JAC Volume 4

Uncertainty about theory and methodology is probably the rule rather than the exception among, us teachers of writing. Consequently, we respond favorably to research—sometimes too favorably, or at least too quickly. For example, Kolln presents convincing evidence that the research then available did not warrant this famous statement in an NCTE report in 1963: “the teaching of formal grammar has a negligible, or because it usually displaces some instruction in actual composition, even a harmful effect on the improvement of writing.”¹

Christensen, for one, questioned the validity of the statement:

Such warning voices notwithstanding, the report was widely accepted. Kolln summarizes what happened:

If, as Kolln claims, the available research did not warrant the statement in the first place, and if the report “effectively turned back the clock on grammar research,”⁴ then we still lack reliable information on the “relation” Christensen suspected between grammar and composition.

The case of the outline is strikingly similar to that of grammar.

Emig’s pilot study “revealed no correlation between the presence or absence of any outline and the grade a student receives evaluating how well organized that theme is.”⁵ The study also revealed that only 36.7 percent of the total sample of themes “were accompanied by a plan, defined . . . as any schema related to the composition of the theme, prior to that theme. Of these plans, nine (or 8.3 percent) qualified as formal outlines." ⁶

So?
Emig herself refers to the “very scant data”⁷ upon which her findings were based. Moreover, it should be noted that the findings were the result of a quite casually conceived study, rather than of a well-designed experiment. For instance, there was no control group, and the sample was small and atypical:

Coe, for example, refers to “Professor Janet Emig’s classic study”⁹ and later in his textbook, an advanced rhetoric, advises the student to “outline later”¹⁰—after, that is, writing ad libitum in search of what it was he or she was trying to say.

While Emig’s study did not generate any further research on outlining per se, it does seem related to, perhaps seminal in, research into the linearity and/or recursiveness of the composing process; glimpses of the connection occur here and there. For example, Hairston, in her rhetoric for advanced composition, gives “The Traditional Outline” about one page’s worth of discussion,¹¹ but does not indicate the basis of her decision. However, her reasons are made clear enough in a separate article wherein she maintains that “we [composition teachers] are poised for a paradigm shift ” based on “controlled and directed research on writers’ composing processes.”² “So far,” she says, “only a small amount of data have [sic] been collected, and the inferences we can draw are necessarily tentative.”¹³ Neverthe­less, she hazards a couple of “truths.”

I must confess that I am surprised. In the first place, this seems to be another deplorable example of jumping to a conclusion before all the evidence is in. Besides, either I am not a practicing writer or Hairston’s assertions are too broad by far. I do not doubt there is truth in them. For example, Coe states that “John Ciardi . . . uses outlines when he writes essays but not when he writes short stories.”¹⁵ This appears to mean Ciardi writes linearly or recursively, depending on what kind of writing he is doing. But Hairston’s paradigm shift, judging from her description of the composing processes of “most writers,” would virtually exclude linear writing, and thence the teaching of techniques for linear writing. Coe tends in the same direction: he dismisses the procedures (he calls them formulas) of linear writing as being “particularly suitable for writing research reports, theses, and dissertations.”¹⁶ The implication is that linear writing is academic writing—for academic purposes.

But Selzer reports on the composing processes of “an experienced engineer in Chicago who spends roughly half of his time on the job writing various proposals, reports, and correspondence.”’⁷

The exclamation point at the end of the following quotation expresses another unexpected finding: “Nelson spends up to 80% of his time inventing and arranging!”¹⁹ Why Seizer’s surprise? Well, as he says, “Several students of the writing process have argued that arrangement is less important to writers than some teachers believe.”²⁰ Several? His footnote I cites one:

I have argued previously that “[m]uch of the confusion and inadequacy in the teaching of composition stems . . . from the teacher’s failure to make distinctions between kinds of writing.”²⁴ And if research into the composing process continues long enough (we seem prone to accept minimal findings as the last word), I suspect we will discover that linearity or recursiveness are characteristic of the kind of writing being undertaken. Furthermore, we should not neglect the question of whether linear composing is just a personal style or a learned skill. I suspect it is the latter—in any mode; Frost claimed somewhere that he wrote “Stopping by Woods” in a single, brief sitting. Consider: a sculptor or architect cannot afford the luxury of not getting it right the first time; planning is all. (Ultimately, recursiveness or linearity may be a question of character). In any case, so far as outlining is concerned, research focusing on whether writers do or do not make an outline can yield information of only limited pedagogical usefulness. The far more important question is whether rigorous training in outlining can enhance the ability of the student to compose linearly—which is to say, efficiently.

Let me make myself clear: I believe that the outline is an exceedingly useful tool for the preparation or analysis of writing which presents a line of thought in a logical—that is, linear and sequential—way; it has very limited usefulness—if any at all—for the preparation or analysis of fiction, poetry, drama, personal reminiscences, and the like.

Emig, in more recent work, has perhaps pointed the way toward our understanding why a certain compositional strategy may be appropriate to one kind of writing but not to another kind: "The current hypothesis about the brain that seems most generative for studies about the writing process is that the two hemispheres . . . have specialized, though not wholly unique, functions.”²⁵ She quotes Robert Ornstein’s The Psychology of Consciousness as follows:

Emig reports that she and a colleague

*

Karrfalt gives the following example of “a paragraph which shows, in addition to horizontal structure, vertical structure of both kinds—coordinate and subordinate.”²⁹

 

 

[D]      1) He (the child) (because foreknowledge is so little a part of him) is able to look at the thing (the certain event he had foreknowledge of) it­-self.
                        

