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Testing Out the User’s Model

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Modelling Written Communication

Part of the book series: Methodos Series ((METH,volume 8))

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Abstract

One of the stages of Franck’s modelling process is testing out the applied model against real-life situations or against data. This validates – or signals further modifications to – the applied model, which can then, in turn, be used to validate the theoretical model. This chapter shows how the testing process, carried out in over 40 video protocols of student composing, validated the user’s model as far as the systemic operation of composing was concerned, but showed up flaws in categorising the social aspects of composing, more specifically, how to portray the impact of local academic criteria on – and in – the composing system. The model in fact displayed the same weaknesses as the approach on which it was initially based, the process approach. This chapter, then, offers a brief description and critique of the process approach, and shows why other more socially conscious approaches were not seriously considered as options for modifying the user’s model. The chapter also describes the video protocol method used to reconstruct composing, as well as the depiction of the systemic operation of composing in colour-coded graphs.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    It must be remembered that all of the process researchers were using the term paradigm in the sense of disciplinary matrix (Kuhn 1962:182) rather than comprehensive world view (1962:175), the sense in which it tends to be used in the field of Education (notably by curriculum theorists such as Grundy 1987 and Schubert 1986). To suggest that there is a disciplinary matrix for the field of written composition is clearly unwise, as the field of written composition is characterised by diversity (see North 1987:iii) rather than by a shared set of values and beliefs about composition and how it should best be taught. Moreover, it is difficult to see why the process approach, while popular, should be given a position of prominence in a field which was then, and still is dominated by form-based approaches (e.g. current-traditional rhetoric in the 1980s and social constructionism in the 1990s, as well as the postmodern approaches based on the perception of discourse as text). Yet Young (1978), Hairston (1982) and Spack’s (1984) claim that the advent of the process approach involved a paradigm shift was in fact justified, as the focus shifted (at least momentarily) towards a consideration of writing as interaction between participants, that is the communicative function of writing was being emphasised for the first time.

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    Deirdre Pratt

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Pratt, D. (2010). Testing Out the User’s Model. In: Modelling Written Communication. Methodos Series, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9843-6_5

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