Professional Writing Studied: Authors’ Accounts of Planning in Document Production Processes

Abstract

Since the seventies, research into writing processes has been conceived as studying the cognitive processes of writers. They were observed when performing writing tasks, were asked to think aloud while at work and were interviewed post hoc about what they had done. On the basis of these data, writing was analysed and described as a special manifestation of problem solving behaviour. In 1981, Flower and Hayes referred to writing as ‘among the most complex of human mental activities’ (1981b, p. 39); their model of the cognitive processes going on during writing dominated the discussion about what writing is for a decade(see Fig. 1.1). At that time, they claimed that the task environment (that is, the writer’s conception of the rhetorical problem to be solved and the text produced so far) and the writer’s long-term memory (containing the topical and strategical knowledge the writer has at her disposal) influenced the actual writing processes. The writing process itself appeared to consist of sub-processes like planning, translating the plans in language and reviewing the language generated, and if necessary, revising it. Those sub-processes alternated and interleaved, which made writing into a recursive and iterative cognitive process. The alternation of mental events is directed by a monitor, a control structure that permits any sub-process to incorporate other sub-processes (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1986).