On Mon, 23 Sep 2002, Jan Coker wrote:
> I was asked by my own children how to go about
> writing a paper for school.
> I assumed ... outlining a paper as the best approach.
> To my surprise ... he sat down at his computer and ... started to type.
> After a while he read what he wrote to see what he
> had said, and went from there.
That is part of what I also found from looking in the literature on
writing. There are a number of techniques/tricks, and each writer has to
find what works personally. Some work to strict schedules, some wait for
inspiration then work while that lasts. Some plan on paper, others *say*
they write the first draft straight out - but surely they have carried out
the planning mentally? Some write a complete draft then revise, others
work on a short passage (maybe just a sentence) and refine it before
proceeding. What Jan Coker describes is "free writing" as a technique for
concentrating the mind and bringing out subconscious ideas. Some teachers
teach *only* the method of outlining then expanding; I suspect that
discourages the majority of pupils from believing they can write. One
finding that applied across all age groups when using a word processor was
that they concentrated attention on the small features - spell checking,
punctuation. In this context I quote a Peanuts cartoon, where Lucy
totally demolishes Snoopy's novel in lit crit terms, but in the final
frame Snoopy says, "But at least I have neat margins."
I have been surprised that students and teachers have shown so little
knowledge of outlining as a word processor tool - and so little interest
in applying it. The difference from the "plan/expand/revise" dogmatic
approach to school writing is that the WP outline can *emerge* from a
block of text, perhaps created in free writing, and can evolve as the
interaction of thinking and writing leads to greater clarity for the
writer as to what s/he wants to say. Hence writing is a design problem,
and the process of writing forms part of the process of research.
Creating a WP outline, either as planning or through analysis of generated
text, helps the writer (and I think mainly of research students) keep
track of what has or has not been covered, and how the internal argument
flows through the text. Ultimately, the outline may well form the table
of contents, so there should be a productivity gain as well as an
improvement in the quality of the thesis. Too many students (and staff)
continue to be "too busy writing" to consider how they can improve their
work methods. And too many examiners can recognise only a formulaic copy
as the appropriate standard for presentation.
R. Allan Reese Email: [log in to unmask]
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