150).

156

In their book Assessing Writers' Knowleege and Processes

 

of Composing, Faigley et al. examined their research and

 

teaching instruments based on directed process questions to
help students become more aware of their composing: the
Process Log and Self-Evaluation Questionnaire. The Process
Log involves directed questions for students to answer

during three stages of composing:

When You Get The Writing Assignment:

1. Do you know much about the topic you are about
to write on? What do you know? Have you written
a paper like this before?

2. How are you going to get your ideas for this
paper? Are you going to start writing and let the
ideas develop? Will you think about it for a
while? Will you make notes or an outline?

3. Are you thinking of a reader or readers for
your paper other than your teacher? Who? Why
did you choose this reader or these readers?

When You Have Started Writing: (Suggestion: Answer
questions 4 through 6 after you write one of your
preliminary drafts but before you write your final
draft.)

4. Have your ideas about the topic changed since
you started writing the paper? How?

5. Have your assumptions about what your readers
know or believe to be true about the subject
affected how you are writing the paper? How?

6. Have you made changes in your paper during or
after writing a draft? What are the three most
important changes you have made? Why did you make
these changes?

After You Have Finished Writing:
7. Did you talk about the paper with anyone

before or during the writing of the paper? Who?
What did you talk about?

157

8. In the process of writing this paper, did you

do anything that was different from what you have

done when writing papers in the past? What was

it? (174)
Faigley et al. pointed out that these questions reflect a
student's ability to metacognize: to be aware of composing.
The questions assess a writer's knowledge of important
elements of writing: subject matter, strategies of invention,
audience, preconceptions, planning, revision, talking to aid
reflection, and difference. That these process questions
ask students consciously to see differences and changes is
useful. In learning logs I had hoped that students would
naturally write about differences and changes, but I did not
direct students to do this. Process questions can help
students deliberately direct their attention to these matters
and perhaps influence students to do this in future writing
as well. Faigley et al. discussed using the Process Log two
or three times during a term to measure student growth in
awareness of writing, and they argued that most later Process
Logs indicated more awareness of important elements of
writing than earlier Logs did. I find it noteworthy that
questions 4, 5, 6 ask students to reflect midstream between
beginning and ending their writing. With the log method, I

did not regularly ask students to write mid—logs.7

 

7 Bruner has described what is known as the Zeigarnik
Effect: "tasks that are interrupted are much more likely to
be returned to and completed, and much more likely to be
remembered, than comparable tasks that one has completed
without interruption" (Toward 119). This, along with

158
While my purpose for using post-logs was for students

to evaluate their essay writing, I did not ask students to
make lists for specific purposes nor did I ask directed
questions. However, Faigley et al. did. They developed the
Self-Evaluation Questionnaire to help students reflect on
and evaluate each of their papers in a systematic way by
doing the following:

1. List the most successful things you did in

writing this paper. List the things that a reader

will think are successful.

2. List the things you were unable to do in this
paper that would have made it more successful.

3. In the process of writing this paper, what
aspects were easier than when you have written
previous papers?

4. In the process of writing this paper, what
aspects were more difficult than when you have

 

research on pause behavior showing that effective writers
pause more often to reflect than do poorer writers, would
seem to support Faigley et al.'s method of having students
write "mid" process questions (their Process Log questions
4-6). In my own teaching I experimented with having students
write mid—logs on occasion. I found, however, that because
students composed at different times and in different ways,
requiring mid-logs to be handed in on a certain day was
impractical. This motivated some students to fabricate
responses, to act as if they had written a rough draft when
they had not. Also, I felt that requiring students to
write mid-logs for each paper would burden them too much
and make them resent writing post-logs or all logs in
general. Bruner cautioned against pushing metacognition
too much: "ll_is this task—-getting children to look at and
ponder the things they can notice in their language, long
enough to understand them--that is most difficult, and it
should not be pushed to the point of tedium" (Toward 77).
Sometimes I gave students the option to write a mid-log
instead of a post—log. But generally I only recommended
that students write mid-logs to explore problems they were
having. Few students wrote them, however.

159

written previous papers? (176)

These questions ask students to see their own point of view
and the reader's and to consider problems and changes. The
purpose of these questions is to help make students more
aware of important stages and skills of their own writing
process. In designing this instrument Faigley et al. assumed
"that writers become more specific and accurate in their
reporting as they become more perceptive in evaluation"
(176). Yet Faigley et al. pointed out that this question-
naire will not indicate a steady growth of awareness. I
found this to be true with logs as well. Reflection is
relative; students reflected better with some essays more
than others depending on if they liked the assignment and
how busy they were.

Although directed process questions differ from logs,
both methods are similar in respects. Faigley et al.
observed that teachers need to stress to students that
there are no right answers to the process questions; I
tried to stress this with my students as well--I did not
want them to write what they thought I wanted to hear.
Faigley et al. found, as I found, that students often do
"not give lengthy, articulate answers the first time they
use the instruments" (201). Many students need to grow
into the habit of reflecting in logs. Faigley et al. also
acknowledged the fabrication factor in metacognitive re-

sponses:

160

there is always the possibility that answers will
merely be fabricated. But we have found that if
students regularly use the Self-Evaluation Ques—
tionnaire, are not "punished" for answering
honestly, and are given encouraging responses

from their teachers, most are motivated to respond
and truthfully report their perceptions of their
papers. (187-188)

I also tried to be encouraging in logs and not to punish
students for being honest.

Although Hayes and Flower have criticized directed
reports, arguing that most writers will invent or distort

information when asked to answer specific questions (Uncover—

 

leg 17), I find Faigley et al.'s process instruments useful.
Directing students to answer specific questions would help
many students focus on important composing elements. With
the log method as I have used it, students may have too much
undirected space to explore their composing. Directed
questions would help prevent students from feeling lost and
not knowing what to write about. Yet a major disadvantage
of the process instruments is that they do not encourage
students to identify and explore their own questions and
concerns. Also, the directed questions might not allow
students to engage in as much open, personal dialogue with
teachers as often happens in learning logs. Perhaps a
synthesis of Faigley et al.'s process instruments and the
log method would work. Rather than having students do one
type of metacognitive writing, teachers could alternate

types or find ways to combine them.

161

Conclusions

 

Whether in the form of learning logs and journals or
directed process questions, metacognitive writing has a
number of positive values. Because both approaches are
systematic-~students can do them regularly throughout a
term-~they can help students develop metacognitive habits of
thought characteristic of effective writers. Logs and
directed process questions can enable students to become
more aware of composing because such writing involves
personal construction of mental representations. Using
their own language, students can actively think on paper
about rhetorical concerns such as invention, purpose,
audience, evidence, organization, and style. Students can
think ahead about what they might do and think back about
what they did do. If students try to formulate explicitly
their thinking about composing, this may help them interna-
lize their awareness and consciously use it with more
control in the future. But these are hopeful hypotheses.
Pedagogy enabling students to engage in useful metacognition
is exploratory--there is no sure formula for writing about
writing, thinking about thinking, or learning about learning.

As Moffett said, "The development of writing is
unbelievably relative" (Universe 54). This relativity makes
composing difficult to simplify, but much successful pedagogy
has been simple-~such as the use of talk. Teachers have used

dialogue in the classroom and in conference to stimulate

162
social interaction and individual thought. In 1967 Zoellner
described his preference for "talk->write" pedagogy in which
students naturally talk to each other and to teachers about
ideas before they write about ideas. His method was "de-
signed to loosen up the student's verbal behavior" (300).
Metacognitive writing such as learning logs and directed
process questions can help students loosen up deeply in-
grained cognitive habits.

Zoellner rebelled against formalistic pedagogy that
treated students like "S. R. Rodents" (284) in "Rodential
Composition" (293). He valued natural and simple pedagogy:

I entertain the conviction that an elaborate
pedagogy is not justified by elaborate theoretical
underpinnings. The only good pedagogy, it seems
to me, is one so simple that it can be applied
with great effectiveness by the teacher who knows
little or nothing about the theoretical structure
from which it springs. (302)
Learning logs and journals exemplify such simple pedagogy.
Neither students nor teachers need to know much about the
psychology or philosophy of thinking to benefit from using
them. Teachers do not need to explain in great depth to
students how to write logs or journals--most students natu-
rally find their own ways to engage in metacognitive writing.

Metacognitive writing appears to help awareness of
writing/thinking/learning grow. Vygotsky and Moffett sug-
gested that cognitive growth is similar to growth in nature.

Vygotsky argued that writing should "be taught naturally"

and should be "'cultivated' rather than 'imposed'" (Mind

163
118). He criticized writing instruction "conceived in
narrowly practical terms" (105) in which teachers tell
students what and how to write. Moffett has also stressed
the natural cultivation of thought and language. He argued
that writing should "be taught naturalistically, by writing,
and that the only texts be the student productions
themselves" (Universe 210).

Becoming aware of writing/thinking/learning is
necessarily a personal act. Students can become more aware
if they write, think about their writing, and learn from
their writing. Listening to teachers lecture and construct
ideas for students does not enable students to construct
those ideas for themselves. Moffett pointed out that "the
subject is in the learner" (Universe 59). Dewey stressed
active construction and argued that successful teaching
methods "give the pupils something to do, not something to
learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand
thinking, or the intentional noting of connections; learning

naturally results" (Democracy 181).

 

To enable students to become more aware, teachers need
to help students develop positive attitudes toward writing/
thinking/learning. The benefits of dialogue and discovery
learning in metacognitive writing can help students develop
positive attitudes. Bruner believed that writing is so
important for learning that teachers need to make writing

"more lovable" to students (Toward 112). Dewey argued that

164
educators need to help students develop "a delight in
thinking for the sake of thinking" (Hey 226). He wrote,
"The most important attitude that can be formed is that of

desire to go on learning" (Experience 49).

