controlled comp for basic writers

Controlled Composition for Basic WritersAuthor(s): Donna GorrellReviewed work(s):Source: College Composition and Communication, Vol. 32, No. 3, Instruction: Problems,Techniques, Programs (Oct., 1981), pp. 308-316Published by: National Council of Teachers of EnglishStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/356193 .Accessed: 29/12/2011 11:06

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Controlled Composition for Basic Writers

Donna Gorrell

Teachers of basic writing who are searching for an effective method of teaching remedial writing, who have already given up first one basic grammar and then another, first one basic workbook then another, and first one basic rhetoric then another, may have overlooked a technique used successfully for many years in teaching English as a second language (ESL). This technique, called controlled, or guided, composition, is increasingly coming to favor in remedial classes. Similar to sentence combining in that students perform certain manipulations with pre-written material, but different in that the controls are tighter, controlled composition is used to promote (1) improved student writing, including increased fluency, error control, and sense of essay structure; and (2) greater student self-confidence and motivation to further improve writing. These benefits derive from daily practice of correct writing and from the assigned manipulations that tap previously acquired compe- tence in the language.

Controlled composition thus is used to teach the skills that grammar exercises attempt but rarely attain. By requiring copying together with specified lexical or syntactic manipulations, controlled composition requires student writers to employ what they already know about language but frequently fail to practice. It can be used effectively to deal with errors in tense markers, subject-verb agreement, punctuation, spelling, pronoun case and agreement, and sentence formation and boundary markers. It is particularly useful for students using standard written English as a second dialect or as a second language, and for students whose biggest writing problem is lack of attention to written forms. These latter students write as they talk and give little attention to their writing once it is on paper. But controlled composition, because it demands accuracy in both transcription and manipulation, focuses student attention on lexical and syntactic forms in the written language.

Instruction using this technique generally consists of a series of lessons requiring increasingly sophisticated language manipulations. Usually it begins

Donna Gorrell is administrator of English Proficiency Tests and Lecturer in English Composi- tion at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her text, Copy-Write: A Basic Course, will be published in 1982.

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by requiring students to produce an exact copy of a text; proceeds through exercises in shifting person, number, and tense; moves on to assigned modification and other lexical and syntactic manipulations; and finally, by means of controlled phrase and clause embeddings, introduces free sentence combining.

Controlled composition rests on the assumption that as students practice correct writing, making certain assigned manipulative and transformational changes, they will acquire greater proficiency in using English in its standard written form. Through a controlled progression of twenty-five to thirty-five steps or more, students perform competently in writing for perhaps the first time in their lives.

Controlled composition has many forms, but as described here it consists of short compositions that are rewritten with certain prescribed changes. Exact copy is usually the first assignment, in which a passage of about 150- 200 words is rewritten exactly as it appears-word for word, comma for comma, and capital letter for capital letter. The task may seem simple, but the passage demands care in transcribing such troublesome features as quotation marks, the apostrophe, and certain spelling demons-no mean achieve- ment for the basic writer. Moreover, a controlled composition must have one-hundred-percent accuracy. So if the first assignment is not copied exactly, it is returned to the student with errors circled (not corrected). The usual procedure calls for a repetition of the incorrectly executed assignment on a different passage. Kunz and Viscount, for example, have twelve passages that can be used for step one, exact copy,1 Paulston and Dykstra provide three,2 and Friedmann and MacKillop have seven.3 Thus, a student who makes an error in transcribing step one will repeat the step, making an exact copy of a different composition. A student in this way is saved the monotony of repeated work on the same passage while acquiring facility with the assigned step. My method differs somewhat in that I usually request corrections, not repetitions, thus enabling students to deal directly with their faulty transcriptions or manipulations. Only rarely do I find a student with such ex- treme difficulty in executing an assignment that I consider a second passage warranted. Many of the papers, as a matter of fact, can be returned to their writers with a welcome zero, meaning no errors.

Following the first assignment, exact copy, controlled composition proceeds to various lexical and syntactic manipulations. Frequently article change is the next step. In order to combat an apparent trend in student writing toward regularization of the indefinite articles to a universal "a," this lesson requires students to make certain lexical substitutions that precipitate article changes as well. A sentence reading "I am a nineteen-year-old fool," for example, is to be rewritten as "I am an eighteen-year-old fool." The instructions supply only the items to be substituted, yet at the same time warn that additional changes may need to be made in the articles. This lesson, in fact, is an appropriate one for preparing students for other unexpected changes that controlled composition sometimes requires. The exercise on article change is

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only a precursor of subsequent exercises that demand close attention, such as one requiring a number change from "my brother" to "my brothers," which involves not only pluralizing nouns but making pronoun and verb adjust- ments as well.

