Examines the evidence for both the linguistic and rhetorical hypotheses about writers' planning and presents new research on episodic patterns within the writing process itself. Uses protocol analysis to look at the content and nature of writers' plans. (HOD)

Introduces a theory of the cognitive processes involved in composing in an effort to lay groundwork for more detailed study of thinking processes in writing. (RL)

Researchers and educators sometimes need to be reminded of the broad range of factors which have a crucial impact on how writers write. This paper offers a personal checklist of six factors which have been shown to be important, yet which are easy to forget in in heat of research because of the tendency to become immersed in a particular agenda…

Analyzes think-aloud protocols with native speakers of English learning French or German. Shows that as the writer's experience with the language increases, fluency increases, the average length of strings of words proposed between pauses or revision episodes increases, the number of revision episodes decreases, and more of the words proposed as…

Observing the composing processes of students working over real time in naturalistic settings, two exploratory studies asked: (1) What skills and assumptions do freshman and advanced writers invoke when they are searching for information to be used in writing? (2) What strategies and goals do students bring to a typical writing-from-sources task…

Relates how 16 "computer writers" felt about how they use the computer for writing tasks and reports on three experimental studies that compared the performance of college students reading texts displayed on a computer terminal screen and on a printed hard copy. Findings showed that visual/spatial factors influenced locational recall,…

A research project was undertaken to (1) identify the major cognitive processes involved in expository writing, (2) test a model of the organization of those processes, and (3) identify teachable aids that could be used by poor and average adult writers to improve their writing skills. Subjects were expert and novice student writers at…

Provides a model of the rhetorical problem, based on the study of writing as a problem-solving cognitive process; describes three major differences between good and poor writers revealed by a protocol analysis study. (DD)