SQR 1

Uderstanding Composing

Summary

A New York City teacher named Anne took a course with twenty other teachers for research. They had an asiignment to compose on a topic. While composing the topic they had to recored themselves on a tape so they can see their own composing processes at work. At the same time of doing this assignment Anne discovered certian patterns. she noticed that writing appears to be recursive, and she had seen that some elements are esay to point out while others are not. One involves rereading little bits of discourse. A second feature is an item called up by the topic. The third is the feelings or non-verbalized preceptions that surround the words. The term used for this is "felt sense". Felt sense is unifying, it can even break apart, shift, unravel, and become something else. Anne also came across that when a topic is given to a writer the topic itself evokes a felt sense. She also noticed that the internal criterion is the ability to recognize what one needs to do or where to go is informed by felt sense. Writers seem to use internal criterion to guide them while planning, drafting, and revising. Another feature Anne came across was projecting structuring. projecting structuring involves much more than just imagination. Anne as well suggests that retrospective and projecting structuring are two parts of the basic process. So reducing the composing process to a simple linear scheme creates even more powerful ways of understanding composing.



Q. Read the 4 questions and the answers about "felt sense" in p.366 again. Recall how you felt/experienced the "newness" and "freshness" of experience when you were about to write.


R. I experienced the "newness" and "freshness" when I had to write an autobiography for my English teacher my senior year. When I first began the process I brainstormed and I had figured out pretty much everything I was going to write. Once I started I began to remember more things and events that happened in my life so I would add in whatever i remembered while I was writing. Then when I finished I went back to reread and as I was rereading i would remember more events that took place. So i had to go back and rewrite the whole thing again. The newness and freshness will most likely happen when anyone is writing. Someone may have to write on a certian topic and they may think that they know exactly what they are going to write about, but while they are writing their brain comes up with more ideas and thoughts to put into the story. Then when they go back to reread the story and the writer sees that they have gone off topic they have to fix up the story and write it all over again.