Several assignments are devoted to changes in person, number, and tense, with heavy emphasis on effective use of the third person. A typical assignment is to rewrite a first-person singular passage in third-person singular. In my materials this assignment begins:

Have you ever been caught in a tight spot when you needed a paper cup desperately but didn't have one? Well, whenever this happens to me, I rely on my knowledge of origami, the ancient Japanese art of paperfold- ing. ...

The instructions for rewriting the passage will read:

Rewrite the composition, changing the "I" to someone named Charles. Your second sentence will read: Well, whenever this happens to Charles, he relies on his knowledge of origami, the ancient Japanese art of paper- folding.

Students then rewrite the entire passage, maintaining the change from first to third person. If the teacher requires them to underline all substitutions, the time required for reading papers is greatly reduced, since the crucial forms can be examined at a glance and the remainder quickly scanned. Many students, as noted, can complete their assignments with total accuracy, and most of those who commit simple scribal errors will recognize them immediately when the papers are returned. Even some of the errors in essential forms- verb and pronoun inflections, for example-will be understood when circled, and the correction then easily made. When students need help, the teacher gives it.

Upon completion of each assignment at one-hundred-percent accuracy, the student goes on to the next one. The program is individualized, so each student moves quickly over familiar assignments and take more time with the troublesome ones, completing all the assignments at his or her own rate. To complete the twenty-six assignments of Write Me a Ream or the thirty-five that I use, students in a semester will average about two or three controlled writings per week.

As assignments progress, sentence manipulations and transformations both review and develop skills needed for mature writing and competent revision. Moreover, in the move from changes in person and tense to syntactic conversions and transformations, the similarities between controlled composition and sentence combining become increasingly evident. The aim of both techniques is to help students achieve increased syntactic maturity by means of artificial language manipulations. The main difference is that assignments in controlled composition, even the later assignments, are more directive than most sentence combining exercises are. In an exercise on converting post-

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modifying prepositional phrases into pre-modifying adjectives, for example, a pre-written passage is marked to direct specific conversions, as the instructions below indicate:

Change all underlined words to modifiers that can be placed before the word they modify. The first sentence [which in the passage began "The brain of a human is a mass of nerve tissue . ."] will begin as follows: "The human brain is a mass of nerve tissue...."

Similarly, in another of the final assignments the instructions designate certain sentences for combining:

Rewrite "Getting There-Three Ways." Combine each underlined sentence with one beside it at the point marked by a caret (A), using who, which, or that in place of the repeated word. The first sentence of the second paragraph will read: The oldest type of bridge is perhaps the beam, which was originally a log across a stream.

Some controlled composition materials end with assignments that specify certain combinations. There is a benefit, however, in providing for free combining in the controlled composition format. My last two assignments thus require students to rewrite the passages by "combining sentences in any way that seems appropriate and that leads to better-sounding, less choppy sentences." Completion of this course, therefore, not only introduces basic writers to sentence combining but also strengthens their independent writing.

Controlled composition is used with or without grammar instruction. Like sentence combining, it assumes a previous knowledge of language structure and forms, attained either through direct instruction or informal acquisition. And, also like sentence combining, it requires practice in the use of this knowledge. Thus, when students are required to derive appositives from relative clauses, they are given only an example and a minimum of instruction on the manipulative process. And when they are asked to convert a passage from first person singular to third person singular, they are given not a grammar lesson but a sample sentence illustrating how to follow instructions to rewrite the passage so that it describes the actions of another person.

While students doing controlled composition are not required to demonstrate facility with rules and terminology by passing tests or filling in exercises, they do sometimes profit from some instruction about the workings of language. For this reason instruction in grammar is frequently coordinated with controlled composition, so that students can better use this knowledge in self-generated writing. The methods of employing grammar with controlled composition vary from having no instruction in grammar at all to providing students with classroom assistance on problems in grammar to requiring that students use a separate handbook or workbook. For a unified course, some coordination between controlled composition and instruction in grammar is usually desirable; yet, since the need for supportive instruction varies, flexibility is requisite. While some students need extensive help with the

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early assignments on verbs, others require no assistance until they begin to rewrite a later passage, for example the one with direct quotations to be rewritten as indirect statements. The first group may need a thorough lesson on verb forms before successfully completing the verb-change assignments, while the second group may profit from a lesson and some practice on such procedures as dropping the quotation marks and preceding comma, adding "that" or "if" or something else (or nothing), converting verbs to past tense, and, frequently, changing pronouns. Such instruction can be done induc- tively, with the student or class analyzing the differences between examples of the two forms, then applying their knowledge to converting a few practice sentences, and finally rewriting the assigned passage.

I use a similar method to teach the combining of sentences by means of relative clauses. Since basic writers usually are unaware that a sentence can express more than one thought, the lesson begins with analysis of a sentence into its major propositions. For example,

My brother-in-law, who lives in Cincinnati, is a rich plumber. Broken down into the two major propositions, this sentence reads:

My brother-in-law is a rich plumber. My brother-in-law lives in Cincinnati.

