Theoretical Perspectives on Writing

The word “writing” refers not only to text in written script but also to the acts of thinking, composing, and encoding language into such text; these acts also necessarily entail discourse interactions within a socio-cultural context. Writing is text, is composing, and is social construction. This threefold distinction—between text analytic, composing process, and social constructivist views of writing—has served usefully to distinguish the major orientations adopted in inquiry into second language writing and to circumscribe the implications they have for instruction (e.g., Grabe and Kaplan 1996, Raimes 1991, Silva 1990).