Running head: SELF-STUDY OF AN UNSKILLED WRITER 1

Self-study of an unskilled writer and

a comparison to other writers
Miguel A. Algara
University of Texas at El Paso



















SELF-STUDY OF AN UNSKILLED WRITER 2

Abstract
This paper analyzes the writing process of a college student using similar protocols as those
established by Perl (1979) and Berkenkotter (1983). Perl (1979) studied the writing process of
unskilled writers, whereas Berkenkotter (1983) did a similar study with a skilled writer. These
two papers offer important details about the differences between skilled and unskilled writers.
Perl (1979) found that the revision process of unskilled writers was focused mostly on fixing
spelling and grammar mistakes, and that they devoted only a few minutes to pre-writing.
Berkenkotter (1983) found that a skilled writer focused on clarity of ideas and content during the
revision process, and invested much more time to the pre-writing, although the pre-writing time
was measured differently in this study. This paper also compares the college student against the
writers from the studies previously mentioned in order to gain more insight into their writing
process and use this knowledge to improve the college students writing process.











SELF-STUDY OF AN UNSKILLED WRITER 3

Self-study of an unskilled writer and
a comparison to other writers
I never thought about my writing process. Before I started this English course, I simply
wrote to answer whatever my assignment asked. I never considered how I wrote, I just focused
on doing whatever I was told to do. Yet, thanks to my English course, I now realize just how
complex the process of writing is. This is an important study for me because it will give me a
better understanding of my writing process. By understanding my writing process I can compare
it that of professional writers and other unskilled writers and use that knowledge to improve. In
this study I will be focusing on the three main steps of my writing process: pre-writing,
composing, and revising. I will focus mostly in how long I took in each the writing processes
mentioned, and in the revising process I will focus also in the nature of the corrections made,
noting whether they were superficial (focusing on spelling and grammar), or insightful (focusing
on ideas and content).
Literature Review
Throughout this study I will repeatedly mention two papers: Berkenkotter (1983), as well
as Perl (1979). Berkenkotter (1983) studied the writing process of a skilled writer, whereas Perl
(1979) studied the writing process of unskilled writers. Perls (1979) study found, among many
other things, that one of the problems unskilled writers faced was egocentricity, meaning that
they assumed that the reader knew everything that they did, or as Perl (1979) puts it they did not
see the necessity of making their referents explicit p.332. On the other hand, Berkenkotters
(1983) study found that skilled writers keep their readers in mind almost unconsciously, which
gives their works more clarity. Another important comparison found between these two studies
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was the amount of time spent in each of the stages of the writing process. Moreover, the
difference in the revising processes of the skilled and unskilled writers is another important
comparison. I will be referencing these papers as I compare my own writing process to that of
other writers, both unskilled and skilled.
The methods of this study are somewhat simple. Two weeks ago I did an assignment
called Portrait of a Writer, (see appendix A for more information about my Portrait of a
Writer) in which I was asked different questions regarding my writing process, and I had to think
out loud each and every thought that crossed my mind and record everything I said using a voice
recorder (see appendix B for more information about the recordings). After I was done, a couple
of my peers reviewed my first draft and, with their suggestions in mind, I started the editing
process. I recorded my thoughts throughout the editing process as well. The purpose of this was
to use both the recordings and my portrait of a writer as evidence in a study of my own writing
process. I will analyze the recordings of my portrait of a writer, starting with the pre-writing,
which will include analyzing my writing environment, how much time was spent prewriting, and
how does that time compare to that of a skilled or unskilled writer. Then I will analyze the
composing and the revising stages. Both of these stages will be analyzed concurrently because of
how intimately connected they are.
Berkenkotter (1983) argued that a writers environment plays a huge role on how they
write. My writing environment is nothing special. I wrote my Portrait of a Writer in my room.
Sitting in my desk, with the door closed, and nothing to distract me. I had the document with the
guidelines for my Portrait of a Writer open in my computer, as well as a blank Word document,
Blackboard, along with websites such as reddit, and facebook. Just like the skilled writer in
Berkenkotters (1983) study, I was in my natural setting.
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According to the recordings, I spent a total of 73 minutes on the whole writing process.
Of those, I only spent four minutes pre-writing. Although that number might be misleading,
since I spent additional time reviewing the instructions for the assignment during class, so it is
hard to say whether this had any effect on my actual pre-writing process. It is possible that if I
had not previously read the instructions for the assignment I might have spent more time pre-
writing since I would have not had any ideas how to start my portrait. During these four minutes
I repeated the questions in the guide document. I ignored some of these questions, saying I do
not feel like talking about this whereas other questions sparked my interest and made me think.