 

Implications for Further Research

 

How can basic writers use metacognitive writing more
successfully? Would directed process questions help basic
writers reflect more than learning logs? Are logs more
suitable for advanced writers? If basic writers take a two-
term sequence of writing, should they use directed process
questions their first term and logs their second term?

How important is the emphasis on types of logs--on pre,
mid, and post? More research could be done on mid-logs.
What benefits do mid-logs have that pre and post-logs do
not? What if teachers had students write only mid-logs for
their essays? Should teachers give students the option to
write one of three logs for each paper: pre, mid, or post?
If students wanted to write more than one log, they could.
Would this system work better than requiring students to
write a pre and post-log for each paper?

How well would learning logs work in creative writing
courses? Would writing pre-logs help students generate
topics for poems and stories? Would writing mid-logs help
students revise? Would writing post-logs help students

evaluate their writing? In what ways might learning logs

165
interfere with the "creative" process?

Researchers can investigate the question of formulation
of mental representations and awareness: How explicit should
formulation be? How might researchers investigate the tacit
dimension of composing? Should researchers even try to do
this? If introspection can not be completely trusted, and
if protocol analysis is too restrictive and artificial,
researchers can aim to find some other method to help
students develop the habit of reflection. How might natural—
istic and formalistic methods of metacognition work together?
Using computers might be one way to bridge both methods.

But how? What might be the relationship between computers
and metacognition? Would computers systematize composing
too much?

To what extent do theories of composing--such as the
process of inquiry, the concept of difference and similarity
——help students as writers/thinkers/learners? What have
cognitive psychologists found concerning the age levels at
which people can consciously use dialectical thinking?
Should there be a movement of dialectical thinking across
the curriculum? What ideas concerning writing/thinking/
learning are best learned by students themselves but not
taught to them? How directive should teachers be in helping

students think about their own thinking?

CHAPTER V
A TAXONOMY OF AWARENESS 0F WRITING/THINKING/LEARNING

FOR COLLEGE ENGLISH TEACHERS

In this dissertation I have examined recent research in
composition and metacognition, theoretical perspectives of
modern psychologists, philosophers, and composition special-
ists regarding awareness of writing/thinking/learning
processes, and pedagogical implications of metacognitive
writing. In this final chapter I will try to synthesize
what I have done so far by presenting a taxonomy of awareness
of writing/thinking/learning for writing teachers. My goal
is to help teachers help their students to become more
aware of awareness-—of paying attention to the activity of
the mind and caring for its welfare-—through using metacog-
nitive writing.

Awareness is a difficult, ambiguous, ultimately myster-
ious phenomenon to understand clearly, yet it is fairly
easy to facilitate with the pedagogy of learning logs or
directed process questions. Awareness cannot be understood
objectively; it has no formula; no one knows exactly what
it is, how or why it works, or how to help develop it. But
awareness can be felt. We feel it most often when we look

166

167

back or look ahead and try to figure things out. Awareness
in the present is difficult to feel. As Mandel suggested
(1980), awareness is like breathing-~if we notice it while
we breathe, our natural breathing or thinking is disrupted.
But we can sense ourselves thinking—-as Roethke wrote, "I
think by feeling. What is there to know?" ("The Waking").
Awareness is felt and known tacitly, yet people can learn
to feel it more explicitly by trying to formulate it.
Through writing, students can learn to develop more awareness
and control of their own thinking and learning processes.

As writing development "is unbelievably relative"
(Moffett, Universe 54), so is awareness, thinking, and
learning. They are all relative--based on various relation-

ships within and between each other. Webster's New World

 

Dictionary defines "relative" as "meaningful only in rela-

 

tionship; not absolute." In this dissertation I have
argued that awareness is meaningful within the context of
writing/thinking/learning.

Researchers do not know if the attempt to formulate
awareness of writing/thinking/learning will have a lasting
effect on students. Although the freshman writing course
may be an ideal framework in which to help students care
about these processes, if students do not use expressive
writing to help themselves think and learn in their other
courses, and if teachers across the curriculum do not

require some metacognitive writing, then the awareness and

168
control that students developed as freshmen will likely
fade.

What levels of generality is it appropriate for students
to be aware within the context of a freshmen writing course?
How might awareness of writing/thinking/learning be analyzed
and classified? Continua include simple to elaborate, and
naturalistic to formalistic. I favor Zoellner's preference
for simple, naturalistic pedagogy and theory.

A taxonomy of awareness is a way to simplify the
swirling dynamics of the mind paying attention to itself.

It is a map, a reduction that allows us to formulate an
understanding. Yet I realize I am selecting one map of
awareness over other possibly more accurate maps.

The following table is an outline of the taxonomy. The
seven categories are hierarchical, moving from ideas based
on concreteness to ideas based on higher levels of abstrac-

tion.

169
Table 2

Taxonomy of Awareness of Writing/Thinking/Learning

1.0 Awareness of Interaction of Concrete and Abstract
1.1 Attention to Sensory Details

1.2 Recognition of Distinctive Details

1 3 Concrete Details and Abstractions in Discourse

2.0 Awareness of the Process of Inquiry

2.1 Preparation

2.2 Incubation

2.3 Illumination

2.4 Verification

2.5 Recursiveness

2.6 Necessity of Error
2.7 Deliberate Inquiry

3.0 Awareness of Common Thinking Problems

3.1 Egocentricity
3.2 Preconceptions

4.0 Awareness of Ambiguity

4.1 Positive
4.2 Negative

5.0 Awareness of Different Functions and Forms
of Language

5.1 Tacit and Explicit Awareness
5.2 Not Being Aware and Being Aware

6.0 Awareness of Dialectical Thinking

Contrast

Change

Difference and Similarity
Contrary Thinking
Either/Or Thinking

@GO‘O\O\
U1§UJNH

7.0 Awareness of Metaphorical Thinking

1 Hidden Similarities
2 Practicality and Imagination
3 Mind Metaphors

7.
7
7

170

1.0 AWARENESS 0F INTERACTION 0F CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT

The tradition of college writing teachers having
freshmen write description and narration is firmly rooted
in the belief that if students can learn to see concrete
experience better, then they will be able to perceive
abstract experience better as well. This tradition parallels
Piaget's ideas of intellectual development: people construct
mental structures from concrete experience before they build

structures from abstract experience.

1.1 Attention to Sensory Details

 

Students should pay attention to their senses--sight,
sound, smell, touch, taste--and how their senses help them
think. If students are to care about writing/thinking/learn-
ing, they need to care about concrete details and how
details help generate and clarify ideas. This is a lesson
that students need to be reminded of periodically through
their school years and beyond. This lesson should spiral
in and out of students' lives, and the freshmen writing

course is a suitable place to emphasize its importance.

1.2 Recognition of Distinctive Details

 

Students should be aware of small details that are

distinctive. In Sense and Sensitivity Creber stressed the

 

importance of helping students "discover just how much

there is to say about familiar objects and experiences"

171
(25). He recommended that students write on "severely
limited topics" such as raindrops on a window pane, water
in a gutter, or snow on a rooftop to help students pay more
attention to the concrete world. Creber argued that good
writing is "a real exploration and rediscovery of familiar
experience" (35). Students need to rediscover the importance
of concreteness and specificity many times. This awareness
needs to precede higher levels of awareness. Moffett
argued,
Perceptual abstraction is the first stage of
symbolizing conscious experience and a necessary
condition for thinking and writing. Many so-
called writing faults, such as lack of detail,
lack of example, indiscrimination, and inaccuracy
are traceable to poor observation. (Universe
103—4)

Pedagogically, one way to help students construct more
awareness of the value of perceiving distinctive concrete
details is to let students experience them in class. This
is why teachers can bring in curious objects like sunflower
heads for students to see and touch. I enjoy bringing in
Petoskey stones-~dull gray until dipped in water, they
transform into beautiful hexagonal patterns. These stones
might symbolize many thoughts that at first seem dry and
undistinguished, but once we water them or pay attention to
them--patterns arise. I also like to give each student a
Kraft caramel and together the class studies it by paying

attention to its concrete details: its soft hardness, its

slight indentations, its white letters; at the same time

172
students can unwrap their cube and listen to how loud the
cellophane is; they can feel the caramel's tackiness;
together students can pay attention to it liquefying in
their mouths. Teachers can have students freewrite about
memorable sensory experiences to show students that paying
attention to senses helps them think. Teachers need to be
aware of the option to use sensory awareness exercises in
class. Although such exercises may seem childish, they are
instructive: they help students construct representations
of the idea that using concrete details in writing will

help them show and clarify what they mean.

1.3 Concrete Details and Abstractions in Discourse

 

College freshmen should be aware of the interplay
between concrete and abstract in discourse. Although many
students are naturally concrete and specific without knowing
what the ideas "concrete," "specific," and "abstract" mean,
I have observed that these students are more ready to
generalize and learn the idea that concreteness is important
than poorer writers who do not typically use concrete
evidence to communicate ideas—~they have more difficulty
learning the concept.

Students should not only practice communication but
should also be able to formulate it--to talk or write about
how well or poorly they communicate. Langan in English

Skills offered a clear and simple explanation of

173
communication: "1. Make a point. 2. Support that point
with specific evidence. 3. Organize and connect the specific
evidence. 4. Write clear, error-free sentences" (2). I
would add a fifth step: Consider purpose and audience.
College freshmen should be aware of these steps, and their
awareness should grow out of practicing the process of
communicating. The idea that generalizations need to be
qualified and supported with specific evidence is one of
the most important ideas that students should know. Students
should be able to practice communication with awareness and
control, and they should be able to analyze communication--
their own and others'-~by using these five steps as criteria.
Moffett has discussed the importance of the interaction

of concrete and abstract when he referred to downward and
upward thinking. Downward thinking involves using concrete,
specific, precise information; it is a process of differen-
tiation and elaboration. Upward thinking involves con-
structing or forming ideas and generalizations; it is a
process of integration. These two types of thinking interact
dialectically. According to Moffett, upward and downward
thinking take place along a ladder of abstraction:

The student must play up and down the abstraction

ladder according to the situation, jumping down for

limited cases of the generalization, jumping

farther down for illustrations, and then jumping

back up occasionally for transitions or other

restatements of the main idea. (5! 126)

Moffett has argued that the common advice "Be specific" is

not helpful without coupling it with "Be general" as well.

