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THREE APPROACHES TO COMPOSITION STUDIES
Today, we will discuss a chronological outline of the main stages in the development of the modern understanding of writing from the product-based approach to the rhetorical context view and the emergence of social constructionist genre theory.
1 Product-based approach to composition
The primary focus of composition studies before the 1970s was to examine finished text using textual (Faigley, 1986) or product-based approaches. It was, essentially, a period that emphasized skill development in the superficial structuring of written texts (Dixon, 1967). What these textual studies tended to overlook was that in so-called 'good' writing, form always follows function (Barabas, 1990; Grider, 1993).
Referring to Halliday, Bazerman (1988) underlines that "linguistic features are only surface realizations of larger social activities" (p. 300 ) and, therefore, instead of focusing on textual features only, one must account for the functional emergence of the text regularities to understand what purpose they serve. According to Barabas (1990),
"the quality of a text can no more be judged by its structural features alone than can the quality of a building" (p. 37).
By the 1970s researchers had recognized, however, that the singular focus on the final product could offer only a narrow view of writing which did not consider writers as in any way integral to the overall development of writing ability. Therefore, writers needed to be "more prominently situated when examining composing development since writers themselves were responsible for generating written texts" (Sloat, 1994, p. 10).
This shift in the view of the writer's role in composing led to the emergence of a new

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2 Process approach to composition
According to the process approach to composition (1970s), the single most important aspect of writing is not the text but rather the act of composing itself (Barabas,
1990). Particularly attractive is the ability of this view to provide a systematic basis for a new pedagogy which can help students to make decisions and to choose strategies necessary in the course of writing, rather than simply describe faults and errors in the written product. This change in thinking caused researchers and theorists to place a greater emphasis on the thought processes of writers . Those researchers who focused their studies on examining writing as a process (for example, Berkenkotter, 1981; Emig,
1971; Flower & Hayes, 1981; Perl, 1979; Pianko, 1979) have repeatedly demonstrated that the act of composing is dynamic, interactive, and complex and is comprised of planning, writing, and revising operations (Barabas, 1990; Freedman & Medway,
1994a; Grider, 1993; Sloat, 1994).
The process view sees the act of composing the text as the most important aspect of writing . The result of this view is that writing remains essentially a private, egocentric matte r. Writing is considered more as a form of communing with oneself rather than communicating with others (Barabas, 1990; Grider, 1993; Sloat, 1994). The process model pictures the ideal writer totally isolated from the social world.
It should be recognized that even today the images of a solitary author inspire a great deal of what goes on in writing classes (Cooper, 1989).
Both these views -- the product and the process -- fail to account for how social contexts influence meaning and affect the way a writer approaches a writing task (the process) and what he/she writes (the product) (Barabas, 1990; Grider, 1993).

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In 1981 Kenneth Bruffe argued that "writing is not an inherently private act but is a displaced social act we perform in private for the sake of convenience " (cited in
Cooper, 1989, p. 5). Gradually, it became clear that "writing and what writers do during writing cannot be artificially separated from the social-rhetorical situations in which writing gets done, from the conditions that enable writers to do what they do, and from the motives writers have for doing what they do" (Reither, cited in Cooper, 1989, p. 5).
Due to the changing perception of the social aspects of the act of composing, writing began to be considered as located in the social world (1980s) and, thus, to be fundamentally structured by the shape of the environment (Cooper & Holzman,
1989).
3 Emergence of the rhetorical context view
Transactional theory was developed by Loise Rosenblatt (1978) in Rosenblatt, L. M.
(1978). The reader, the text, the poem.
Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois
University Press.
Within the framework of transactional theory, "knowing is viewed as taking place in transaction between what’s ‘out there’ and the ‘self’" (Ely, Vinz, Downing & Anzul,
1997, p. 17). Meaning is in the transaction between the author – through text – with the reader.
The works of Richard Rorty (1979) and Kenneth Bruffee (1986) provided a philosophic foundation for social and contextual perspectives on writing . A new emphasis on rhetorical context in composition studies has resulted in the emergence of a new approach that focuses on the social aspects of writing . This social approach began to dominate the area of composition studies by the 1980s (Sloat, 1994; Freedman &
Medway, 1994a; Cooper, 1989).

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Odell and Goswami (1985) stress that understanding of writing as a social activity is absolutely essential to research both in academic and workplace settings .
The central questions for research taking the social perspective are those that concern the contexts in which texts are created (Faigley, 1985). This rhetorical context view emphasizes that awareness of audience and purpose influences both what and how a writer writes (Barabas, 1990).
As suggested at the beginning of this chapter, this new perspective on writing is due in part to the application of the social constructionist view to composition studies (Bruffee,
1986; Rorty, 1979). The social constructionist view perceives knowledge as something that is socially constructed in response to communal needs, goals, and contexts
(Freedman & Medway, 1994a; Sloat, 1994).
1 Social constructionism
Social constructionism views the composing of texts as part of the social process by which knowledge is constructed. Writing is seen as an activity through which a writer is continually engaged with a variety of socially constituted systems. The rhetorical approach considers writing as both constituted by and constitutive of changing systems through which individuals relate as social beings, rather than imagining each other as remote images. Writing nowadays is, therefore, interpreted as one of the activities by which "writers locate themselves in the enmeshed systems that make up the social world" (Cooper, 1989, p.13).
According to Bazerman, social constructionism can be seen as a sociological movement that looks into the social formation of everyday knowledge and assumptions upon which our understanding and actions rest.

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As Freedman and Medway (1994a) point out, it is not surprising that such changes in the perception of writing have led to a reconsideration of the notion of 'genre' and the ways in which communities develop and use particular genres in response to their own recurrent rhetorical situations and in order to accomplish the goals of those communities.
Reconsidering the notion of genre: textual regularities are surface reflections of an underlying regularity.

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Adapted from A. Paré
3. Person, text, context (social)
2. Person + text (processbased)
1. Text
(product-based)