Word and the Writing Process

Teachers know that writing is one of the most powerful learning experiences available to students. Weaving knowledge into written composition is often a more effective learning tool than listening to a lecture or reading. You can facilitate the writing process by using the powerful, collaborative tools of Microsoft Word 2002. New task panes enable you to access common tasks immediately, such as using templates, formatting, and searching. Smart tags enable you to access information immediately across Microsoft Office applications, and give you greater control by providing options that are relevant to your current action. For example, you can add Microsoft Outlook contact information to your Word document, select formatting for text immediately, link to a map and driving directions, and much more. You can also increase student collaboration by using the Send for Review tools to facilitate peer reviews during the composition process.

Although most instructors respect the power of written composition in the learning environment, the integration of thoughtful writing activities in classes across curriculum has often faced obstacles. First, writing seems complicated and mysterious to many, even teachers. For example, a physics teacher may feel that her students’ written work is severely wanting in many respects, but at the same time she may feel that she lacks the expertise to help her students become better writers. Second, writing and teaching writing can seem to impose burdens of time that an instructor’s schedule simply can’t afford. For too many teachers, these obstacles have resulted in a retreat from using writing assignments.

Over the past 30 years, many writing specialists and teachers across the curriculum have turned to a “process-oriented approach” to teach writing which addresses some of these obstacles. A process-oriented approach to teaching writing insists on not taking for granted that a single writer who writes alone will show up with the best possible work on a composition’s due date. Rather, this process insists that a composition needs to be integral to the teaching and learning process and shared among a community of writers. Hallmarks of the process approach include teaching prewriting activities like concept-mapping and freewriting (freewriting involves generating ideas in prose rapidly and without consideration to formal correctness), the inclusion of organized peer-review activities in the lesson plan, the incorporation of a multiple-draft production cycle, and the use of peer- and self-evaluation assessments after final drafts are complete. In a process-oriented approach, the final due date of a writing project is the formal end of a long cycle of writing and revision—not, as is the case with many teachers’ lesson plans, the day when students are expected to appear with a complete, mature draft in hand.

A process-oriented approach has several profound advantages over writing assignments that call for completed work on a given date.

Writers write for a meaningful audience of peers throughout the writing process.
The teacher is a member of a writing community, not a gatekeeper faced with marking every spliced comma or split infinitive—the students provide the vast majority of feedback and response for one another.
A series of project deadlines throughout the process helps students to spread work over a longer period of time and to make better mid-course adjustments as they get feedback from other writers.
Time-on-task increases as students become more aware of how writing is being received and how other student writers are approaching the same rhetorical tasks.
As time-on-task increases, so does student learning—usually in ways that are immediately evident (and demonstrable through assessment) to teachers and students alike.