[1]      a) The event (he had foreknowledge of and is able to look at in itself) reaches him (the child) radiant with magical causes but not yet trapped in sufficient cause.

II. Tolstoy does not, as many do, achieve this freshness (ex­perienced in a child-like way by the author) by trans­forming the reader into a never-never land; on the contrary, his fictional mode is realistic.

A.  (The mode is realistic because) the people in his (Tols­toy’s) novel appear and behave like possible people in the world we live in.

 

*revives in the original.

*The original speaks of “transforming the reader into a never-never land.”

One further reduction yields the following conventional outline.

Thesis:    War and Peace engenders in the reader a special enchantment like that of the child, in spite of the fact that Tolstoy’s fictional mode is realistic, and that realism—unlike other literary modes—is subject to the encroachment of mediocrity.

I.     War and Peace engenders in the reader a special amaze­ment like that of a child.

A.   A child’s amazement is special because he does not expect the unexpected.

B.   A child’s amazement is special because he does not doubt that a certain event had to happen.

C.   A child’s amazement is special because foreknowl­edge of what will happen does not prevent him from seeing what happens in a fresh way.

[In the original, the transition at this point turns on the words, “this freshness.”]                                                                              

II.    Tolstoy’s fictional mode in War and Peace is realistic.

A.   The setting is realistic in that the reader is not transported to a never-never land.

B.   The characterization is realistic in that the people in the novel appear and behave like possible people in the world we daily live in.

[In the original, the transition here seems to occur at “His achievement is the greater . . ."]

III.    Realism—unlike other literary modes—is subject to the encroachment of mediocrity.

What the exercise demonstrates is that the outline is a powerful tool for the analysis of discourse—and also, indeed, for judging it.

Both the Karrfalt analysis and the Nold and Davis analysis are descriptive but not valuational. But the outline analysis forces the question of whether or not the paragraph is a successful one, and the further question of whether parts of it even make any sense. For example, Karrfalt’s “horizontal struc­ture” and Nold and Davis’s “superordination” are demonstrably related—at least in this instance—to the probability that the subject matters of three paragraphs have been dealt with in one. Furthermore, we may readily observe that the statement at III is unsupported; indeed, it is probably unsupportable. Both of the other models investigate surface structure only. In contrast, the outline forces consideration of deep structure, namely, the author’s intended meaning, and the relation of ideas one to another in a coherent or incoherent, logical or illogical, way.

I have not made, here, the usual argument for outlining as a tool for pre-writing; let me mention, however, that I believe the outline is a valuable, overlooked (or discarded) tool of in­vention. But that point cannot be developed here.

*

What Barritt and Kroll call “an alternative [to the be­havioral] tradition in psychology,”³⁴ namely, the cognitive-developmental orientation, can perhaps provide us with a valuable theoretical context for much future research on out­lining (and other areas of composition as well). “[Cognitive-developmental] psychology focuses on the way a person knows the world, on ‘mind’ rather than behavior. . . . The position is developmental in that it emphasizes the sequential stages through which mature intelligence emerges.”³⁵ The authors comment that the counting and measuring strategies of be­havioral psychology “can lead to the study of the measurable alone, often to the unfortunate neglect of the significant.”³⁶

The significant question about outlining is not whether students can be observed making an outline. (I can outline quite effectively in my head; many of my students learn to do the same thing—in, for example, the situation of taking a long essay test). No, the really important question is what effect outlining (or grammar) has on the way the student knows the world, on 'mind,’ on the emergence of mature intelligence. (The same question needs to be asked of alternate strategies—say, Macrorie’s Third Way. Vopat, in an account of his defection from Macrorie-ism, reaches this chilling conclusion: “. . . I feel many students in a student-centered program regress rather than mature”).³⁷

But prior to research, we must be sure that students (the subjects of the research) have been taught outlining. Real out­lining entails a rigorous examination of the content at hand, and the arrangement of that content into a logical system of coordinated and subordinated parts; none of the content is to be “outdented” or “superordinated.” Real outlining is not merely a mechanical arrangement of letters and numbers. Real out­lining cannot be done after the paper is written.

Sad to say, most of my advanced students—they’ve been through high school English and freshman comp—are sur­prised to learn that one does not make an outline by proceeding from I. to A. to 1. to 2. to 3. to B. and so forth, but, rather, that one identifies all of the major points (Roman numerals), then all the sub-major points (capital letters), et cetera. They are sur­prised to learn that one may change one’s mind about where a certain point belongs. They are surprised to learn that making their first really good outline takes a long time and a lot of sweat.

The point is that outlining has not been adequately tested to date, nor can it be until it is adequately taught. Once thoroughly learned, outlining is an invaluable tool for preparing to write on subjects of a logical nature and for analyz­ing writing of like kind. Or so my students tell me. They say their grades on essay tests rise by a full point, sometimes by two points. They say they approach writing in a more organized, more confident, manner. They even say they read differently, with attention to form as well as content (and discover that some of their textbooks are poorly written).

Not scientific evidence? Surely not—from the behavior­ist perspective. But perhaps self-reporting is a major way by which we can begin to understand the ways of knowing, the constituent elements of ‘mind,’ and the stages leading toward mature intelligence.