The Writer's Knowledge and the Writing Process: A Protocol Analysis.

This study used on-line protocol analysis to contrast the effects on the writing process of knowledge taught in three instructional treatments: Models (declarative knowledge of form), General Procedures (declarative knowledge of form plus general procedural knowledge related to content plus procedural knowledge related to form), and Task-Specific Procedures (declarative knowledge of form plus task-specific procedural knowledge related to content plus procedural knowledge related to form). Pretest and posttest protocols from six students in each treatment measured treatment effects on the processes of students writing essays involving extended definition. Students in the Models treatment made weak improvements in relating the elements of definition and did not think critically about the concepts being defined. Students in the General Procedures treatment made gains in linking ideas according to particular task constraints and improved their critical thinking skills. Students in the Task-Specific Procedures integrated their ideas purposefully, thought critically about the concepts being defined, and appeared to establish a conversational voice to anticipate composing needs. Composition authorities have begun to debate the sources of knowledge that most benefit writers. The most ancient notion of all and still practiced by about a third of the secondary teachers studied by Applebee (1981) holds that studying models of successful products enables writers to produce the features of the exemplars. Most current theorists agree that instruction in essay form is insufficient and, according to some, counterproductive. Critics have presented two process-centered alternatives to the study of model essays: learning general composing procedures, usually in the form of free-thinking activities such as brainstorming and freewriting; and learning task-specific composing procedures, which vary according to the specific knowledge required to undertake particular tasks. Hillocks (1984, 1986a, 1986b) has been the foremost advocate of taskspecific knowledge, using his meta-analysis of experimental research as the basis for his judgments. He questions the effectiveness of the "natural process" method of teaching writing in which a teacher facilitates writing I would like to thank Susan Goldin-Meadow, Fred Lighthall, William Pattison, Michael W. Smith, Tom Trabasso, and especially George Hillocks, Jr., plus the retiring editors and anonymous reviewers from RTE for their help in preparing this manuscript. Research in the Teaching of English, Vol. 25, No. 3, October 1991