An Overview of Composition Theories: A Critical Look

 

 

Setiono Sugiharto

 

 

It is inevitably true that writing is a complex skill to acquire as it includes not only the mastery of graphic conventions, diction, standard usage, and the ability to arrange sentences logically, but also the ability to make the expressed ideas intelligible to the readers. In other words, writing is not just a matter of generating, composing, and revising ideas on paper, but it is also an act of translating these ideas into readable texts in an appropriate context. The inherent complexity of this skill indeed poses a challenge for writing teachers to make their teaching successful. 

 

Given this complexity, teachers of writing and EFL composition professionals undoubtedly need coherent perspectives, principles, and models- theories for thinking, upon which they base their teaching instruction. The pragmatic attitude toward the teaching of writing only presupposes an assumption about writing. (see Santos 1992 for the discussion of ideology in teaching writing). Questions related to ideology such as: what are the students' purposes of learning to write in a new language?; what types of writing should we teach them?; to whom their writing is addressed ?, and in what context are they writing?, are often time not given sufficient consideration in composition classroom where the teachers have pragmatic aims in their teaching. Such questions, however, do reflect the importance of an understanding of writing theories. A firm grounding in the theories which shape classroom writing instruction can help teachers gain significant insight into what they have previously assumed about writing. The importance of theory to writing instructors has been articulated by Zebroski (1986), quoted by Johns (1990: 33):

 

Theory has helped me to excavate and to uncover my own assumptions about writing. It has aided me in crafting a more coherent and unified course structure. It has encouraged me to try out some new methods of teaching writing. It has helped me to relinquish control and to emphasize classroom community.

 

This paper discusses the shift of paradigm (form the product and process approach), which has taken place in the composition theory, and then critically assesses each approach subsumed under this paradigm. Suggestions as to which approach we should adopt are also offered.  

 

 

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Sugiharto, S. (2003, October). An overview of composition theories: A critical look. Paper presented at the 51^st TEFLIN International Conference, Bandung, Indonesia.

 

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