From there, I discuss the substitution of the relative pronoun for the repeated noun. The next step presents the two-clause sentence without com- mas ("My brother-in-law who lives in Cincinnati is a rich plumber") and asks students how the two sentences are different. The students are led to devise a rule about restrictive and non-restrictive modifiers, to apply it in sentences they are asked to combine, and then to complete the controlled composition passage calling for relative clause combinations.

Such instruction can be done with a minimum of terminology. Fur- thermore, since the controlled composition method is to show, by means of examples, and then have students follow the model in making their conversions, many students understand, without the additional instruction, what needs to be done in the rewriting assignment. I think, therefore, that the best use for the terminology of grammar-with controlled composition or any remedial technique-is to introduce it only as needed, and when needed, for accurate writing. Furthermore, by practicing controlled composition, students who have missed, resisted, or misunderstood grammar all their lives are sur- prised to find that the system does make sense, that they already know most of its forms and structures, and that they can write even though they still can't recite the parts of speech.

This insight is one reason for the positive attitude toward writing that controlled composition encourages. Another is the frequency of error-free writing, an anomaly for students who have become accustomed to red-inked papers and failing grades in English. Gerald Dykstra and Christina Bratt Paulston, using the technique for teaching English as a second language, have reported favorable responses from their students, who showed positive at-

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titudes toward the technique and toward writing in general, accompanied by a sense of their progress and improvement that motivated them to continued improvement.4 Other reports are similar: Vivian Horn observes that the technique stimulated considerable student interest and productivity.5 Linda Ann Kunz and Robert R. Viscount, who used controlled composition in a job-training program in the banking business for recruits of varied back- grounds in New York City, report that their students were greatly encouraged by their production of error-free writing.6 And in studies conducted at Illinois State University, similar results have been found: students using controlled composition as a remedial writing technique do not demonstrate the negative, resentful, inhibited attitude toward writing that is usually consid- ered characteristic of the basic writer.7

The positive attitude associated with controlled composition derives not only from the students' ability to see tangible evidence of improvement in their writing but also from the predetermined content, which frees them from the demands of composing on paper, allowing concentration on form. Moreover, since the writings do not represent the student's own thoughts, error corrections are no threat to the creative ego and are more willingly accepted. Those teachers who use the technique attest enthusiastically to its effectiveness: students' attitudes toward writing are improved and errors are decreased.

Of course, copying the writing of others for the improvement of one's own skill is not a new technique. Roman schoolboys used exercises in imitation as common practice, and it has since had a long and respected history. Today modern rhetoricians propose similar exercises for their students. Edward P. J. Corbett, for example, suggests word-for-word copying from "admired au- thors," noting that the exercise is not as "brainless" as it might seem, being extremely effective in the teaching of style. The copying he recommends is done with the student's own hand, slowly and accurately, the completed transcription being read aloud as a final step so that the student can get a sense of the whole.8

Weathers and Winchester in Copy and Compose similarly observe that "Writing is a skill, and, like playing the violin or throwing a discus, it may be learned by observing how others do it-then by trying to imitate-carefully and thoughtfully-the way it was done."9 They advise that writing is a "civilized art that is rooted in tradition. It draws upon the experience and practice of the masters, and all successful experimentation and novelty in writing is ultimately based on techniques that have already been successfully demonstrated."'? Weathers and Winchester suggest that model paragraphs first be copied, physically, in one's own handwriting-thus expediting an understanding of "what is happening in the words."1' After having copied the model exactly-with every comma, dash, and period-the student is ready for imitation, writing his or her own passage after the manner and style of the original.

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The controlled composition materials I use in the classroom employ a similar "copy-write" format. A passage is used first as a "copy" assignment, to be transcribed exactly as written, or altered according to instructions. After a passage has been used as a controlled writing, it may further be assigned as a model for an original composition. As an example, the "Paper Cup" passage cited above would, after completion of the controlled writing, be used also as a model for a student-generated process paper. Exemplified on a page, essay structure and development cease to be mystical entities to basic writers; in- stead, they are tangibles to be observed and imitated. Thesis sentence and conclusion are seen to support one another, paragraphs look and act like unified paragraphs, transitions are observed in operation, specific details illus- trate ideas demonstrably. Thus, while the controlled-"copy"-composition enables students to improve their command of written language forms through diligent practice, the "write" assignment provides them with a structure for arranging their own ideas. Just as students can learn to write well- formed sentences without instruction in the rules for their production, they also can write well-formed essays without instruction in rhetoric. By imitating the structure and development of a model essay, they produce a composition themselves that develops an idea in a logically structured way.

