Parallel processing in writing

The writing processes are not uni-directional but often work in parallel, and thus compete for the resources of the working memory (Galbraith et al. 2005: 117, Kellogg 1996: 59, 2012, Lea and Levy 1999: 72, Levy and Ransdell 1995: 768, Torrance 2007). For example, the revision process often starts very early in the overall writing process. Most writers do not write down all the ideas they have after receiving an assignment, but revise and edit their ideas while writing – be it on a scrap paper or in their minds. These writers monitor the coherence of the text and the adequacy of the sentence structure and morphology during the writing process. In the formulation process, new ideas can emerge, which might then lead to a revision of the whole plan and, in turn, to a complete revision of the text written thus far (Hayes and Nash 1996: 33). In other words, the writing processes are interrelated and it is crucial for successful writing that the sets be well balanced. Only if this is the case can information be received and passed from one writing process to another in a fluent and uninterrupted way. A consequence of the varying demands made on cognitive resources is that the executive processes are often interrupted: writers write down words, pause, go on writing, pause again, and so on. Flower and Hayes (1981) suggest that this stop-start behaviour is part of a strategy of separating the thinking processes, which

“writers orchestrate or organize during the act of composing” (366). It operates as a repeated plan-formulate-revise cycle.

Torrance and Galbraith (2008), however, propose that hesitation, rewriting and backtracking are in part associated with the need to repair problems that occur because of the complexity of the information processes and the constraints they put on the writer's limited cognitive resources. These researchers make use of McCutchen’s (1994: 1) analogy and compare writers to “a switchboard operator [who is] continually, and at times frantically, trying to coordinate and direct the inputs to outputs from several component processes” (Torrance and Galbraith 2008: 73).

How the orchestration of the cognitive processes is managed depends on the individual writer and at the same time on the context in which they must perform the task (Pajares and Valiante 2008: 162, Schultz 2008: 362, Torrance, Thomas and Robinson 1999: 190). This raises the perennial question of whether and to what extent successful writing can be taught. MacArthur (1996: 344 ff.) and others assume that “process writing [is] primarily based on indirect rather than direct methods of instruction” (Graham and Harris 1997: 252). Elbow (2000: 166) proposes that students should not be pressed into a single approach to writing and planning an essay, since it is important to be flexible in the pre-writing stage. He suggests that it can even be counterproductive to have a clear picture of the final version of the text in one’s mind before one begins to write, because then the potential of writing transform knowledge is reduced (Alamargot, Favat and Galbraith 2000, Menary 2007: 622, Newell 2008: 236). To put it in E.M. Forster’s (1949 [1927]:

101) words: “How can I know what I think until I see what I say?”. Other pedagogies – especially those in textbooks on academic writing – recommend generating a predefined picture of the entire essay before beginning to write, because otherwise the structure and the logic of the argument cannot be guaranteed; moreover, in exam situations – where texts are almost always written by hand – thorough revision is not possible (e.g. Aczel 2007: ch.

2, Reid 2000: ch. 3, for an overview of the discussion, see Prain 2009).

Applebee (1986: 106), Knapp and Watkins (2005: 83 ff.), and others argue that direct strategy instruction and guided practice are crucial for the acquisition of efficient writing processes. A study by Scannella (1982: 91), for example, found that students improved in expository writing after having been taught writing process methods. The students’ attitude towards writing became much more positive in comparison to the attitude of the control group. When writing strategies are internalised, self-regulation strategies are employed, and writers can activate strategies for dealing with negative emotions that arise during the composition process. As a consequence of this positive thinking, the quality of the texts

improves. However, this improvement is not apparent in creative writing (Honeycutt 2002:

ch. 5.1.2; for an overview of the discussion, see Hyland 2003: 178 ff.).

