The Goals of Advanced Composition Instruction

Abstract

An operational definition of levels of instruction in the teaching of composition is based on the description of the sets of subskills at each level. Level I includes all skills required for the production of a single word; Level II includes all skills required to produce a single sentence of any complexity; Level III subsumes I and II and includes the additional skills required to produce text greater than a single sentence. The last level is equated in this essay with the less specific term advanced. At Level I the subskills are essentially psychomotor; at Level II they are concerned with the application of syntactic structure to writing and the use of lexical items; at Level III, there are six goals: to become independent of controls imposed by text and teacher; to write for a variety of communicative purposes; to extend and refine the use of vocabulary and syntactic patterns; to write conceptual paragraphs; to write longer units of discourse; and to use awareness of cultural differences in writing. Early audiolingual approaches to the teaching of second languages emphasized oral language to the neglect of the written language (Paulston 1972), especially at intermediate and advanced levels. A rationale for the delayed use of writing was grounded in principles of behavioral psychology and structural linguistics: written language was essentially a recoding of speech, and a learner could code writing only through reference to the oral code which was previously and thoroughly mastered. Writing was, moreover, seen as less critical. In the natural process of language learning, it was often considered quite appropriate to wait a fairly long time before the initiation of writing/composition instruction. Early texts for writing and composition did not attempt to specify the subsets of skills necessary for the production of writing, a failing still demonstrated by more recent manuals. Explicitly or implicitly, early texts defined goals, objectives, levels of instruction, and other aspects of writing in arbitrary and subjective language, if they defined them at all. Texts and methological treatments on writing are filled with terms which are inconsistent and so personal in meaning that they contribute little to a general theory of second language writing/composition. Regardless of the instructional methods used, it has always been difficult to meaningfully specify differences between levels of language learning. Beyond the initial stage the boundaries between beginning, intermediate and advanced