Opponents of the technique mistrust it as being too behavioristic, a strictly stimulus-response type of learning that does not teach higher skills. And, to be sure, controlled composition does have elements of behaviorism. How else could one describe a system that requires students to copy someone else's writing, making certain assigned changes, and then give it to an evaluator for reinforcing approval or for an error count-one that spurs repeated efforts to achieve the "0 Errors" reward? But becoming conditioned to produce acceptable lexical, syntactic, and rhetorical forms is only one ele- ment in the learning process activated by controlled composition. Another is cognitive activity. While the student is carrying out the copying assignment, several cognitive, problem-solving processes are also taking place.

First of all, the student must meet the challenge of transforming "what is" to "what is asked for," from the passage as printed to the assigned revision. Some changes, like those in person and number, demand a modification of the deep structure of the sentence in order for the surface features to be accurately rewritten. Other changes can be carried out only with a thorough understanding of the deep structure of the model sentences. The underlying meanings in the active/passive transformations, as a matter of fact, require a degree of cognitive involvement that for basic, remedial writers frequently reaches the upper limit of their capabilities.

For any passage, no matter what the kind or degree of deep structural involvement, the controlled rewriting process demands a cognitive mediation between a student's customary writing performance and the desired performance. The practice of correct writing by individuals who never write cor- rectly is therefore not a mindless repetition but a resolution of conflict at

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each point of difference between the student's habitual performance and the target performance. A student in rewriting a passage from past tense to pres- ent, for example, must not only mentally alter the deep-structural time refer- ence but also resolve the differences in surface features between the required verb forms and those he or she would ordinarily use. I submit that both processes require cognitive involvement and that controlled composition thus utilizes not only conditioned learning but also essential cognitive processes.

This utilization of both learning modes is characteristic of all transformational strategies. At least so suggests James W. Ney in a 1973 article in Col- lege Composition and Communication. Referring to the work of Jerome Bruner, he relates controlled composition and other transformational strategies to both "outside-in" learning, which depends on modeling, imitation, and rein- forcement, and "inside-out" learning, in which concept formation structures knowledge and perception.12 Bruner himself in The Relevance of Education de- clares that no theory of development is complete without attention to both modes.13 Furthermore, Noam Chomsky in his critical review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior plainly acknowledges the importance of conditioning as well as cognition for language acquisition.14

Speculations about the learning processes underlying the practice of controlled composition are only tentative. As a teaching strategy, this technique, though used effectively in a limited way for many years, still remains an un- explored territory for empirical and theoretical research. Explanations are hypothetical, and basic writing teachers have only the word of those who have used the strategy that it does decrease errors, increase fluency, and, by increasing self-confidence in writing and serving as a model for original writing, improve overall writing quality.

Controlled composition for basic writers is not easy-not for the student, not for the teacher. But students who fail grammar tests despite thorough instruction and whose writing is "but a line that moves haltingly across the page"15 find that they can meet the challenges of manipulating and transforming sentences in context, and, thus encouraged, confidently express their own ideas in writing.

Notes

1. Linda Ann Kunz and Robert R. Viscount, Write Me a Ream, Teachers Handbook (New York: Teachers College Press of Columbia University, 1973), p. 7.

2. Christina Bratt Paulston and Gerald Dykstra, Controlled Composition in English as a Second Language (New York: Regents, 1973).

3. Thomas Friedmann and James MacKillop, The Copy Book: Mastering Basic Grammar and Style (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980).

4. Gerald Dykstra and Christina Bratt Paulston, "Guided Composition," English Language Teaching, 21 January, 1967), 136.

5. Vivian Horn, "Using the 'Ananse Tales' for Composition," TESOL Quarterly, 8 (March, 1974), 37.

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6. Kunz and Viscount, p. 7. 7. Donna K. Gorrell, "Writing Apprehension: (1) Combating Fear of Failure," Illinois Eng-

lish Bulletin, 67 (Winter, 1980), 11-12. 8. Edward P. J. Corbett, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student, 2nd ed. (New York: Ox-

ford University Press, 1971), pp. 496-97, 510-511. 9. Winston Weathers and Otis Winchester, Copy and Compose: A Guide to Prose Style (En-

glewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall, 1969), p. 1. 10. Weathers and Winchester, p. 2. 11. Weathers and Winchester, p. 2. 12. James W. Ney, "Lessons from the Language Teacher: Cognition, Conditioning, and Con-

trolled Composition," College Composition and Communication, 26 (May, 1973), 182-87. 13. Jerome S. Bruner, The Relevance of Education, ed. Anita Gil (New York: W. W. Norton,

1971), p. 119. 14. Noam Chomsky, review of Verbal Behavior by B. F. Skinner, Language, 35 (January-

March, 1959), 43. 15. Mina P. Shaughnessy, Errors and Expectations (New York: Oxford University Press,

1977), p. 7.

Moving Between Research and Practice in Writing

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