Key Questions
- What makes an effective piece of writing?
- What are the different stages of writing?
- Why should teachers be concerned about process writing?
- What classroom activities can you do to activate process writing?
What is Process Writing?
Throughout a learner’s school career, they will need to complete hundreds of pieces of writing and will develop their skill at producing different written pieces.
Consider the question below. Click on your answer.
The concept of process writing is to see writing as an entire creative process, involving many different stages. There is a shift from a teacher who sets a writing topic and then receives the final product for corrections and marking, to a teacher who is involved in all parts of the writing process.
CAPS suggests a very specific writing process that all learners should go through when engaging in essays or transactional texts.
Process writing fits very well into each stage.
Click on the numbers on the image below to discover what each stage in the writing process entails.
After analysing the stages of process writing, place these in the right order below.
Why use process writing?
Research has shown that a sole focus on grading the writing piece at the end with a strong focus on language and grammar does not improve either grammar or writing fluency (White & Arndt, 1991).
Further research (Kroll, 1990) also demonstrates that feedback throughout the process is not only more useful but yields more benefits than written feedback on the text at the end of the process.
How do their roles change?
What does it look like in the classroom?
Go through the examples of process writing and decide which stage of the writing process they belong to.
The stages of process writing
Much like the CAPS writing process, process writing has stages – three stages to be exact.
Pre-writing
The teacher stimulates learners’ creativity and encourages them to identify HOW they will approach the writing topic.
The focus is on the flow of ideas and not writing. At this point, the teacher contributes and gives feedback on the ideas generated.
Focusing ideas
This stage is where the learners solely focus on writing the content.
Learners should not be worried about form or language. Rather, they should assess each other on whether the content makes sense. Does it flow?
Evaluating and editing
At this point, the writing is adapted for the readers.
The learners focus on form and creating the finished piece of work.
The teacher assists with any error correction.
Evaluate where each stage of the CAPS writing process fits into the concept of process writing.
Acknowledging problems
Writing is a long and complex process. This can often lead to learner frustration. It is important for teachers to provide a supportive environment and to be patient in the process. This does mean that more time is spent writing in class, but as the next unit will show, not all of this time is spent writing, so teachers can also work on developing other skills during the process.
At the end of each module, you will need to reflect on your journey. Start now by considering any problems you can potentially foresee and how these can be solved.
The next unit looks at modelling these in a classroom. Mark this unit as complete to move on.