174

Specificity nor generality alone does not create effective
writing or thinking; but together they do. This ability to
think abstractly and concretely develops mental growth,
Moffett has maintained. Whitehead also stressed the impor-
tance of this dialectic. He argued that a disciplined mind
"should be both more abstract and more concrete" (glee 19).

Vygotsky argued that the "fusion of the general and the
particular . . . is the distinctive characteristic of all
complex thinking" (lll 65). Concepts are developed between
two directions: "from the particular to the general, and from
the general to the particular" (80). As children have
difficulty moving upwards towards abstractions, young
adults have difficulty moving downward towards concreteness.
Students need to learn how to develop their thoughts in
peel directions, and they should be able to evaluate their

performance.

2.0 AWARENESS OF THE PROCESS OF INQUIRY

 

Although all students naturally practice inquiry at some
level, they can practice it more deliberately--with more
awareness of its stages. I favor that students consciously
use the process of inquiry as described by Young, Becker,

and Pike in their book Rhetoric: Discovery and Change.

 

175

2.1 Preparation

 

Students should be able to identify and explore
problems. They should be aware that a problem-~dissonance,
uneasiness, puzzlement, incongruity, difference--usually
causes thinking to happen. They should know that problems
can be classified in many different ways: personal, social,
political, academic, mechanical, religious, moral, scienti-
fic, artistic, and so on. They should know how to explore
a problem consciously--by asking various questions and by
viewing it from different perspectives. They should know
that they can use language to help them explore problems--

to think on paper.

2.2 Incubation

 

Students should be aware of their subconscious mind
and know that it works on problems. As premature babies
and chickens are kept in incubators, premature thoughts can
develop in the subconscious mind. A common example of
incubation is the experience of not recalling a person's
name and then later having it come to mind after our atten-
tion has moved to something else. Incubation helps ideas
develop and mature in the mind. It allows the subconscious
mind to work in alternation with the conscious mind.
Students should be aware that writing a paper the night
before it is due does not give them much time for their

subconscious and conscious mind to operate and play off

176

each other.

2.3 Illumination

 

Students should be aware of illumination--the feeling
of eureka, of a possible solution or hypothesis. Students
should know that they can never predict when illumination
will occur, that insignificant actions like drying one's
hair can trigger a possible solution to a problem. Students
should know that illumination comes in many sizes. A big
eureka may be discovering an idea for an essay or a way to
organize twenty-five chaotic pages. A mid-sized eureka may
be realizing that a conclusion would make a fine introduc-
tion. A small eureka may be realizing that a revised
sentence finally sounds right or that the word "separate"
has "a rat" in it. Students should be aware of illumination
because this stage involves discovery and surprise. The more
eurekas students experience in a freshman writing course, the

more they may learn to enjoy writing/thinking/learning.

2.4 Verification

 

Students should be aware that they need to test hypo-
theses. Does the topic "pride in humility" work? Is it
meaningful? Have I supported it with enough concrete
evidence? Is my paper organized? Are my sentences clear
and effective? Do I communicate to a specific audience and

for specific purposes? All of these basic questions are

177
problems that writers need to explore and verify when they
write. Often the attempt to verify a solution reveals

further problems, and the process of inquiry begins again.

2.5 Recursiveness

 

Inquiry is relative, complex, fluid, and personal.
It is not linear and sequential but recursive. The process
moves in waves, swings, and loops. Like an artist making
several sketches of a picture, writers often need to revise
a paper several times in order to discover and express
meaning. Stages of inquiry merge and may not be noticed.
The process may happen instantly with familiar problems.
Other times, the conscious and subconscious exploration may

take days, weeks, or years.

2.6 Necessity of Error

Errors are themselves problems that usually motivate
more thinking. Students should learn to be willing to make
mistakes. Young, Becker, and Pike wrote, "Inquiry normally
proceeds by a succession of increasingly intelligent mis-
takes; we learn from them and move ever closer to a solution"
(76). Moffett emphasized the importance of trial and error
in composing: "plunging into the act, then heeding the
results" (Universe 198). He pointed out that part of the
teacher's job is to help students investigate their own

trials and errors instead of pre-teaching error avoidance

178
to students. Students should "capitalize" on errors and
learn from them (199).

Students should be aware that trials and problems are
motivators of thought and awareness. The way a person
copes with and manages trials indicates the way that person's
mind works, and students should know how their mind works.
Moffett argued, "The learner has to know his own mind, what
it natively produces, so that he can see what he personally
needs to correct for" (Universe 202). Students need to
know "what their blind spots are" (202). Dewey argued that
errors aid in thinking: "Nothing shows the trained thinker
better than the use he makes of his errors and mistakes"
(lee 114). Errors motivate reflection for effective think-

ers.

2.7 Deliberate Inquiry

 

Students should be aware that they can consciously use
the process of inquiry whenever they write. If they are
required to write a research paper for European history or
for biochemistry, they can deliberately think about what
puzzles them that they want to investigate, what problems
need to be addressed that have not yet been covered in
class. To find topics for any discourse situation, students
can consciously seek problems, dissonances, differences,
and contradictions to explore. Bruner has valued problem—

solving and inquiry as primary ways to help students think

179
and learn. He wrote that "the process of trying to find

out something" is at the heart of thinking and learning (92

Knowing 93).

3.0 AWARENESS 0F COMMON THINKING PROBLEMS

 

Students should be aware of common thinking problems

that hinder effective writing/thinking/learning.

3.1 Egpcentricity

 

Students should be aware of their own egocentricity.
Piaget and Moffett analyzed the problems that egocentricity
causes. If students see only their own point of view, they
will not think logically—-they will not be able to use
formal operations of thought: to hypothesize, to consider
possible interpretations, to metacognize. Moffett and
Wagner clearly defined egocentricity as "thinking that
something couldn't be any other way" and as "unawareness of
one's limited point of view" (ll 531). They argued that
egocentricity causes poor thinking and poor communication.
Egocentric writers have difficulty imagining themselves as
readers because they assume that what they write is clear.

To help students "decenter," teachers can frequently
have students share their writing in workshops. Social
interaction helps students to see how their peers view
their work. "Constant comparison" with other viewpoints

reduces egocentricity, Moffett has stressed (ll 68).

180
Frequent dialogue with teachers and peers can help reduce
student egocentricity because other people can point out

when students are not considering various options.

3.2 Preconceptions

 

Students should be aware that they often see what they
want to see; they often think what they want to think
instead of considering other views. It is natural to have
preconceptions, but students need to guard against them
from governing their thought. Nisbett and Ross wrote that
"our preconceptions structure and potentially distort what
we see, understand, and remember" (281). Moffett argued,
"Notoriously, we see and interpret according to our needs
and desires" (Universe 27). If students in a freshman
writing course believe that imagination does not belong in
their course, they will resist using figurative language
and analogies. Teachers need to help students shed their
preconceptions in order to think in new ways. But teachers
cannot shed preconceptions for students: students must
construct for themselves. One of Moffett and Wagner's
stated growth sequences involves students being aware of

their preconceptions: students should develop "increasing

 

awareness that one creates what he knows and that this

knowledge is partial" (529).

 

181

4.0 AWARENESS OF AMBIGUITY

Students should be aware of intentional or unintentional
ambiguity in writing/thinking/learning. Ambiguity is itself

ambiguous: depending on its purpose, it can be positive or

negative.

4.1 Positive

 

Ambiguity is positive when it helps students see
different perspectives and answers—-not just one. Ambiguity
implies multiple perspectives, many holes through the fence
through which to see the proverbial elephant or anything.

Berthoff argued that ambiguity is necessary for writing/
thinking/learning. Students should not try to avoid it:

Learning to write means learning to tolerate
ambiguity, to learn that the making of meaning is
a dialectical process determined by perspective
and context. Meanings change as we think about
them; statements and events, significances and
interpretations can mean different things to
different people at different times. Meanings
are not pre-baked or set for all time; they are
created, found, formed, and reformed. ("Learning"
77)
Ambiguity is especially useful during beginning stages of
composing when writers want to generate many ideas. From
ambiguity writers can also weigh what they think are the best
perspectives. Thus, ambiguity can motivate both creative
and critical thinking. The teacher's job is to help students

welcome ambiguity.

Berthoff pointed out I. A. Richards' definition of

182
ambiguity as "the hinges of thought" (ll 71). She argued
that teachers can help oil these hinges by asking thought-
provoking questions involving perspective and context such
as "How does it change your meaning if you put it this
way?" "If the author is saying X, how does that go with
the Y we heard him saying in the preceding chapter-~or
stanza?" "What do you make of passage A in the light of
passage B?" When students formulate alternative perspec-
tives, they exercise their hinges of thought.

Moffett also stressed the importance of ambiguity,
arguing that it relates to egocentricity. The more students
are willing to tolerate ambiguity, the less egocentric they
will be. Becoming aware of ambiguity is a sign of intellec—
tual maturity. But, Moffett and Wagner warned, "literal-
minded people fear ambiguity. They do not want to believe
that things may not be what they seem" (537). Students
should be aware that ambiguity makes thought and language

rich with possible meanings.

4.2 Negative

 

Ambiguity is negative when unintended--when writers
want to be clear and precise. A writer does not want to
give ambiguous directions on how to shut down a nuclear
power plant.