Perls (1979) study found that unskilled writers also tend to spend less time in the pre-writing
aspect, although it is worth noting that during Perls (1979) tests, the unskilled writers only had
90 minutes to complete their assignments. The unskilled writer in Perls (1979) study spent on
average 6% of their time in the pre-writing stage. On the other hand, the skilled writer in
Berkenkotter (1983) spent on average almost 45% of the total time in the planning stage. While
this stage offers several similarities to the pre-writing stage, it would be misleading to consider
them the same because the skilled writers planning stage occurred not only before starting the
writing process, but in the middle of it as well. This difference makes direct comparison
complicated, since it is hard to quantify exactly how much of the planning process is done before
writing, yet with such a high percentage of time spent, it is reasonable to assume that at the very
least a third of the planning stage was done before writing. This would mean that the skilled
writer spent around 15% of their total time in the pre-writing section, which is still more than
twice the amount of time spent by the unskilled writer. Compared to these writers, the four
minutes, or around 6% of my total time, that I spent pre-writing are extremely similar to those of
the unskilled writer. Granted, the skilled writer had several months to write, whereas the
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unskilled writer and I had much tighter schedules, therefore that is another factor that might have
had an effect on the studies. Additionally, it is also important to mention whether this pre-writing
practices were successful or dysfunctional. Successful pre-writing practices are those that allow
the writer to write freely whereas dysfunctional practices are those that lead to writers block,
such as having too many rules, or being too inflexible about certain rules. I did not observe any
dysfunctional pre-writing practices, which strengthens the point I previously made in my Portrait
of a Writer about my lack of inflexible rules.
Both Perl (1979) and Berkenkotter (1983) found that the composing and the revising
processes are intensely connected. I spent 35 minutes composing, in that time I wrote about
different aspects about my writing process and how it has been shaped throughout my life. I
wrote all paragraphs linearly, meaning that I started from the introduction and finished with the
conclusion, additionally, midway through writing the third paragraph I went back to the
beginning and read everything I wrote to make sure my portrait was heading in the right
direction. In total I spent 48% in the composing stage, yet at several points I also did revising.
Even though the skilled and unskilled writers had many differences, they both have a pattern of
composing then immediately revising then composing again and revising again. Although as
both authors said, the main difference between these writers was that the unskilled writer focused
mainly on fixing issues related to grammar and spelling, however the skilled writer focused
almost exclusively on content and ideas for the first draft, only dealing with surface issues on
later drafts. Unfortunately, I believe I am now rather biased towards focusing on content since it
is an idea that has been repeated very often in my English class. All of the 34 minutes I spent
revising were spent developing new ideas and adding details that were suggested by my peers.
For example, one of my peers suggested I could mention Spanglish as an option given my issues
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with translating Spanish words into English. Furthermore, my peers also suggested I added more
detail in several areas, for instance in the introduction, where I had originally omitted the country
I grew up in. Although this style of revision is similar to the skilled writer, this revising style was
not my idea, so I am unsure whether it is a part of my actual writing process. I cannot be sure if I
would revise in the same manner if it was not for my English course.
Conclusions and Future Study
Based only in the results of this simple study, it would appear that I am a skilled writer.
After all, I have more in common with Berkenkotters (1983) skilled writer than with Perls
(1979) unskilled one. This directly contradicts what I wrote in my Portrait of a Writer, but I still
do not feel like a skilled writer though I suppose that I am not an inept writer as I had previously
said. I believe further studies are needed to ascertain the quality of my writing process, as in my
opinion, my pre-writing is still very weak compared to that of a skilled writer. On the other hand,
I think this small study did help me understand more of my writing process. I had never actually
timed my writing process, so knowing I spent only 6% of it for pre-writing is very useful. Now
that I know that, I can invest more time in the pre-writing stage next time I write. Another
important thing I learned because of this study was the important connection between the
composing and the revising processes. I used to think that the composing process was much
more important and that revising was just to fix the grammar mistakes, but thanks to this study I
now realize that revising is just as important as composing.



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References:
Berkenkotter, C. (1983). Decisions and revisions: The planning strategies of a publishing
writer. College Composition and Communication, 34(2), 156-169. Retrieved from:
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/357403
Perl, S. (1979). The composing processes of unskilled college writers. Research in the
Teaching of English, 13(4), 317-336. Retrieved from:
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40170774















