Book reviews: Writing in nonacademic settings

Odell, Lee; Goswami, Dixie; Eden, Rick

doi:10.1109/tpc.1987.6449052

Cited by 18 publications

(23 citation statements)

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“…This interest is warranted given the importance of writing in work settings (Faigley & Miller, 1982;Odell & Goswami, 1984) and the concern raised by the ongoing National Assessment of Educational Progress that schools are not adequately preparing students in writing. Although research advances are being made, numerous basic questions remain, at best, only partially answered.…”

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confidence: 99%

Effects of topic knowledge on the allocation of processing time and cognitive effort to writing processes

1987

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Conditions of low and high knowledge about the topic of a writing task were compared in terms of the time and cognitive effort allocated to writing processes. These processes were planning ideas, translating ideas into text, and reviewing ideas and text during document composition. Directed retrospection provided estimates of the time devoted to each process, and secondary task reaction times indexed the cognitive effort expended. Topic knowledge was manipulated by selecting subjects in Experiment 1 and by selecting topics in Experiment 2. The retrospection results indicated that both low-and high-knowledge writers intermixed planning, translating, and reviewing during all phases of composing. There was no evidence that low-and high-knowledge writers adopt different strategies for allocating processing time. About 50 % of writing time was devoted to translating throughout composition. From early to later phases of composing, the percentage of time devoted to planning decreased and that devoted to reviewing increased. The secondary task results showed that the degree of cognitive effort devoted to planning, translating, and reviewing depended on the task. Also, the high-knowledge writers expended less effort overall than did the low-knowledge writers; there was no difference in allocation strategy across planning, translating, and reviewing.Research on the writing process has increased markedly in recent years (Beach & Bridwell, 1984;de Beaugrande, 1980; Frederiksen & Dominic, 1981; Gregg & Steinberg, 1980;Nystrand, 1982). This interest is warranted given the importance of writing in work settings (Faigley & Miller, 1982;Odell & Goswami, 1984) and the concern raised by the ongoing National Assessment of Educational Progress that schools are not adequately preparing students in writing. Although research advances are being made, numerous basic questions remain, at best, only partially answered. One such question is how the knowledge of the writer affects the writing process. The importance of knowledge differences in other tasks, such as reading comprehension (Voss, Vesonder, & Spilich, 1980) and problem solving (Chi, Feltovich, & Glaser, 1981), suggests that this should be a key factor in writing.Writers differ in what they know about their language, audience, and topic (Applebee, 1982). The present studies examined how knowledge of the topic being written about affects the amount of processing time and cognitive effort allocated to various writing processes. Although linguistic and audience knowledge also deserve exploration, they fall beyond the scope of this initial investigation. Processing time and cognitive effort were selected because, as will be discussed below, they concern two prominent features of writing based on current theory and empirical findings.The author thanks the anonymous reviewers for the useful suggestions they provided on an earlier version of this manuscript. Requests for reprints should be addressed to Ronald T. Kellogg, Department of Psychology, University of Missouri-Rolla, Rolla, M...

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confidence: 99%

Effects of topic knowledge on the allocation of processing time and cognitive effort to writing processes

1987

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“…Revision Process: Professional communication researchers have studied revision processes since at least the mid-1980s [21], [49], [9], based on earlier work on revision processes in composition [20]. (See Faigley's article [19] for an overview.)…”

Section: Research On Revision In Professional Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As some of the research above implies [22], [32], [34], [43], [47], [49], documents typically do not do work on their own; they are set in interaction with other documents (see the interaction in the GIP process described in Fig. 1).…”

Section: Research On Revision In Professional Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making the Pitch: Examining Dialogue and Revisions in Entrepreneurs' Pitch Decks

Spinuzzi

Nelson

Thomson

et al. 2014

IEEE Trans. Profess. Commun.

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“…Many of these interviews were discourse-based interviews (e.g. Odell & Goswami, 1982) during which Steve and Kathy watched video segments, with Kathy then commenting on their content, her learning goals, and how effectively she thought those goals were accomplished.…”

Section: Data Collection Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Capitalism, Risk, and Subjectification in an Early Childhood Classroom

Bialostok

Kamberelis

2010

Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood

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'New capitalism' has been characterized as an economic period in which insecurity, flux, and uncertainty exist in the workplace. Capitalism attempts to tame that uncertainty through risk taking. Taking risks has become what one must do with risk. Economic discourses of embracing riskthoroughly grounded in the ideologies of neoliberalism -are widely distributed into many noneconomic areas, including education. Risk taking is now understood as something everyone should valorize, a necessity for freedom and choice. Such discourses are appropriated and recontextualized into different domains, including the everyday interactions between young children and teachers. In this study the authors examine the discourse of a writing lesson taught by one early childhood teacher, focusing on how she used language to promote/produce her students as risk-takers. The authors argue that this teacher's attempt to promote/produce risk-takers belied her commitment to neoliberal ideologies and new modes of capitalism. They also argue that her efforts were dampened by tensions that she also seemed to embody/live -tensions between old and new forms of capitalism, between modernist and postmodernist notions of agency, between safety and risk, and between freedom and control. The outcomes of her work thus seemed to embody tensions in how her students came to understand choice, risk, and freedom.It is no coincidence that free-market economies, which encourage personal risk taking, have outlived centrally planned ones, which do not. (The Economist, 1994) Steve: A person who takes risks -what kind of person do you think that person is? Jackie (age 10): A good person.

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Book reviews: Writing in nonacademic settings

Cited by 18 publications

References 0 publications

Effects of topic knowledge on the allocation of processing time and cognitive effort to writing processes

Effects of topic knowledge on the allocation of processing time and cognitive effort to writing processes

Making the Pitch: Examining Dialogue and Revisions in Entrepreneurs' Pitch Decks

New Capitalism, Risk, and Subjectification in an Early Childhood Classroom

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