Van den Bergh and Rijlaarsdam (1999) found that certain cognitive processes are more likely to succeed than others depending on the stage of writing reached at a given moment:

The occurrence of cognitive activities in the writing process is determined by two factors:

1) the writer’s procedural knowledge of the ways in which he or she typically sequences cognitive activities and 2) the task environment (102).

In their dynamic model of cognitive activities, all such activities that take place during the writing process – including the basic ones such as typing – are guided by the monitor. It has access to both the text produced thus far and the procedural knowledge. The knowledge about the general writing processes and task-specific modifications tells the monitor which aspects it must concentrate on. This procedural knowledge can be acquired through experience or gained through explicit teaching (Baddeley 2009a: 82/83). It stores data about which cognitive activities are to dominate which stages of the writing process (van den Bergh et al. 2009: 400, Rijlaarsdam and van den Bergh 1996: 108). According to van den Bergh and Rijlaarsdam (1999: 102), it is not the frequency of a specific cognitive activity that is relevant for the success of the writing process, but the probability of its occurrence. This rate of probability changes during the writing process, as the monitor decides which activity is the most suitable at a specific moment. In this way, the situation at a given moment diminishes the number of choices to be made for the next step and gives the activity a different role depending on current demands. For example, when the writer reads the task at the beginning of the writing process, the reading activates the generation of ideas. In a later step, after parts of the text have already been produced, the re-reading of the task can either reactivate the generator in order to produce more ideas, or it can activate the revision activity. That is, it can be used to assess whether the text written thus far fits the demands of the assignment.

Rijlaarsdam and van den Bergh (2008) tested the model and investigated the writing processes of students who were about fifteen years old. These students were asked to write argumentative essays within a peer-audience-oriented contextual frame. The authors found that the cognitive activities involved in writing are indeed not spread randomly over the writing process, but that each activity tends to dominate at different points in it.

Furthermore, the distribution of the processes influences the text quality (van den Bergh et al. 2009: 421, van der Hoeven 1999: 75, Rijlaarsdam and van den Bergh 2008: 51, van

assignment and the purpose and audience of the text at the beginning of the writing process. As a result, they are able to generate a wider range of ideas. Reading the resource material before writing helps them to integrate facts and background knowledge into the text. If, however, the writer re-reads the assignment often in the later stages of the writing process, this indicates that they are still insecure about the actual task and the goals they want to achieve. As a consequence, the quality of the text tends to be lower (Levy and Marek 1999: 40, Rijlaarsdam and van den Bergh 2008: 43, van Weijen 2008: 163).

Some combinations of cognitive activities also have a higher probability of occurring at certain points in the writing process than others. When tasked with an argumentative essay, for example, writers tend to read the resource material in order to generate ideas, whereas during the formulation process, the resource material is consulted in order to find support for the thesis. In the revision process, the resource is needed to make sure that the facts quoted in the text are correct. That is, although the quality of papers and the orchestration of writing processes differ from person to person (and from task to task), it can be said that “the correlation between the occurrence of cognitive activities and text quality…is dependent on the moment in the writing process” (Rijlaarsdam and van den Bergh 2008: 44). In other words, it is not exclusively the level of writing skill in itself that has an impact on quality, but also the writer’s knowledge of when to apply which skill.

Rijlaarsdam and colleagues assume that the cognitive system learns which activity should follow another particular activity at a given moment based on (subconscious) routine, plus the influence of other activities that are triggered by the evaluation of the text produced thus far. The text changes over time, and with it so do the activated cognitive nodes, and writers employ different cognitive activities in response to the change in the internal representation of the text (van den Bergh and Rijlaarsdam 1999: 113/114, Breetvelt, van den Bergh and Rijlaarsdam 1994: 103, Dale 1999: 56/57).

All of these findings are based on studies in L1 writing. In FL writing, however, the strategies that are used may differ because of the additional cognitive demands placed on the writer – for example because of the need to repress the L1 (which is often more active), and because of the different orthographic structures involved (see Chapters 2.2 and 2.3).