Written Communication Jul 1995

Where Cognitive Psychology Applies

JULIE FOERTSCH

Abstract

What sort of approach should we use to teach writing skills in today's classrooms? Many socially oriented scholars think we should teach context-specific writing skills that address the text's social milieu, whereas cognitively inclined scholars think we should teach more general models that can be adapted to a wide variety of writing contexts. As a number of composition theorists (e.g., Carter, 1990; Flower, 1994; Nystrand, 1989) have argued, a genuine synthesis between the cognitive theorists' general knowledge perspective and the social theorists' local knowledge perspective is necessary if we wish to teach students of diverse backgrounds how to write successfully in a variety of present and future contexts. This article attempts to bridge the misleading dichotomy between local knowledge and general knowledge by applying what cognitive psychologists have discovered about memory, expertise, and the transfer-of-learning to the question of appropriate composition pedagogy.

Journal
Written Communication
Published
1995-07-01
DOI
10.1177/0741088395012003006
Open Access
Closed
Topics
writing pedagogy writing across the curriculum multimodality

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (3)

  1. Rounsaville et al. (2022)
    Relationality in the Transfer of Writing Knowledge
    College Composition and Communication
  2. Carillo (2016)
    Creating Mindful Readers in First-Year Composition Courses
    Pedagogy
  3. James (2008)
    The Influence of Perceptions of Task Similarity/Difference on Learning Transfer…
    Written Communication

Cites in this index (6)

  1. BERKENKOTTER et al. (1993)
    Rethinking Genre from a Sociocognitive Perspective
    Written Communication
  2. Freedman (1993)
    Show and Tell? The Role of Explicit Teaching in the Learning of New Genres
    Research in the Teaching of English
  3. NYSTRAND et al. (1993)
    Where did Composition Studies Come from?
    Written Communication
  4. BRANDT (1992)
    The Cognitive as the Social
    Written Communication
  5. Flower (1989)
    Cognition, Context, and Theory Building
    College Composition and Communication
Show all 6 →
  1. NYSTRAND (1989)
    A Social-Interactive Model of Writing
    Written Communication
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