It seems to me that many in the process school oppose anything that looks
like an exercise. If it's not "authentic" writing--usually defined as
students writing to fulfill their own goals--then it's not real writing.

In this scheme, whether an exercise works or not is irrelevant. In fact,
some will say that whether process writing itself works or not is also
irrelevant. Or maybe they say it's not knowable--which is almost the same
as irrelevant.

Bill


>
>What I've never understood is why the process school generally ignored
>textual matters, even those pedagogies that worked to improve writing, like
>sentence combining.  The process school  licensed  teachers to throw out
>bad grammar handbooks and bad grammar teaching in general.  That was
>certainly a positive move.  And they certainly improved the teaching of
>writing in many ways.  But they threw out the baby with the bathwater, I
>think, licensing English teachers to avoid any instruction in textual
>matters.
>
>Max Morenberg
>Miami University
>Oxford, OH


William J. McCleary
3247 Bronson Hill Road
Livonia, NY 14487
716-346-6859