I had to actually check the copyright day for
Within and Beyond the Writing Process in the Secondary English Classroom (phew! what a title). All the of the information seemed so common sense to me, yet the authors seemed to pose it as revolutionary. But, as I thought about it, the only time I have ever experienced writing instruction as a process has been in either a college-level creative writing course or one of the U of M's writing intensive courses. In thinking back on those courses, though, they are the ones that have stuck out as courses that have really improved my writing. I am not the type of person who will automatically revise my paper or even think much about how it will look or sound before I write it. You can say that I'm a very lazy writer. I usually procrastinate until the last moment, write it, turn it in and never look at it again. Yikes! However, with workshops, I have actually been proud of my papers and I put a lot more love and dedication into them when I am forced to collaborate and revise. Now if only I could just make that a part of my natural writing habit....
I suppose the point I really want to make is making writing a process instead of a one-chance assignment seems like common sense, but it's not as wide of a practice as we'd like to think. If we add multi-genre papers and student-chosen paper topics, we can argue as to whether those help students become better writers or not. Teaching writing as a process, though, doesn't seem like an argument to me. Plus, it makes grading easier and more enjoyable.