If writers intend for their meaning to be ambiguous,

as with a poetic image, fine--the ambiguity is positive.

183
But if writers do not desire ambiguity, the ambiguity is
negative and disrupts communication. Another of Moffett
and Wagner's growth sequence goals is for students to be
aware of when they are using ambiguity deliberately and
when they are not. Students should develop an "increasing
ability to verbalize literally, when unintended and pointless
amblguity will otherwise result, and to verbalize figpra-

tively when multiple meaningyis desirable" (537). Students

 

should also be aware of themselves as receivers of messages
and judge whether other people are being ambiguous inten-

tionally or not.

5.0 AWARENESS OF DIFFERENT FUNCTIONS AND FORMS OF LANGUAGE

 

Students should be aware of different functions and
forms of language. They should know that they have different
options open to them when they write. They can write logs
or journals for themselves to help figure something out
(expressive). They can write essays in school for teachers
or letters to the editor of their hometown paper, or any
number of kinds of writing—-memos, critical reviews, propo-
sals, summaries-—for any number of different audiences
other than themselves (transactional). They can write for
themselves and for others, creating verbal constructs such
as poems, stories, and plays that stir wonder, cause
reflection, insight and delight (poetic). They can write in

various combinations of these functions: such as learning

184
logs for courses which involve expressive and transactional
functions. Bruner wrote, "If there is not a developed
awareness of the different functions that language serves,
the resulting affliction will be not only lopsided speaking

and writing, but a lopsided mind" (Toward 108-109).

5.1 Tacit and Explicit Awareness

 

Whether students should formulate awareness of different
functions and forms of language implicitly or explicitly is
one of the major concerns I have explored in this disser-
tation. I would argue, however, that this is not an
either/or dilemma. Students should formulate their awareness
in peel ways. After frequently practicing different func-
tions and forms of language, students should have a tacit
awareness of how they adapt language. Yet the effort to
formulate this awareness explicitly is worthwhile because
it helps students generalize what they have learned. My
hypothesis is that implicit awareness strengthens explicit
awareness, and explicit awareness strengthens implicit
awareness. They nurture each other dialectically.

Students should be aware that awareness cannot be
clearly understood, that no matter how explicit and objec-
tive we try to be in explaining how we thought or might
think we can never separate the tacit dimension (Polanyi)

from such a process.

185

5.2 Not BeinglAware and Being Aware

 

Students should be aware that they are often better
off not being aware of their thinking during certain stages
of composing—-as in first generating ideas and support.

The main purpose of freewriting and clustering methods is
for students to create thoughts freely without self-evalua—
tion and without paying attention to usage. However,
students should be aware of their thinking during revision
and editing when they need to pay critical attention to
their discourse. Thus, students should know when awareness
helps composing and when it hinders composing. Elbow has

discussed this paradox eloquently.

6.0 AWARENESS 0F DIALECTICAL THINKING

 

Students should be aware that they can write/think/learn
more effectively if they consciously look for differences and
similarities. The philosopher Alan Watts expressed the
importance of this idea when he wrote, "All things are
known by their differences from and likenesses to each
other" (The Book 130).

To look deliberately for differences and similarities
is to engage in metacognition because this desire involves
consciously thinking about certain kinds of thoughts. Many
psychologists and philosophers in Chapter II stressed the

importance of difference as a motivator of thought. Piaget

186
argued that difference causes disadaptation or disequilibri-
um. Donaldson argued that students should consciously seek
incongruity. Vygotsky discussed Claparede's law of aware-
ness: that we naturally pay attention to differences or
difficulties. Students should frequently pay attention to
what they do naturally--such as seeing contrasts and connec-

tions.

6.1 Contrast

 

Contrast produces awareness-~students should be aware
of this cognitive pattern. We may be driving and suddenly
notice sea gulls on a freshly plowed field; the white of
the birds and the rich brown of the earth contrast and

catch our eye. Psychology Today (June, 1968) printed a

 

photograph of a young black boy sitting in a totally white
room. The scene makes readers wonder about racism and
inequality. Contrast naturally generates thought and
awareness, helping writers become aware of thought, of their
minds taking notice of something. Bruner wrote, "Contrast
is the vehicle by which the obvious that is too obvious to
be appreciated can be made noticeable again" (Toward 64).

He argued that contrast is "the chief aid" to recognition
and provides people with "the opportunity to observe the
oppositional features that are so much a characteristic of

human language" (77).

187

6.2 Change

 

Change is a form of contrast. They are both based on

difference. Webster's New World Dictionary defines "change"

 

as "to cause to become different, to undergo a variation."
Scientists are trained to notice subtle and overt changes
in their experiments. Artists are trained to notice subtle
and overt variations in color, design, and point of view.
Students should be aware of change: they should consciously
look for changes happening in what they observe, feel, think,
read, write, and say. This ability to perceive change is
natural, but for most people it is an unconscious habit.
Teachers should try to help students see some of their
unconscious habits in order to use them deliberately and to

have more control over them.

6.3 Difference and Similarity

 

Difference enables similarity, and similarity enables
difference: seeing similarity is as important as seeing
difference. Bruner and others have related the ability to
connect with creative thinking and the right brain hemis-
phere. Connecting involves discovery learning. Bruner
argued that students should "pause and review in order to
recognize the connections within what they have learned--
the kind of internal discovery that is probably of highest
value" (Toward 96). Whitehead also discussed the

importance of establishing similarity: "Connectedness is of

188
the essence of all things of all types" (Meeee 13).

Moffett based much of his theory of writing/thinking/
learning on difference and similarity. He compared mental
growth to embryology: with thoughts like cells continuously
differentiating into parts and parts integrating into
wholes (Universe 29). He equated the ability to specify
with differentiation, the ability to generalize with simi-
larity. Both kinds of thinking, though different, combine
in myriad ways when people think effectively. The interac-
tion is dialectical, and the balance is dynamic, changing
with each new discourse situation. Moffett and Wagner
based their language arts program on the "concept of simi-
larity and difference" (3). They wrote, "Likeness and
unlikeness are in the eye of the beholder and hence at the
center of conceiving and verbalizing" (2).

Berthoff has stressed the concept of similarity and
difference. In much of her writing she has emphasized the
importance of dialectical thinking: the give-and-take
integration of oppositions. She has argued that writing/
thinking/learning depend on dialectics. She defined "dia-
lectic" as "the interdependence of all the operations
involved in composing" (ll! 63). And she pointed out that
"dialectic" and "dialogue" are cognates: both mean "born
together." Each involves a "process in which a 'twoness'
is made one" (48). The more a teacher can help students

become aware of dialectical thinking, the better writers/

189
thinkers/learners those students will become.

Although people perceive differences and similarities
naturally, most people do not purposely look for them.
Berthoff wrote, "You don't have to learn to do this: you're
born knowing how; it's the way your mind works. But as a
student of composition, you have to learn how to put those
natural facilities to work" (80). Thus, students should be
aware that seeking differences and similarities facilitates

writing/thinking/learning.

6.4 Contrary Thinking

 

Elbow could be called a prophet of dialectical thinking.

The title of his latest book Embracing Contraries conveys

 

this. His pedagogical advice is usually based on contrary

thinking:

Writing_without Teachers: "Meaning is not what you
start out with but what you end up with" (15);
"What is really eey is letting go of an old
perception" (46); "Learning to write seems to

mean learning contrasting but interdependent
skills-—double—binds: learning X and Y, but you
can't do X till you can do Y, but you can't do Y
till you can do X" (135); "Writing badly . . . is

a crucial part of learning to write well" (136).

Writing with Power: "It turns out, paradoxically,
that you increase your creativity by working on
critical thinking" (9-10); "Contrary views are
inherently intriguing" (203); "Make sure you
engage in two opposite kinds of writing: very
practical writing and very impractical writing"
(227) "Let's be reasonably magical" (359).

Embracing Contraries: "Almost always it is good
to use extremes and let moderation arrive eventu-
ally" (48); "Excellence must involve finding some

 

190

way to be both abundantly inventive yet toughmind-
edly critical" (60); "Students seldom learn well
unless they ive in or submit to teachers. Yet
they seldom Iearn well unless they resist or even
reject their teachers" (65); "There is violence

in learning. We cannot learn something without
eating it, yet we cannot really learn it either
without being chewed up" (148).

Elbow has stressed the idea of contrast and how it makes
people think. His advice for anyone wanting to write

better is usually hinged on paradoxical contrasts of some
kind. Elbow has recommended that writers welcome contradic-
tions as he does:

. . . encourage conflicts and contradictions in
your thinking. We are usually taught to avoid
them; and we cooperate in this teaching because

it is confusing or frustrating to hold two conflic-
ting ideas at the same time. It feels like a

dead end or a trap but really it is the most
fruitful situation to be in. Unless you can get
yourself into a contradiction, you may be stuck
with no power to have any thoughts than the ones
you are already thinking. (Without 50)

Students should be aware that they can think new
thoughts by seeking out contradictions and paradoxes, by
turning over ideas and seeing them from different perspec-
tives. In their pre-logs for the essay activity on contrast
(see Appendix page 215), students consciously explored the
kind of thinking Elbow has stressed.

My roommate and I get along great but we are
completely different. Our taste in music, our
style of dress, and our friends are some examples
of our differences. These differences, however,
make us a lot alike. We're alike in the sense

that we don't let our differences get in the way
of our relationship.

191

****

Consider a grain of sand. It appears to be one
of the simpler objects on the planet. After all,
it's only about one-half of a millimeter long and
it's worthless by itself. Now take a look at
that piece of sand under a scanning electron
microscope. The number of valleys and peaks on
its surface is mind-boggling. The potential of
that grain of sand is enormous. Without it, glass
production would be impossible. Besides, what
would we line our beaches with, astroturf? Great.
* * * *
Another contradiction which comes to my mind
involves socio-economic problems in the poor
third world countries. As much as these countries
want to improve their GNP and standard of living,
it proves to be very difficult. To increase
their GNP they must modernize and industrialize.
However, to do this they must change internally,
meaning their culture must change. Is it worth
the risk to become an industrialized nation if
the society loses its cultural identity? I think
this is a political paradox.

