Planning Writing

TR 6. The Role of Task Representation in Reading-to-Write, by Linda Flower (Reading-to-Write Report 2). In a study of college writers, Flower looks at the ways different writers interpret a "standard" writing task. In analyzing their reading and writing strategies, Flower demonstrates how students construct significantly different representations of a task, leading to differences in their texts and their writing process. June, 1987; 35 pages; $4.00.
Order report

TR 16. How the Writing Context Shapes College Students' Strategies for Writing from Sources, by Jennie Nelson and John R. Hayes. This study explores processes college students use to write assigned research papers. It examines the skills and assumptions that freshmen and more advanced college students bring to the tasks of selecting paper topics, finding and selecting sources of information, and developing an organizing structure and thesis for their papers. August, 1988; 22 pages; $4.00.
Order report

TR 22. Promises of Coherence, Weak Content, and Strong Organization: An Analysis of the Student Texts, by Margaret Kantz (Reading-to-Write Report 3). This report describes the ways that readers saw the structures in a set of freshman essays and discusses the problems the judges had in agreeing on how some students had interpreted the writing assignment. Analysis of students' organizing plans suggests that both students and teachers may sometimes confuse coherence strategies (for text) with knowledge transformation strategies (for content). May, 1989; 35 pages; $4.00.
Order report

TR 26. The Effects of Prompts Upon Revision: A Glimpse of the Gap Between Planning and Performance, by Wayne C. Peck (Reading-to-Write Report 7). This report analyzes the think-aloud protocols and finished texts of students asked to revise a written assignment. Students introduced to task representation and prompted to "interpret for a purpose of one's own" on revision were far more likely to change their organizing plan than students prompted merely to revise to "make the text better." However, the protocols also revealed a significant group of "intenders" who made plans they were unable to translate into text. May, 1989; 26 pages; $4.00.
Order report

TR 34. Planning in Writing: The Cognition of a Constructive Process, by Linda Flower, Karen A. Schriver, Linda Carey, Christina Haas, and John R. Hayes (a joint report with the Carnegie Mellon Planning Project). This paper describes the process adult writers bring to ill-defined expository tasks, such as writing essays, articles, reports, and proposals. It presents a theory of constructive planning based on a detailed analysis of expert and novice writers and suggests goals for instruction and the support of planning. July, 1989; 55 pages; $4.50.
Order report

TR 35. Differences in Writers' Initial Task Representations, by Linda Carey, Linda Flower, John R. Hayes, Karen A. Schriver, and Christina Haas (a joint report with the Carnegie Mellon Planning Project). This exploratory study investigates how writers represent their task to themselves before beginning to write. Examining the writing plans of expert as well as student writers, it uncovers ways in which the type of planning writers do and the quality of their texts correlate. July, 1989; 28 pages; $4.00.
Order report

TR 52. Planning Text Together: The Role of Critical Reflection in Student Collaboration, by Lorraine Higgins, Linda Flower, and Joseph Petraglia. The authors argue that student collaboration does not necessarily foster critical reflection in writing tasks; use of reflection depends on students' assumptions about peer interaction and the task itself. Three forms of reflection were identified in college students' collaborative planning on a course paper: evaluating, considering alternatives, and justifying. While not all students engaged in reflective thinking, those who did were more likely to produce high-quality plans. September, 1991; 26 pages; $4.00.
Order report

TR 56. Collaboration and the Construction of Meaning, by Linda Flower and Lorraine Higgins. This study explores the constructive and collaborative process of a group of college freshmen in a writing course. Flower and Higgins discuss the theoretical roots of collaborative planning, look at students' planning as acts of construction and negotiation, and raise questions about the role students' strategic knowledge plays in this social/cognitive process. December, 1991; 74 pages; $5.50.
Order report

TR 59. Constructing a Research Paper: A Study of Students' Goals and Approaches, by Jennie Nelson. This study considers the processes involved in writing an academic research paper. Nelson studied twenty-one college freshmen enrolled in an introductory cognitive psychology class to determine how students understood the teacher's research paper assignments, whether students took extensive notes and produced multiple drafts, and whether these "high-investment" reading and writing processes led to higher-quality papers. February, 1992; 16 pages; $3.50.
Order report