Strategy and Writing Instruction

Understanding individual differences in strategic skills can help teachers be more effective in teaching the now-traditional elements of "process writing," including three broad phases: prewriting, drafting, and revising. Prewriting is the planning phase. Drafting and revising are the phases in which students monitor and evaluate their own work relative to the purpose or goal of the writing (Hallenbeck, 1995).

Many students with learning difficulties have trouble at the beginning stages of planning or strategizing. They may plunge into a task without having all the information needed or they may approach the task in a random fashion (Bardine, 1997; MacArthur, 1996). Students with problems at this level may write on subjects that are totally unrelated to the topic. Others may understand the purpose for writing but have trouble organizing and structuring information so that it can be used for a specific purpose, such as telling a story or supporting a point of view (Zipprich, 1995).

Students who have problems with the modeling phase of strategic planning do not think through an assignment. Often they merely plan for it in the way they have approached previous assignments, not seeing aspects unique to the current situation. They cannot anticipate the possible shortcomings or stumbling blocks inherent in their plans (Butler, 1995). Additionally, they do not have a clear sense of how much time their plan will take. They either allow too much time or (more frequently) develop a large-scale plan that cannot be accomplished adequately in the time allotted.

Some students can devise a plan for solving a problem or completing an assignment but are unaware of points during the implementation when the plan needs to be modified. They develop a plan that will work "in theory," but do not monitor effectively enough to notice when conditions change and an additional step or another approach is needed (Meltzer, 1991). When writing, students may not incorporate new information into an argument. They may not see that changing the order of two paragraphs would enhance an argument.

Alternately, some students may deviate from a plan and not be aware that they have done so. Other stimuli in the environment may attract their attention, and soon they are going off in a different direction. In addition, they may have trouble allowing sufficient time for each step of the plan. Either they become bogged down in a fact-finding/research phase and never get to the actual writing of the paper or, more frequently, they leave the entire project until the very last moment or forget to even begin it until other students are handing their work in during class.

Finally, students may not be aware that what they have produced does not meet the requirements of an assignment. Certainly, an inadequate plan and ineffective monitoring will result in less than optimal results. Students may not have the skills to judge the quality of their work or to analyze how effectively it meets the goals that were established initially. Without this reflective analysis, students cannot revise the current assignment (Hallenbeck, 1995; Wong, Butler, Ficzere, & Kuperis, 1996).