Flower and Hayes

Linda Flower and John R. Hayes explored the series of decisions and choices (the cognitive process) of a writer during the writing process.



The first major point of the article is the examination of stage models of writing. Ideas about pre-writing, writing and re-writing were explored. Flower and Hayes referred back to the article by Nancy Sommers and agreed that it appears that most students don't view these as separate tasks but instead they seem to flow together. Most theorists have been unable to answer the question how do good ideas relate to good prose.

Flower and Hayes' cognitive process model is one way that might help answer this. Understanding the "task environment", writing process specific to an individual and the "long term memory" of a writer are all parts of this process.



Task environment was a new term to me. It is defined as anything outside of the writer's skin such as the problem/assignment and the text itself (277). From observation the authors remark that things which seem less important, such as the title of the paper, can put invisible barries on how a student will write their paper.





Long term memory as it applies to this article is the knowledge a person has stored which might possibly be useful for the assignment they are completing. Outside resources such as books can contribute to long term memory. Knowledge about the audience is also categorized under long term memory, I thought this might fall under a task environment since the audience is usually outside of the writers skin (unless writing a personal, private diary). Is the audience referred to in this piece audience addressed or audience invoked? I'm not entirely sure how to answer that question but it is something I'd like to think about over time.



While not completely rejecting the notions of prewriting, writing and rewriting it seems that the writing process is examined in a slightly different way by Flower and Hayes. Concepts such as planning, translating, reviewing and "The Monitor" are taken into account here. Planning is an internal task where the writer might generate ideas and organize them before writing them down. Setting goals for a paper is part of the planning process which likely impacts the way an author would organize his or her paper. At this point the writer is working on the process only for himself. Translating is when the writer must also consider the conventions of the English language and the audience he/she is writing for. Reviewing has two subpoints, evaluating and revising. Further translation may occur during this stage but it isn't inherent to this step. Flower and Hayes say that what is unique to this step is that it might interrupt any other part of the writing process. Another new term introduced in this article was "The Monitor". It seems to be an internal quality that writers have. It filters ideas in and out but also makes sure that the process isn't simply bogged down in goal setting or translating or at any other point. A writer doesn't create "the monitor" it seems to be a part of being a writer but it can be fine tuned.

Understanding this process is a tool for researchers to pose more questions about the writing process. One might be: How do these different actions interact with each other, how are they organized? The authors suggest that there may be a hierarchy at work but that the hierarchy isn't fixed. While they had previously laid out a possible order for the process the fact that reviewing can take place at any time and that "The Monitor" is constantly present suggests that the hierarchy described isn't incredibly rigid. In fact the goals of the writing process may change the way the process takes place. Process goals and context goals are distinguished. Process goals relate to the way the writer plans to carry out the different tasks in writing while context goals are what the writer means for the finished product to do (convey?). Context goals are also flexible as a writer works.

Pages 291-296 elaborate on 3 different types of context goals 1) explore and consolidate, 2) state and develop and 3) write and regenerate. These goals are fairly straight forward and since it doesn't seem like part of the assignment to go into elaborate detail on them I'll hold off. If more questions/interest come out of further discussion of these distinctions I will look back at this section.