Commetary on Process Pedagogy

I read about Process Pedagogy once when I was taking a teaching course about 5 years ago at Arcadia University. We read the book entitled "A Guide to Composition Pedagogies" I did not quite understand what I was reading much back then, but now I think I understand some pedagogies better after teaching for 3 years. I wrote a reflective paper on the pedagogy and I thought it was very interesting.

Process Pedagogy:

It's originated by Donald Murray and Peter Elbow, who wrote "Learning by Teaching." Process Pedagogy, from my understanding, is the approach of teaching writing by teaching students in a series of steps and stages. Most importantly, teachers allow their students to write freely from their interests and believe that the students are writers. The teacher also allows students to choose most of their own topics, forms, and then work on it. The teacher employs invention, free writing and journals, and peer review or revision. Lad Tobin finds that Process Pedagogy is mandatory and essential, which I agree. I have to confess that I hated learning writing by spending the whole class time learning grammar, sentence structure over and over from high school through college. When it was time to write an essay, I freaked out (as well as other L2 learners I am sure)and worried that my grammar would not be correct. However, I question that if the teacher employs the process pedagogy alone, how could students write their stories or compositions grammatically correct, and how could the teacher evaluate students' writing skills?

There is a contradiction between Lad's views and some critics' views regarding the process pedagogy. They argue that process pedagogy cannot be used as the core of teaching writing. They suggest that it is outmoded. They encourage teachers to focus on the finished writing product by reading and more class discussions relating to the finished work of other writers. Furthermore, the teachers should concentrate on writing structure, grammar and usage. I disagree because I think writing students should write more in class not worry a lot about grammar and structure.

There are some powerful critiques criticising the process pedagogy many with different points of view. Some say that process pedagogy is too structured, but some say that that it is dead and suggest that we should use a "Preprocess" or "Postprocess" but they don't know what should replace the process pedagogy. At any rate, I think process pedagogy contains some good rationals that teachers should use. Each teacher has his or her own style of teaching; however, the teachers need to consider which process is best for their students. I believe that the more students write, the better they become. Teachers should not be the center of the whole teaching process. Instead, they should assist their students by correcting their works, showing them how to identify, how to cite sources, and how to write a good essay. I also like the idea of whole language pedagogy--teachers try to make connections to other subjects.