Cognition, Convention, And Certainty By Patricia Bizzell Summary

In “Cognition, Convention, and Certainty: What We Need to Know Writing” the author Patricia Bizzell explains what we need to know about writing. Initially, Bizzell states that that there is a “writing problem”. She says that we are just now realizing that it is actually a thinking problem where we used to take student thinking for granted. The author then explains that there are two opposing theoretical camps that see writing differently. The first camp sees writing as inner-directed which focusses on the structure of language-learning and thinking process prior to social influence. They also seek to discover writing processes that are so fundamental as to be universal. On the other hand outer-directed is more interested in the social process