Elbow's main idea in his books is that contraries such
as creative and critical thinking naturally interact and
complement each other. Elbow has advised writers to affirm
both processes, not one or the other. Yet he has argued
that the mind works best if a writer pays attention to one
at a time more than the other: trying to be creative and
critical at the same time causes too much interference.
"It's a matter of learning to work on opposites one at a
time in a generous spirit of mutual reinforcement rather
than in a spirit of restrictive combat" (Embracing 63).

Students should practice and be aware of the power of
contrary thinking, of seeing opposites and considering
their interaction. Many psychologists, philosophers, and

composition theorists have emphasized this metacognitive

192
idea. Moffett pointed out that "seeing joy and sorrow as
aspects of the same thing is typical of the process of mind

enlargement" (e! 69).

6.5 Either/Or Thinking

 

Writers/thinkers/learners should be aware that contrary
thinking can lead to either/or thinking which is usually
reductive and simplistic. In the dynamics of discourse,
there are few absolutes, few blacks and whites. There are
many grays. Students should be aware that contrary situa-
tions or points of view can be "both/and" instead of
"either/or."

Dewey cautioned against either/or thinking. "Mankind
likes to think in terms of extreme opposites. It is given

to formulating its beliefs in terms of Either-Ora, between

 

which it recognizes no intermediate possibilities" (Experi-
eeee 1). Students should be able to recognize intermediate
possibilities. Whitehead commented that "the simple-minded
use of the notions 'right or wrong' is one of the chief
obstacles to the progress of understanding" (52233.15):
Some research has shown that college freshmen tend to
think dualistically, to see either/ors instead of multiple
perspectives. Perry investigated freshmen at Harvard and
found that they saw "the world in polar terms of we-right-
good vs. other-wrong-bad." The freshmen in his study felt

that "Right Answers for everything exist in the Absolute"

193
(9). From his research Perry developed a model of intellec-
tual and ethical growth in which students move from dualistic
thinking through stages in which they see multiple views
and finally reach a stage of "Committed Relativism" in
which they realize that certain opinions on any subject are
more credible than others. Hays (1987) has argued that
composition teachers should know about the Perry Scheme
because college freshmen writers should eventually progress
along the same growth sequence from dualism to multiplicity
to relativism. She wrote, "The relativistic thinker has
realized that the point of view writers adopt depends upon
the particular rhetorical context and the writer's purposes
in it, and chooses her strategies accordingly" ("Models"

15).

Pedagogical Implications for Dialectical Thinking1

 

What can teachers do to help students see more con-
traries interacting instead of opposing each other? What can
teachers do to help students see more contrasts and connec-
tions? Teachers need to let students practice and construct

these metacognitive skills for themselves. Lecturing on

 

1 The information in this section is not directly part
of the taxonomy for freshmen. However, since I have already
discussed pedagogical implications of awareness throughout
this taxonomy, I feel justified in including this section
here rather than placing it as an appendix. I believe this
discussion of pedagogy complements and clarifies the theory
of dialectical thinking discussed in 6.0 through 6.5 of the
taxonomy.

194

dialectical thinking will not likely help students think
dialectically. Teachers need to find ways to enable students
themselves to construct awareness of it.

Some teachers have developed pedagogy. Young, Becker,
and Pike discussed heuristic procedures that can help
writers consciously explore ideas by varying perspectives:
such as particle, wave, field analysis. Within each of
these perspectives, a writer can analyze contrast, variation,
and distribution. Odell modified this tagmemic theory by
having writers ask themselves questions which make them
consider contrast, classification, change, physical context,
and sequence. He focused on the importance of contrast and
change and suggested that teachers help students identify
"different kinds of contrasts or changes" ("Written Products"
64).

In his popular Telling Writing, Macrorie devoted a

 

chapter to oppositions. He explained their value:

Strong writers bring together oppositions of one
kind or another. Kitchen language and elevated
language, long and short sentences, fast and slow
rhythms. And what they choose to present from
life--whether it be object, act, or idea—-is
frequently the negative and the positive, one
thing and its opposite, two ideas that antagonize
each other. The result is tension. And the
surprise that comes from new combinations. (89)

Macrorie argued that oppositions help break people's "habit—
ual opinions and expectations" and that if students develop
a new habit to look for oppositions, they will find them—

selves "wiser" by not oversimplifying "people and processes

195
and ideas" (92). In his text Macrorie described what he
called "fabulous realities"--surprising statements implying
subtle contrast and connection or irony: i.e., "In the
middle of a heated argument with me, my wife goes to the
refrigerator, gets a bottle of ginger ale, fills two glasses,
gives me one, and continues the argument" (48). Macrorie
assigned students to observe closely and record fabulous
realities to help them construct the habit to look for
moments of tension in which "two things that do not belong
together touch in some way" (48).

I have tried to help freshmen develop greater awareness
of contrast by having students frequently discover the
principle throughout a semester. I have told students that
I was trying to teach them a thinking skill that may be
unteachable but that is worth trying to teach nevertheless.
In class I have read this excerpt from Bellow's novel
Herzog about a father talking with his young daughter:

"Papa?"

"Yes, June."

"You didn't tell me about the most-most."

For an instant he did not remember. "Ah,"
he said, "you mean that club in New York where
people are the most of everything."

"That's the story."

She sat between his knees on the chair. He
tried to make more room for her. "There's this
association that people belong to. They're the
most of every type. There's the hairiest bald
man, and the baldest hairy man."

"The fattest thin lady."

"And the thinnest fat woman. The tallest
dwarf and the smallest giant. They're all in it.

The weakest strong man, and the strongest weak
man. The stupidest wise man and the smartest

196
blockhead. Then they have things like crippled
acrobats, and ugly beauties."

"And what do they do, Papa?"

"On Saturday night they have a dinner-dance.
They have a contest."

"To tell each other apart."

"Yes, sweetheart. And if you can tell the
hairiest bald man from the baldest hairy man, you
get a prize."

Bless her, she enjoyed her father's nonsense

(295-296)

But is this passage complete nonsense? Some things that do
not make sense seem to make sense. The paradoxical thinking
expressed in the passage is the kind of thinking that Elbow,
Berthoff, Moffett, and Macrorie have emphasized. It is the
kind of thinking that helped Einstein and Watson make their
scientific discoveries. Einstein's hypothesis on relativity
was that a person falling from the roof of a house was both
in motion and at rest at the same time, and Watson discovered
that instead of the DNA molecule having a structure based
on pairs of like-with—like segments, it could consist of
identical but spatially opposed chains (Rothenberg).

I have given students ambiguous pictures such as the old

hag's face that contains the face of a pretty young woman.

I have used exercises from Adams' Conceptual Blockbusting

 

and von Oech's A Whack on the Side of the Head: How to

 

Unlock Your Mind for Innovation in which students experience
the problem of looking for "the right answer" (the lesson
being that there are usually many right answers) and exer-
cises in which students formulate awareness of soft (crea-

tive) and hard (critical) thinking. I have asked students

197
to stand up and do something "different" such as bending
down and looking between their legs to see each other from
a different perspective. Students need to practice and
experience the idea of contrast before they can formulate
generalizations of it.

A problem with trying to teach dialectical thinking is
what to call it. "Dialectical thinking" seems too abstract
and heavy. "Oppositions" seems too narrowly focused on
opposites rather than on the wider array of contrasts,
changes, differences, incongruities, contradictions, and
paradoxes that such thinking includes. After I have students
experience this idea in several ways, I ask them what we
should call it. I write the word "connecticut" on the
board, and many students recognize it contains opposites:
connect 1 cut. This has been a playful name I have used to
help students develop the habit of looking for connections
and contrasts. The word "connecticut" is instructive
because as an oxymoron it exemplifies the kind of thinking
it means. I see the word as symbolic of the way people
write/think/learn: the "i" in the center is what connects
and cuts. Each of us synthesizes and analyzes personally.
The word suggests an integration of right and left brain
thinking. It also suggests "art" and "science" for the
etymology of "art" is "to join, fit together" and the

etymology of "science" is to "to cut, separate" (Webster's

 

New World). In a liberal arts education, students should

 

198
take a combination of art and science courses in order to
develop this state of mind.2

Trying to teach dialectical thinking or "connecticut"
has been challenging and useful because it seems just
beyond the grasp of many students. The idea fully concerns
thinking and the mind; it straddles the tacit and explicit;
it can be pointed out concretely as light and dark, up and
down, in and out; and it can be implied as joy and sadness
or as differentiation and integration. The idea takes
advantage of students' "zone of proximal development" that
Vygotsky discussed.

Yet dialectical thinking is ambiguous. It is difficult
to describe clearly. Perhaps it is an idea best known by
feeling and intuition. It is an idea that students need to
interact with frequently for several weeks. Perhaps it is
an idea best learned but not taught. American poet Robert
Bly told me that the importance of seeing connections and
contrasts is a secret that teachers should not tell students;

students who care enough about thinking will eventually

 

figure it out for themselves. Perhaps we should not rob
students of this discovery. But our job as writing teachers
2

I have experimented with "connecticut" by offering
students extra-credit if they turn in a list of "connecti-
cuts" stemming from their observation or knowledge. A
basic writer wrote, "trying to do homework on a Saturday
afternoon when your family is watching a football [game]-—
is like shoveling I-75 with [a] hand shovel." Another
student discovered these wordplays: a song, "It Ain't Easy
Being Easy" by Dolly Parton; Hannah spelled backwards is
Hannah; Cheboygan--She boy again.

