Reviews of writing coaching programmes

How can we reconceptualise writing instruction from the perspective of deliberate practice and multiple articulation? The good news is that many if not most writing programmes already include components that could be considered deliberate practice. What they appear to lack is a focus at building up larger mental representations at multiple levels of articulation.

There are very few academic writing programmes that take a structured approach to the development of writing skills. In this section, I will briefly consider the Process approach which has been gaining popularity and has generated some research evidence [ref] . I will then compare two structured approaches to coaching writing and will offer a suggestion for a possible programme based on insights from all three working towards the idea of building up larger mental representations. Unfortunately, this section will of necessity be speculative since there is little evidence base to draw on.

Process

The most common approach to teaching writing is Process [ref Coffin et al 2013]. The focus on the process of writing is consonant with deliberate practice. However, there is no coherent programme of study associated with Process. It appears to consist of its main philosophy and an eclectic mix of instructional activities. Many of these activities would form a core part of any instructional programme but there is no sense of progression across levels of articulation. It is not surprising that a meta analysis [ref] showed only modest improvements overall and no improvement for struggling writers.

The one crucial element of the Process approach is it emphasis on early, actionable feedback. Feedback both by instructors and peers is essential for the development of writing skills. Here the process literature and wealth of practical knowledge provides an invaluable resource to anybody wanting to enhance their deliberate practice with more relevant feedback.

In short, it is without doubt that any deliberate practice schema will include a significant number of techniques from the process approach but these would need to be structured around an individualised course of progression as the developing writers continue to build up chunks of increasing size across multiple levels of articulation.

Writing process reingineering - Basboll

The cumulative and habit based approach promoted by the writing coach Thomas Basbol is an eight-week programme that focuses on building writing habits but also on practicing the form of the paragraph built around a topic sentence.

The writer is advised to schedule a block of time (30 minutes) and commit to write and edit one paragraph during that time. To facilitate this, the writer should construct a topic sentence the evening before.

For Basboll the paragraph is a foundational unit of academic writing and through this process, it is possible for writers to accumulate enough writing to become productive.

The writing process reingineering assumes that all other writing skills are available and the writer has requisite fluency in writing academic language and writing in general. All that the programme offers is the development of stamina.

Frameworks for Academic Writing - Poulter

Book: Frameworks for Academic Writing (Poulter)

Frameworks for academic writing is very much based around the idea of building up chunks or mental representations at the various level of articulation of the writing process. It outlines patterns at the level of phrase, clause and paragraphs, and it encourages trainee writers to apply them to their own writing through practice. It very much goes beyond the simple 'academic English' paradigm by focusing on larger constructs but at the same time not simply limiting itself to genre forms such as essay or general compositional structures like the paragraph or topic sentence. Each component of the written whole is presented through a series of prompts from which templates are constructed illustrated by an example of use.

The point that [insert author’s last name] seems to be making in this [insert type of selection] is [insert what you think the message or point is here].

The words in bold provide the basic structure for the writing assignment while the parts in square brackets are expected to be replaced by the trainee writer's own words. It is important, that the amount of text the student is expected to write is on the order of words to sentences.

But what brings the Frameworks for Academic Writing even closer to the principles of deliberate practice is reframing the role of the writing teacher and the purpose of the writing sessions. The origin of the idea is described in the introduction:

One breakthrough idea that emerged from listening to students was the request to have writing teachers present while drafting their papers. They wanted to do their drafting during class.

This practice allowed the role of the teacher being framed as that of a coach:

During one of these “writing with the teacher present” classes, a student said that these classes were more like athletic practice than class. We were practicing while the coach was around to break steps down into smaller and smaller elements and to help us learn the skills “in real time.”

POWER by Patricia Goodson

Becoming an Academic Writer: 50 Exercises for Paced, Productive, and Powerful Writing

How to write a sentence by Stanley Fish

Fish's book cannot be considered a programme for writing instruction but its advice is very much one of deliberate practice.

BASE: Academic writing capabilities framework by Helen Sword

Focuses on writing advice by analysing multiple author interviews and questionnaires. Goes againt the singular you should advice by reframing it as you may... Possibly 'you may want to try'.

Introduces the BASE framework which could be useful outside - similar to engagement frameworks - also very much deliberate practice compatible. Behavioural, Artisanal, Social and Emotional.

Artisanal was the weakest section - not because of Sword but because of the poor quality of the self reflection by the subjects (cf. King).

Behavioural and Social sections are most useful - social - writing with others, for others and among others is a particularly useful distinction.

Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write by Helen Sword