Teaching the Other Self: The Writer's First Reader

This piece was published as the lead article in the issue of CCC in which it appeared.

Work

The act of writing might be described as a conversation between two workmen muttering to each other at the workbench. The self speaks, the other self listens and responds. The self proposes, the other self considers. The self makes, the other self evaluates. The two selves collaborate: a prob- lem is spotted, discussed, defined; solutions are proposed, rejected, suggested, attempted, tested, discarded, accepted. (140)

The conference isn't a psychiatric session. Think of the writer as an apprentice at the workbench with a master workman, a senior colleague, stopping by once in a while for a quick chat about the work. (146)

Calls for Research:

The act of writing might be described as a conversation between two workmen muttering to each other at the workbench. The self speaks, the other self listens and responds. The self proposes, the other self considers. The self makes, the other self evaluates. The two selves collaborate: a prob- lem is spotted, discussed, defined; solutions are proposed, rejected, suggested, attempted, tested, discarded, accepted. (141)

We shall have to wait for perceptive and innovative research by teams of reading and writing researchers to document the complex kind of reading that is done during the writing process. (143)

Role of Student/Role of Teacher:

There is only one way the student can learn map-reading-and that is in the field. Books and lectures may help, but only after the student writer has been out in the bush will the student understand the kind of reading essential for the exploration of thinking. The teacher has to be a guide who doesn't lead so much as stand behind the young explorer, pointing out alternatives only at the moment of panic. Only after the writer/explorer has read one map and made the trip from meaning intended to meaning realized, will the young writer begin to trust the other self and have faith that it will know how to read other trails through other territories. (141-142)

The teacher brings the other self into existence, and then works with that other self so that, after the student has graduated, the other self can take over the function of teacher. When the student speaks and the student and the teacher listen, they are both informed about the nature of the writing process that produced the draft. This is the point at which the teacher knows what needs to be taught or reinforced, one step at a time, and the point at which the student knows what needs to be done in the next draft. Listening is not a normal composition teacher's skill. We tell and they lis- ten. But to make effective use of the other self the teacher and the student must listen together. (143)

Interacts w/ Composition Research:

The reading writer-the map-maker and map-reader-reads the word, the line, the sentence, the paragraph, the page, the entire text. This constant back-and-forth reading monitors the multiple complex relationships between all the elements in writing. Recursive scanning-or reviewing and previewing--during revision is beginning to be documented by Sondra Perl, Nancy Sommers, and others. But further and more sophisticated investiga- tion will, I believe, show that the experienced writer is able, through the writer's other self, to read what has gone before and what may come after- ward during the writing that is done before there is a written text, and during the writing that produces an embryonic text. (142)

I have been impressed by how effectively primary students, those in the first three grades in school, have a speaking other self. Fortunately this other self that monitors the writing process has been documented on tape in a longitudinal study conducted in the Atkinson, New Hampshire, schools by Donald Graves, Lucy Calkins and Susan Sowers at the University of New Hampshire. There the other self has been recorded and analyzed. The most effective learning takes place when the other self articulates the writing that went well. Too much instruction is failure-centered. It focuses on error and unintentionally reinforces error. (146)

Validates Voice/Input of Writers:

Many teachers of writing, especially those who are also teachers of litera- ture, are deeply suspicious of the testimony of writers about their own writing. It may be that the critic feels that he or she knows more than the writer, that the testimony of writers is too simple to be of value. But I have found in my own work that what students and professional writers say about their own writing process is helpful and makes sense in relation to the text. (143)

The more inexperienced the student and the less comprehensible the text, the more helpful the writer's comments [on his/her own draft]. Again and again with remedial students I am handed a text that I simply cannot understand. I do not know what it is supposed to say. I cannot discover a pattern of organization. I cannot understand the language. But when the writer tells me what the writer was doing, when the other self is allowed to speak, I find that the text was produced rationally. The writer followed misunderstood instruction, inappropriate principles, or logical processes that did not work. (144)

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This was a great essay and I was able to make all sorts of interesting connections to some of the ideas I've been kicking around with regard to metacognition, Beaufort, etc.

The basic thrust of this article is that we need to teach students how to read their own work as a more experienced writer would or does. I take this to to be, they need to learn how to watch themselves and make sense of their process as it is unfolding.

It's also interesting to note the way that Murray is increasingly aware of the existence of a "field" and of "scholars" who are studying the writing process. He references the work of Sonda Perl, Donald Graves, Nancy Sommers in this piece. Part of this may have been because he participated in the protocol analysis with Carol Berkenkotter. He writes:

There are now many trained writing researchers who can collaborate with the trained researcher in reading, for the act of writing is inseparable from the act of reading. (88-89)

But further and more sophisticated investigation will, I believe, show that the experienced writer is able, through the writer's other self... (emphasis added 90).

I note here that phrase "experienced writer" and I find a similarity with Beaufort's desire to understand what she calls expert writing performances and what skills/knowledge domains it takes to enact such performances.

When the student speaks and the student and teacher listen they are both informed about the nature of the writing process that produced the draft. (91)

He is encouraging the kind of communication ABOUT writing that we encourage when we ask students to write literacy narratives or autoethnographies about writing.