199
is to help as many students as possible discover and eee this
heuristic. By enabling students to learn this skill of
consciously looking for differences and similarities, we

can help students become more inquisitive.

7.0 AWARENESS OF METAPHORICAL THINKING

 

Students should be aware of practical logical reasoning
such as communicating clearly and unambiguously. However,
because our society and system of education value left
brain thinking more than right, English teachers should
help students try to achieve a greater balance by using and
valuing imagination. Students should be aware of the power
and delight of metaphorical thinking in helping generate
and express ideas and information.

Many of the psychologists, philOSOphers, and composition
theorists I have examined in this dissertation have argued
that metaphorical thinking is important and needs to be
emphasized along with critical thinking. Whitehead was
especially clear on this when he discussed the Rhythm of
Education as involving different stages of mental growth:
romance or imagination, precision or analysis, and genera-
lization. When students study a subject, that subject
should have a romantic appeal--it should be vivid and
novel, holding "within itself unexplored connexions with
possibilities half-disclosed by glimpses and half-concealed

by the wealth of material" (Aims 28). After students have

200

become involved with the romance of a subject, they should
experience the precision inherent in a subject: the
"systematic procedures" and "exactness of formulation"
(28-29). Students should analyze facts "bit by bit" (29).
The stage of generalization is, for Whitehead, the synthesis
stage of Hegel's dialectic: thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
It is a reconciliation of the first two different stages in
which students formulate the essential meaning they have
learned: "It is a return to romanticism with added advantage
of classified ideas and relevant technique" (30).

Students should be aware of the imagination inherent
in writing/thinking/learning--these intellectual processes
require imagination to function fully. Writing teachers
can help students construct such awareness by modelling it
themselves, by sharing their sense of discovery and enthusi—
asm, and by using imagination in class. But it is necessary
for students to practice writing metaphorically at least a
few times during a semester. Although most essays involve
the use of imagination in some way—-finding ideas and using
occasional figures of speech--students can benefit from

trying to use imagination deliberately.

7.1 Hidden Similarities

 

I have had some luck with helping students understand
the creatiVe process by using Koestler's definition of

creativity as discovering hidden similarities between

201
previously unrelated things (121). Although this defini-
tion simplifies the complex dynamics of creativity, it
gives students a handle with which to grasp the idea and
technique. I give students a "minor" writing assignment to
write at least a paragraph using an analogy (See Appendix
page 216). Many students have told me in logs that they
enjoyed writing creatively: i.e., "I am not very creative,
but I had a lot of fun writing this paper."

The idea of creativity applies to humor. Humor is a way
of thinking new thoughts based on discovering hidden simi-
larities that cause surprise. Humor is thinking in different
perspectives. Therefore, a discussion of humor is appropri-
ate in writing courses that emphasize thinking. Not all
jokes or cartoons clearly reflect Koestler's definition but
many do: i.e., "I took my girlfriend camping and she got
poison ivy of the brain. The only way she can scratch it
is to think of sandpaper"--Steven Wright. "I do not believe
in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of under-

wear"--Woody Allen.

7.2 Practicality and Imegination

 

For students to be aware of the value of metaphorical
thinking, they need to be persuaded that it also has practi—
cal value. Having them read essays like Sir James Jeans'
"Why the Sky Is Blue" helps them see that scientists use

imagination to help them communicate technical subjects.

202
Having students pay attention to their other professors to
see when they use figures of speech or analogies is
instructive too. DevelOping a habit of looking for hidden
similarities, which is a form of "connecticut," can help
students become more intellectually curious--this has
practical value. Bruner has argued many times that a
primary "ingredient" of learning "is a sense of excitement
about discovery--discovery of regularities of previously
unrecognized relations and similarities between ideas, with
a resulting sense of self-confidence in one's abilities"
(Process 20). English teachers need to help students
discover connections, gain confidence in their creative
ability, and feel the desire to continue seeking connec-
tions.

Bruner has also acknowledged the difficulty of helping
students to see the value of metaphorical thinking: "What
poses the eternal challenge to the teacher is the knowledge
that the metaphoric processes can, when put under the
constraints of conscious problem solving, serve the interests

of healthy functioning" (Toward 148).

7.3 Mind Metaphors

 

A way to help students try to solve a problem by using
metaphorical thinking is to have students write about how
they think they think. This activity works well at the end

of a writing course as a way for students to synthesize

203
their experience of writing/thinking/learning. Because the
mind is so abstract and mysterious, it is impossible to
describe with total knowledge. Thus, it is natural to
compare it with something more concrete and less complex.
Using analogy is a way to help represent the mind, and it
can be challenging and instructive. This assignment nudges
students enough that they lose balance, feel dissonance,
and want to discover some way to meet the demands of the
topic.3

When I introduce the mind essay, I ask students how they
would develop such a paper, what strategies they would use.
They freewrite and review what they have done through the
semester. Many students mention that they could compare
their mind to something else. We explore this idea and I
take it to an extreme: Can anything represent the mind?

It seems so. William Carlos Williams suggested this
idea in Paterson. He created mind metaphors, implying that
nature concretely reflects the abstract world of the mind.
Williams used the Falls of the Passaic River in Paterson,

New Jersey as his central image of the mind rushing with

torrents of thoughts. He wrote that the roar of the Falls

is a language that can "renew" a person with its "addition

 

3 I adapted the idea for the mind essay from a
similar assignment suggested by D. Gordon Rohman and Albert
0. Wlecke, Pre-Writing: The Construction and Application of
Models for Concept Formation in Writing, Cooperative Research
Project No. 2174, Michigan State University, 1964: 63-65.

 

204
and subtraction." But most people are too many "Minds like
beds always made up,/ (more stony than a shore)! unwilling
or unable" (4). Thoughts are too often "forked by
preconception and accident/ split, furrowed, creased,
mottled, stained" (6). Yet our thoughts "forever strain
forward" (7).

Students should be aware that the mind can be repre-
sented in myriad ways. The mind is like a child rubbing oil
with his fingertips into the center of his baseball mitt,
ready to catch high-flies, line-drives, and grounders.
Thinking is like riding a bike. William Stafford wrote,

"At times in my thinking I take my hands off the handlebars
and see what happens. In a poem I do that all the time"
(Revise 59). In her poem "The Mind, Like an Old Fish"

Diane Wakoski compared her mind with "a caterpillar rolled
into a ball against prodding," "a rose in a glass paper-
weight," "a curtain cord blowing in the open-window breeze,"
"a sea anemone, each ripple of water/ moving a long graceful
membrane." Brad, a freshman, compared his mind to a fine-
tuned, well—oiled Porsche 928: "My mind, though it has a

few stone chips in the paint, still is clean, fresh, and
open." Rachel compared her mind to a rubber band that
stretches, twists, snaps: "It can be wrapped and wrapped to
hold the smallest bundle easily. I can depend on it to
encompass the most specific detail. Do you know that iron

is the most stable element?" Christy compared her mind to

205

color:

My mind is like color because both are intangible
and abstract. Although we speak of seeing colors,
we don't actually see them. Instead we see the
light that objects reflect or give off. Our eyes
absorb this reflected light, and our brain repro-
duces it as colored images. We can't actually

see our mind either; we know it is there because
we can think. Ideas are produced in our mind

just as different colored images are produced by
the various wavelengths of light reflected off an
object. It's an abstract process, but we know it's
happening.

My mind is probably comparable to color in ways
that I am not even aware of. My mind is colorblind
in this case: it does not have the ability to
tell all colors apart. . . .

Students should be aware of imagination and how it can
help them see different perspectives regarding the mind,
but students should also be aware that mind metaphors are
maps of the mind, not real representations. Many students
discover this when they write about their minds. They
recognize that although analogies help describe the mind,
they also falsify the mind. A student wrote in his post-
log, "An analogy is a cop out in a lot of ways. It's too
easy to find an object and make your mind fit it instead of

4

finding something that really resembles your mind." It is

 

4 Ultimately, the idea that "anything" can symbolize
the mind reaches absurdity. A cigarette butt is like a
smoked-out idea. The mind like a toaster can cook thoughts
to be light, medium, dark, or burnt. Some thoughts are like
Frosted Flakes. The mind is like democracy or fascism or
God. Although anything seemingly can represent the mind,
so what? Many connections are so thin they can hardly
carry meaning. If anything can describe the mind, then the
concept of mind soon becomes meaningless. The task for
students in using mind metaphors is not to discover witty
connections but to discover images that truly reflect how
they think they think.

206
educational for students to realize how difficult it is to
formulate an awareness of an abstraction like "mind."
Writers can discuss certain patterns of their mental
behavior, certain aspects of their mind, but not their whole
mind.

Students should be aware of the mystery of the mind--
and of the mystery of writing/thinking/learning. Students
should be aware that they will never completely know how to
write/think/learn, that they can always learn more about
how to do these dynamic intellectual processes. Writing
about how their minds work is a way to help freshmen con—

struct this idea.

Conclusions

 

The preceding taxonomy does not differ much from
traditional notions of what students in composition courses
should be aware of in order to write and think well. Nor
is the taxonomy all inclusive. Other important categories
of awareness exist such as awareness of words: etymology,
connotation and denotation, style. However, I hope that
the taxonomy implies word awareness because the taxonomy
inherently involves relationships between language and
thought.

My rationale for the taxonomy has been influenced by
what Vygotsky said: "becoming conscious of our operations

and viewing each as a process of a certain kind--such as

 

207
remembering or imagining—~leads to their mastery" (Ell 91-
92). I believe that students should be aware of several
important composing ideas and that these ideas need to be
first practiced in action before they can be formulated by
students themselves. The teacher's job is to help students
construct awareness of these ideas so that students can use

them deliberately.

