The Discourse Change Of American Writing Teaching In The 20th Century

Writing is a complex human activity.The generation of writing text requires the author not only to coordinate the multiple cognition,but also to meet the requirements of the specific genre in the actual writing process,to meet the needs of readers in order to achieve the purpose of communication.First,writing is a form.Through the acquisition of structure,grammar and some independent skills,to complete the writing process;Secondly,writing is the collection of ideas and content.Many subjective ideas of the authors will continue to promote the writing behavior and the accumulation of writing content.At last,writing is the intermediary of individual participation in social interaction.The writer communicates with other writing individuals and societies through writing activities.The composition research is a flexible field of study that can be explained in the macro perspective:such as the relationship between writing and social literacy,the relationship between writing and the mass media,the mutual support between writing and literature;It also can be explained in the micro perspective,one-dimensionally analyzing the various elements involved in writing:such as the construction of writing identity,the classification of writing genre and its value,the organization of writing class and so on.If we want to summarize the whole American compositon theory,the concept "discourse change" could be used appropriately.In a broad sense,discourse can refer to all forms and categories of writing teaching;in the narrow sense,discourse refers to a language narrative form,that is,the language interpretation of writing theory and writing teaching.In this dissertation,compositon research will be placed in the broader theoretical and philosophical environment of social sciences and humanities,the writing teaching theory is divided into four research categories:process research,discourse research,cognition research and situation research.The process research originated in the United States in the 1960s.The researchers devoted to the analogy of write process and learning process,analyzed their homogeneity to build the process approach and the revisal strategy,the role of "reader" began to receive attention;The discourse research absorbed the essence of the traditional rhetoric theory,to explain the relationship between writing purpose and writing discourse,and how students learn new forms of discourse and rhetoric to construct rhetorical knowledge unconsiciously;The cognition research originated in the 1970s,Flower and Hayes's cognitive process writing model,marked that the process approach developing from the initial linear model into a cyclical model,the cognitive process model eventually became a teaching approach that has been adopted so far.The situation research is about study under the social and cultural context,such as writing research under the theory of cultural and historical activities,the collaborative writing research under the social construction theory and so on.The most intense contradiction in the field of writing teaching during the 20th century is the contradiction between "academic" and "personal",how to resolve this binary opposition is the core issue.Actually,the development trend of American writing theory is not clear enough,lots of theories coexist in the field:according to own preferences,the researchers choose their research orientation,wrilting teachers adhere to their own curriculum philosophy,theoretical development situates in the explosive"entropy increasing" stage now.But due to the generalization of the meaning of writing behavior and activities,compared with reading literacy,writing literacy occupies more porportion in the family,society and schools,which is expected to rise to become the core literacy among social literacies.