Real Time Studies in Writing Research: Progress and Prospects

Abstract

The last half of the 20th century provided an opportunity for the explosive growth and development of research on writing. From a product-oriented to a process-oriented approach, new theoretical models of writing emerged. Following this shift in conceptual frameworks, new methods of investigations were applied in research. However, in the context of this development, careful analyses of the literature demonstrate clearly that systematic, theoretically-driven empirical research focused on writing has been barely measurable compared with research on speech production and language comprehension. Methods presented in this book illustrate how the study of writing processes is becoming ever more tractable with the use of real time methods that take advantage of their unobtrusive recordings of the writing process.