Metacognitive Writieg Across the Curriculum

 

Symbolization is the main cognitive process in higher
education. The act of constructing mental representations
is usually hidden, however, in most classes. Many content
teachers are not aware of the ways language enables learning.
Not enough connection has been made between language and
teaching the content of a discipline.

Metacognitive writing such as learning logs and process
questions should be used across the curriculum. The rela—
tionship between thought and language is important in every
class, not only English composition. Learning how to
write/think/learn should happen in different contexts for
students. While there is no one right way to accomplish
this goal, logs and journals can help students think and
learn more about subjects because expressive writing is
personal, active, and promotes reflection through dialogue
and discovery.

Fulwiler and Young argued that connections between

208

students and their courses "must be personal" (Language 9).

 

Students need to relate their course-work in the natural
sciences, social sciences, and the humanities to themselves
personally. They need to construct relationships between
what they learn to what they already know. They need to
assimilate and accommodate new ideas and information.
Metacognitive writing helps students do this. Bruner wrote,

In general, material that is organized in terms

of a person's own interests and cognitive struc-
tures is material that has the best chance of
being accessible in memory. It is more likely to
be placed along routes that are connected to

one’s own ways of intellectual travel. Thus, the
very attitudes and activities that characterize
figuring out or discovering things for oneself
also seem to have the effect of conserving memory.
(On Knowing 96)

 

Throughout the curriculum students should reflect: they
should actively explore what they are trying to learn, what
they do not understand, and what they find intriguing. It
is the college's responsibility to help students develop
this intellectual habit. Students can engage in written
dialogues with themselves and with their teachers. They
can raise questions, pose concerns, speculate, and formulate
connections between previously unrelated information. They
can discover the importance of ideas within a course by
interpreting them in their own words, thereby formulating
representations of them. Polanyi argued that learning
involves forming generalizations on what has been learned
(Personal 365). Bruner argued that a learning episode

helps students generalize beyond it to new episodes (Process

209
49). Metacognitive writing can help students form generali-
zations that they can remember and use in the future. But
many teachers are not aware of metacognition nor of pedagogy
based on expressive writing that helps students naturally
think about what they are trying to learn.

Teachers can assign various kinds of informal metacog-
nitive writing to promote reflection and learning--writing
that does not need to be graded, writing that generates its
own intrinsic rewards for the student and teacher. Teachers
can have students write weekly or bi-weekly learning logs,

a page or two of reflection about what students do not
understand and about what intrigues them regarding course
reading, lectures, papers; progress reports about major
projects; short in-class responses about what students
think they have learned lately in the course or have not
learned. Teachers can have students write pre—writing,
mid-writing, and/or post-writing learning logs for any
major paper in a course. This enables teachers to help
students along the way with their writing process--not
simply take the final product. And this enables students
to help monitor themselves along the way by thinking about
different topics, various alternatives, and problems that
students identify themselves.

Teachers across the curriculum should be aware that
writing/thinking/learning are interactive processes that

depend on using language in different functions and forms.

210
They should know that " anguage for learning is different
from language for informing" (Fulwiler and Young 4), that

 

expressive language is largely exploratory, speculative,
ambiguous, tentative, intuitive, and informal. They should
not expect polished correctness of language or as much
overt organization or careful reasoning. Teachers should
be aware that different functions and forms of writing
exercise corresponding functions and forms of thinking.
Using different styles of language--stories, poems, plays,
cartoons, news editorials as well as essays and research
papers--enables students to think about course material in
different perspectives. Thus, teachers across the curriculum
should be aware of the pedagogical value of having students
use varieties of expressive, transactional, and poetic
language to help students think and learn more about their
subject area.

Students need to write/think/learn as biologists do, as
mathematicians do, as historians do, as political scientists
do, as philosophers and poets do. They need "to take part
in the process of knowledge-getting" in each academic
discipline (Bruner, Toward 72). Writing is one of the best
ways for students to do this. But if teachers do not see a
need in having students learn about learning their disci-
pline, they will not likely ask students to engage in
metacognitive writing. It is the responsibility of English

departments to persuade content teachers that students can

211
learn more effectively if teachers require them to reflect
about what they have done, what they are doing, and what
they plan to do.

Teachers across the curriculum should view themselves
as researchers of education, investigating ways to help
students write/think/learn: to use the language and style
of investigation of their particular discipline. As resear-
chers of learning through language, teachers across the
curriculum can learn to become dialogue participants and to
experiment with various approaches of discovery learning.

In his recent book College: The Undergraduate Experience

 

in America, Ernest L. Boyer, President of the Carnegie

 

Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, stressed the
importance of language across the curriculum:
Students need language to grasp and express
effectively feelings and ideas. . . . Language
and thought are inextricably connected and as
undergraduates develop their linguistic skills,
they hone the quality of their thinking and
become intellectually and socially
empowered. (73)
Boyer recommended that all courses emphasize writing because
writing and thinking are interdependent: "Clear writing
leads to clear thinking; clear thinking is the basis of
clear writing" (79). Because writing makes students respon-
sible for their words, writing helps students become "more
thoughtful human beings." Thus, the whole college is
responsible for helping students develop intellectually

through writing: "to weigh evidence, integrate knowledge,

212
and express ideas with clarity and precision" (79). More-
over, Boyer expressed his support for the kind of learning
that metacognitive writing such as logs and journals promote:
"students are rarely given the opportunity to question, to
challenge, to explore their doubts, introduce new assump-
tions, and have such contributions carefully critiqued.
These are the conditions out of which genuine learning will
occur" (158-159).

The ways students learn in college will affect the
ways they learn after college. If we want students to
become independent, proficient writers/thinkers/learners,
we need to develop metacognitive habits across the college
curriculum. By helping our students develop the habit of
reflection through metacognitive writing, we can help them

learn how to learn and face future intellectual challenges.

APPENDIX

APPENDIX

English 100
Major Writing # 1

Write an essay such that it's not a waste of time for
yourself or for your readers (your fellow classmates and
me).

To help you begin this essay, write a pre-log for next
class. In your pre-log talk to yourself (and to me) on
paper about what you think you could do for this essay.
Try to generate a bunch of possible topics--cast several
lines out into your mind and see what you catch. Explore
any concerns and questions you have about the assignment.
Feel free to catch a lot of questions and try to explore
fhem foppossible answers. I don't wapt to give you ques-
tions; I want you to raise your own. I want you to try to
figure out how to write an essay that has meanin --so that
readers won't ask that awful question, "So what?5 (For
more information on how to write a log, see the page "Learn-
ing Logs" in the syllabus.)

 

 

This pre-log could be one page or several pages. Sometimes
people write their essay inside their pre-log. See what
happens. Try to spend at least an hour writing this pre—
log. Then if you want, you can begin writing your essay.
Maybe you'll want to write two or three essays and choose
the one you like best to share with the class next week.
Let's plan to have this first major writing due next Friday.

This Friday I'll collect your pre-log and read it over the
weekend. I'll then return it to you on Monday.

213

214
English 100 Major Writing # 2

"Uneasiness is the seed from which subsequent investigation
grows; ignore it and the process of inquiry may never
begin." Young, Becker, and Pike

Rhetoric: Discovery and Change

 

Write an essay exploring a problem that you are presently
experiencing and want to come to terms with. Or write

about a problem you experienced and somehow solved. Explain
what the problem was, how it affected your life, and how

you solved it. Or write about a problem that is not personal
but that intrigues you and that you want to understand.
Explore your problem by applying the process of inquiry--
review the handout explaining the process. Try to enable

the members of our class to understand the problem and to
appreciate its significance to you.

1) To start this essay, write a pre-log in order to generate
possible topics. Talk to yourself and to me on paper,
trying to explore some of the following questions: What
puzzles you? What makes you uneasy? What bothers you or
makes you mad? What problems in your life need solving?
What stirs your wonder? These questions can be asked in
relation to yourself, another person, a group of peOple, a
place (like Alma College), an object, an event, an idea,
whatever.

Try to write at least two pages of exploration. If you feel
certain that you already know your topic, then explore how
you think you might write about it. Consider what you

could do to help your audience see how your problem relates
to more people other than yourself.

 

It’s a good idea to generate at least three topics so that
you can use some as backups in case your first topic doesn't
work out. As always with logs, don't worry about grammar

or spelling. But please don't hand in a half page of
general BS. I'll collect your pre-log next class.

 

 

At the end of your pre-log, try to select the topic that you
think you might use for this essay. State the topic as a
question so that it can guide your inquiry.

2. After you have written your pre-log, you can proceed to
explore your topic question by freewriting or clustering on
it. In short, start working on the essay. Let's plan to
share complete rough drafts--type written on computer--in
class next Friday.

215

"All things are known by their differences from
and likenesses to each other." Alan Watts, The Book

Writinnguggestions for Major Writing_# 3

 

1. Write about a contradiction-—"a condition in which things

tend to be contrary to each other." Examine contradictions

you see in your own life--or in your family, friends,

education, media, government, etc. Or examine contradictory

feelings/thoughts you have about someone or something.

i.e. how someone or something can be strong yet weak,

beautiful yet ugly, kind yet cruel, afraid yet
brave, happy yet sad, painful yet pleasing

2. Write about a paradox--"a seemingly contradictory
statement that nonetheless may be true."
i.e. Less is more.

Winning is like losing sometimes.

You need to lose yourself to find yourself.

The more things change, the more they stay the

same.

"The only security is realizing there is no

security." Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurigy

 

3. Examine the positive and negative characteristics of
something that causes you dissonance or stirs your wonder:
a person, an object, a place, an event or idea. See if any
positive and negative aspects touch or fuse in some way.

4. Examine how something or someone can be both simple and
complex.

5. Examine the inside and outside of something. Explore
whether the inside and outside reflect each other.

6. Write about the relationships between something big and
something small, old and new, or soft and hard.

7. In what ways are you bound or tied-down? In what ways
are you free? Do you have much room for free play within
your limitations?

