Beyond Form: Thought and the Writing Process

As I continue to consider how I want to teach my composition students, I keep returning to the idea of writing as a process as well as a product. Though we pay a lot of lip-service to the “writing process,” the ultimate goal of many—if not most—writing assignments seems to emphasize the creation of a written product. Does it have a clear thesis? Does the evidence support the initial claim? Is the evidence properly cited?

Don’t get me wrong; these questions are important, and the written product is a critical component not just of composition classes but of every class. What I appreciate about Kasteley’s and Kroll’s articles, though, is that they also address the thought processes behind students’ writing. In Arguing Differently, Kasteley challenges his students to evaluate when traditional arguments are most effective and when other forms might serve their purposes better. Though he discusses three broad, alternate approaches to argument—conciliatory, integrative, and deliberative—he seeks “to avoid talking about types or modes or kinds of essays” so his students can discern the most effective strategies to accomplish their writing goals in a given situation rather then merely learning to follow a particular form (42).

This is not to say that forms are “bad.” I’m convinced that forms are often enormously helpful in teaching composition, for they provide useful, tangible models of writing. The danger seems to be rather that forms, if overemphasized, can ultimately limit students’ creativity. Kroll points out that one “dismal consequence” of forcing students to write using the traditional argument form “is that student arguments become rehearsals of unreflectively held positions or repetitions of unexamined banalities” (223). The point, I think, is not to stop at teaching students the form, but to also teach them why and when it’s useful, how to manipulate it in other situations, and how to gauge which writing strategies will work best for a given assignment. I firmly believe that, in order to help my students become better writers, I must also challenge them to become better thinkers; though I’m not sure exactly how to do so, I think Kasteley’s and Kroll’s articles offer some good ideas on where I can start.