She argues that the current traditionalists believe that reality is external, that the writing process is linear, and that “teaching editing is teaching writing”; she also asserts that the current traditional paradigm evolves out of literature “whose professional focus is on the written product” (78). She also states that, although scholarly work is now being written about process-oriented paradigm, “the overwhelming majority of college teachers in the United States are not professional scholars” as they do not get composition-specific training and are not involved in scholarly work such as reading published research and attending conferences (78-9).
The new paradigm, however, has the following principles (direct quote from pg. 86):
- It focuses on the writing process; instructors intervene in students' writing during the process.
- It teaches strategies for invention and discovery; instructors help students to generate content and discover purpose.
- It is rhetorically based; audience, purpose, and occasion figure prominently in the assignment of writing tasks.
- Instructors evaluate the written product by how well it fulfills the writer's intention and meets the audience's needs.
- It views writing as a recursive rather than a linear process; pre-writing, writing, and revision are activities that overlap and intertwine.
- It is holistic, viewing writing as an activity that involves the intuitive and non-rational as well as the rational faculties.
- It emphasizes that writing is a way of learning and developing as well as a communication skill.
- It includes a variety of writing modes, expressive as well as expository.
- It is informed by other disciplines, especially cognitive psychology and linguistics.
- It views writing as a disciplined creative activity that can be analyzed and described; its practitioners believe that writing can be taught.
- It is based on linguistic research and research into the composing process.
- It stresses the principle that writing teachers should be people who write.