8. Describe a contrast you experienced and then explain
how it made you more aware.

Note: The purpose of these suggestions is to help you
discover a topic you can explore in an essay that will be
meaningful to you and to your audience. If it is true that
seeing differences and similarities-~connecticut--is the
essence of thinking and learning, then I want you to explore
this strategy in a pre-log. For our next class, bring_e
pre-log (at least two pages) of possible topics.

 

 

English 100 Minor Writing

"Creativity is discovering hidden similarities between

previously unrelated things."

New Ways of Looking:

Arthur Koestler,
The Act of Creation

 

Writing an Analogy

Creativity may be understood as the unusual linking of

things not linked before,
through new angles of vision.

as the seeing of old things
Using analogies is a common

practice with inventors and other problem-solvers who
deliberately try to see the familiar in fresh ways and to
understand the strange by pretending that it's familiar.
The ability to think creatively is important: it helps you

see different perspectives,

more effectively.

and it can help you communicate

Following are two lists of activities common to us all.
Choose an activity from column A to describe in terms of an
activity from column B--or vice versa. Push the application

as far and as hard as it will go.
unusual, yet aim for meaning.
activities with topics of your own:
things that you know a lot about.

Don't be afraid of being
Feel free to extend the

compare two unlike

Try to find specific

connections: the more specific and concrete, the better.
Your audience will be your fellow classmates and I. Write
a brief pre and post log for your analogy.

 

Activities A

writing an essay
spelling

reading

studying
learning
reasoning
arguing

feeling sad or happy
wooing

dreaming
cheating

growing up

dying

loving

hating

caring

Activities B

gardening
swimming

hunting

flying

sailing

driving a car
running

crawling

weeding

playing guitar
brushing teeth
playing a sport
taking a shower
changing a tire
Russian roulette
changing diapers

Adapted from D. Gordon Rohman and Albert 0. Wlecke, Pre-
Writing: The Construction and Application of Modelslfor
Concept Formation in Writing, Cooperative Research Project

No. 2174, Michigan State University,

1964: 121.

217
English 100 Major Writing # 4
Suggestions for Topics

1. Write an essay on "quality," making what you think
quality is the thesis that the rest of your paper will
explain and support. Use examples from your experience,
observation, and knowledge.

2. Write about a word that intrigues you--that stirs your
wonder, bothers you a great deal, or has given you problems.

3. Think of a word you use a lot. Define what you mean by
it in different situations.

4. Define a slang term and discuss its possible origins and

significance. Look up the etymology (origin and development)
of the word in a dictionary like Webster's New World Diction—
ely or The Oxford English Dictionary.

 

5. Write about "nice." How do you define it? How do two
or three dictionaries define it? Is "nice" a nice word to
use when complimenting someone? What experiences in your

life exemplify "nice"?

6. Write about "corny." Are corny things really corny?

7. How many games do you play with language? Select one
that seems interesting, describe it, and write out the
rules that seem to apply to it.

8. What are some of your favorite words? Explore why you
like them so much.

9. Try making a list of the most important words in your
life. Try to generate a page full. Then put a check by
those words you wouldn't mind writing/thinking about. Pick
one and freewrite or cluster for ten minutes to grow a
bunch of support. Then pick another word and freewrite or
cluster on it. Repeat this process until you decide on the
word you want to write about in an essay.

10. You don't have to write about a word or language.
You may choose the option not to write on this activity.
Write about any idea as long as you try to be meaningful
and clear. You should, however, explain in your pre-log
why you feel a need not to follow this activity.

218

English 100
Major Writing # 5 Argument/Persuasion Pre-log assignment

I want you to use this pre-log to explore possible topics for
your next paper in which you will persuade a specific
audience to change their minds about an issue. Please do

the following in the order they are given.

1. Freewrite on these questions: 1) What could I argue
about that is meaningful (si nificant or important) to me?
W osepind do I want to c ange, and why? Or wr te on

this: 3) If I could persuade a group of people to change
their minds or to see a view as I see it, what would be 9y
view and who would be my audience? Freewrite on each
question for at least five minutes. (Remember to keep your
pen moving: You can think while you write.)

 

 

 

 

 

2. From the possible topics you generated in the freewrit-
ing, select three topics that you feel are most meaningful
and interesting to you. Write these topics down.

 

3. Of your three possible topics, choose the one you like
best. Start thinking on paper about why you want to persuade
your audience to change his or her mind. What are your
reasons? What are the pros and cons of your argument?

Make a list of pros and cons: reasons for your position and
reasonsegainst your position that your audience migle

raise. These reasons may be based on your own exper ence,
observation, and knowledge.

 

 

 

4. Write down any other thoughts you have about this
assignment.

Note: I'd like this writing activity to be as "real" as
possible. Try not to make this paper "another English
assignment." I want you to find a real issue that yoelwant
to argue about in order to persuade a real audience. In
fact, consider not writing an essay for this activity.
Rather, write a letter or a memo (or some other form).
Consider writing a real letter or memo to a professor, a
college administrator like the Dean of Students, a state
senator, the local mayor or police chief, the owner of
Seven Eleven, your high school principal, etc. I'd like
you to send what you write to your audience. You might
write a letter to the editor of the Almanian, Alma's Morning
See, or the Detroit Free Press. Explore possibilities.

 

 

 

219

English 100
Major Writing # 6 Writing Using Research

I want you to write some kind of composition using research.
The format of this paper is up to you. You may write a
report in which you investigate a question: What are the
right andlleft hemispheres of the brain, and how do they
function together? The question you explore may be a
personal concern--i.e., If you stutter, you might ask
yourself,AwWhy do people stutter, and how do they overcome
this problem?" If you have any personal problem that you
have wanted to know more about, here is your opportupity.
Your audience can be yourself and/or other people. Try to
aim for a certain audience. Consider writing your report
so that you will actually submit it to a real newspaper,
magazine or journal.

 

 

 

 

You may write a paper examining a contradiction or paradox:
i.e., How can there he Brilliint idiots (idiot savants)?

You may write a persuasive/argumentative essay in which you
weigh the pros and cons of an issue that intrigues you: i.e.,
Should all people applying for certain jobs be tested for
drugs? Should more schools adopt dress codes? Again,
consider actually submitting your paper to a real newspaper,
magazine, or journal.

You may use one of the ideas you generated in an early pre—
10 , or you may use an earlier paper that you wrote in this
class and expand it with research.

 

 

 

What else could you do? What would you like to do?

In addition to whatever type of composition you choose, I'd
like you to conduct either an interview with one person or
two people or conduct a survey. This will be written up

and incorporated into your paper, or it can be a minor
writing by itself. I'll explain this further later in class.

The purpose of this major writing is for you to explore a

topic that genuinely interests you, to digest information

about it from living sources as well as print sources, to

follow proper research form, and to communicate it clearly
to a specified audience.

This is not a long research paper. Keep it short: a title
pege, an outline page, four to six pages of text, and a
pege for Works Cited. The basic requirements for this
paper are a minimum of 4 sources to be chosen among living
persons, magazine and/or newspaper articles, books, and
pamphlets, and 5 citations (what used to be footnotes). In
your paper I want you to use at at least three short direct

 

 

220

quotes and one longdirect quote. We will be using the MLA
parenthetical documentation style as described in Writing:
A College Handbook.

 

 

To begin your process of inquiry, you need to identify some
questions that you want--or need--to know more about.

What are some personal concerns or problems--involving you
or someone close to you--that you could investigate?

Could you do some research to help someone you care about?
Suppose a relative or friend of yours has an unhealthy
habit. You could gather research to write a letter-report
that you could actually give this person.

For our next class write at least a two page pre-logein
which you explore somepessihle topics. Write on some of
the above suggestions. Explore what you think you'd like
to investigate. Consider dissonances or anything that
stirs your wonder. Consider exploring topics that relate
to your major or minor, or to any outside interest.

 

 

 

Toward the end of your log, state at least three possible
topics as questions: Try to focus your questions—-however,
when you actually start interviewing or doing a survey or
browsing in the library for information, you will find
sharper focuses as you progress.

Last, speculate on whom you could interview in order to
find some information. Or speculate on what kind of a
survey you could do.

Note: Please do not consider handing in a paper you have
written before or that someone else has written. Plagiarism
(the etymology of which is "kidnapper") is an academic sin.
I want this research process to be fresh and authentic. I
am willing to help you as much as I can. Talk to me if you
encounter problems.

221

English 100
Final Major Essay Mind

How do you think? How do you think you think? For this
final essay I want you to examine how your mind works.

To approach this essay, ask yourself questions about your own
thinking processes and behaviors. Here are some questions
to help you get started:

How aware am I of my thinking?

How do I think when I'm not aware of thinking?

What are some of my idiosyncrasies as a thinker?

How does my mind work differently in different classes?

How does my mind work differently in school as compared
to out of school?

Under what conditions do I think best?

What do I do in particular to help myself think better?

How would I classify the ways I think?

Do I argue much in my mind? Are there pros and cons
always tugging at each other, trying to persuade me
in some way?

How does my mind work when I'm having fun?

How does my mind work when I am in different moods?

What have been some of my best and worst experiences
with thinking?

When is thinking easy and pleasurable for me?

When is thinking painful for me?

What happens in my mind when I learn?

What are my thinking habits, positive and negative?

What am I most curious about? Why?

What kinds of problems do I like to solve? Why?

How emotional am I as a thinker?

What do I like to think about?

What do I not like to think about?

Because the mind is mysterious, perhaps as mysterious (in a
microcosmic way) as the universe, consider using an analogy
or a bunch of analogies to compare the way you think with
something else. Or use a combination of methods of develop—
ment. The purpose of this essay is to help you——and others
in this class——better understand how your mind works.

Due next class: a pre-log for this essay, at least two pages.

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