Donald Murray discuses, in his four page article, about how a major trend in teaching writing in today's classroom is dependent on students' writing product and not on process. Murray preaches about teachers should be rewarding the writing process by applauding works-in-progress or in other words work that students will continue to develop long after the due date has passed. He goes on to say that "we work with language in action" meaning that language is dynamic and it should continuously developed. Murray states that the writing process is developed into three sections: prewriting, writing, and rewritting. Prewriting is the process of learning about the subject or person you are going to write about whether it be through research or interviewing. The writing section includes developing a rough draft and getting your ideas down on paper. The rewriting stage is about reresearching and revising your subject and rethinking your paper. Murray believes the best way to achieve this process is by letting the student go and develop the paper on his own instead of giving him an assignment to write and therefore directing where you want the student to go.
Janet Emig believes that "writing is originating and creating a unique verbal construct that is graphically recorded." She refers to part of Murray's article when she says that talking is considered part of the prewritting process. Emig believes that writing is a unique language process that is valuable with in the process of writing and the product of writing. Throughout Emig's article I felt like she was making a case for writing to be continuously included in the process of learning. She gave lots of examples on how writing uniquely impacts the modes of learning, which I feel should go as unsaid. Writing will never not be taught or developed in future classrooms to come; it is just not realistic. Writing may change in style and format with new technologies being used to help facilitate and develop the writing process, but the core of developing ideas and researching topics of paper, the process, will never go away.
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I was encouraged by your comment, Jake, that it's just not realistic to expect that writing would somehow disappear from the curriculum. In fact, the centrality of writing across today's college curriculum testifies to the success of composition studies as a discipline.
Emig was responding to the climate of the 1970's, when academia was in the midst of a drive toward standardized curriculum and assessment that still continues today. Thanks to Emig and the others who extended her line of inquiry, many more teachers and students today understand that writing represents a unique way of learning--and that writing competence cannot be assessed by multiple-choice questions.
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