Article
Writing Toward the End: Students’ Perceptions of Doneness in the Composition Classroom
Composition Studies
(2016)
Abstract
Process-based composition pedagogy has ignored the question of "doneness": the criteria used to decide when a piece of writing is complete. This article uses survey results from first- and second-year composition courses to challenge common beliefs about how students determine when writing assignments are sufficiently completed. We find that novice writers often relied on personal affective judgments, while advanced but still developing writers turned more to external markers. Students largely neglected processoriented revision tasks, and relied too heavily on lower-order strategies like proofreading. Students in both groups tended to rely on a single strategy for determining doneness, rather than incorporating personal, institutional, and process-based strategies in combination. Little awareness of the rhetorical exigencies of different writing situations was demonstrated. We emphasize the need for reiterating fundamental writing tasks in secondary or advanced writing courses, and we suggest strategies for incorporating a consideration of doneness into the composition classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Disciplines
Publication Date
Fall 2016
Citation Information
Mark Pedretti and Rob McAlear. "Writing Toward the End: Students’ Perceptions of Doneness in the Composition Classroom" Composition Studies Vol. 44 Iss. 2 (2016) p. 72 - 93 ISSN: 1534-9322 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/mark-pedretti/21/