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Appendix A
My Portrait of a Writer
I do not have a lot of experience writing. That is because the education I received in Torreon,
Mexico, was very poor compared to the education students get in the U.S. As a matter of fact, I
have written a grand sum of two papers longer than three pages in all of my life, both of which
were research papers for my University 1301 course. Whereas other students my age have been
writing papers of that length for several years, I only started writing seriously at the ripe old age
of 20. Better late than never? Even worse, both of those papers were last semester. Before I came
to college I never wrote anything longer than three pages. I do remember writing short stories in
Spanish at some point in high school, but they were never longer than one or two pages so I do
not consider those as real writing experiences. So, it is safe to say that my writing experience is
very limited. I think the fact that I did not write anything at all through elementary and middle
school is what shaped my current writing skills the most. It is that lack of experience that makes
me doubt my writing abilities, even though I have been told that I am not as inept as I think.
As I said before, I wrote some short stories during high school. I really enjoyed writing
fiction. I have written short stories ranging from science fiction, to stories based on real life
events, from funny stories, to sad ones. I just like making stuff up, which is why fiction is easily
my favorite thing about writing. I do not have particular inspirations for writing. On the other
hand, there are many things I hate about writing. What I hate the most is that feeling I get when I
have a thought that I want to write down but I cannot put my ideas into words. This happens very
often. Sometimes I do know how to put my ideas into words but only in Spanish, so then I spend
ages trying to find the perfect words in English for what I want to say.
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I would describe my writing process as nonexistent. Because I never really learned about
things like the IPPPC model (Introduction-paragraph-paragraph-paragraph-conclusion) of
writing essays, or doing outlines or stuff like that I never really developed a writing process of
my own. I do not have a particular plan, or a set of steps I always follow when I write, but very
recently I learned about all of these writing processes though I have no idea how this new
knowledge will affect my writing in the future. However, so far I have not noticed any
changes. Before I start writing, I like to prepare myself by researching the topic I am writing
about. For the preparation time itself I usually take 5 or 6 hours spread over the course of a day
with a lot of procrastinating in between. I can usually write a moderately long paper, which for
me is from 3 to 5 pages, in a single sitting, provided I have done my research properly, in about
3-4 hours (although as I said, I have only written two real papers so maybe I have just been
lucky.) Revising usually takes longer than the actual writing for me. I think it is because when I
write I allow myself a lot of freedom, but whenever I need to revise I carefully consider every
word. This also means that most of what I write in my first draft does not survive past the first
edition. I think this works because whenever I write I do not have to worry about whether I am
using proper spelling or grammar or whether my paragraphs are linking together correctly. I also
do not worry about fulfilling minimum page requirements since I just write whatever comes to
mind. On the other hand, this also makes the revising process very tedious for me, especially on
the long papers. Now, do not get me wrong, I realize that at this point in my Portrait of a Writer I
sound like I went to the worst school in the world. It was not that bad. I did learn a lot of useful
stuff, like what a thesis statement is, I just did not practice writing.
One of the bright sides of being such an inexperienced writer is that I have no rules that
block me. Recently I learned from a paper I read in my English class that students with lots of
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rules have higher chances of getting writers block, so at least I do not get writers block because
of all the different rules they teach to students in the U.S. That does not mean I do not get stuck
trying to write, but whenever I get stuck it is because I have trouble translating my ideas from
my Spanish-thinking brain to my English-typing hands. Hopefully as I get more and more
practice writing in English I will get more used to thinking in English. A possible suggestion I
received from a peer was to use Spanglish, which is very common here in El Paso. However, to
me, it just feels weird using Spanglish, which I think is because the place I am from is so far
from the border.
I have never considered myself a writer, and maybe I never will. I just do not have the
passion that true writers have. Maybe it is because I was not exposed to writing when I was
young. Maybe it was because I never got an opportunity to write just for fun. Whatever the
reason, I think that this is a part of myself, and fittingly enough, a part of my writers (or non-
writers I guess) portrait. And who knows, maybe I will start loving writing more and more as I
get more experience.









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Appendix B
SESSION 1: It is 8:37 PM, on a Friday night. A little more than 3 hours remaining to submit the
assignment, which is a 3 page writers portrait. I am alone in my room. Everything is completely
quiet and I have found inner peace (not really). Blackboard is open, along with Reddit, and
several other internet sites. Also open is a blank document, and the writers portrait instructions.
Minutes 1-5: First recording just describes my writing environment, and the fact that Ive
procrastinated on the assignment for a week (I had other stuff to do, or at least thats what I like
to tell myself). I then read the first question from the instructions. I answer the question, and start
writing on the blank document. Recording stops because I wanted to make sure the recordings
were working.
Minutes 1-5: Second recording starts here. Recording starts immediately after recording two
ends. I talk about all the work Ive done so far. Which at this point is two lines. Read the
following question How would you describe your current attitudes towards writing? Cannot
answer question. Get frustrated, and skip it. Move on to the next question. Mention I like writing
fiction, and short stories. Start thinking about the short stories I wrote in high school. Mention it
is my only memory of writing anything meaningful in high school.
Minutes 6-10: Second recording continues. Read the next question. How do you see yourself as
a writer? First answer: I dont know Skip that question. Receive text. Try my best not to
get distracted by it. Count how many lines I have. Read next question. Talk about my lack of
key moments throughout high school. Decide to take small break.
Minutes 1-5: Third recording starts here. Recording 3 starts at 9:03 PM, which means I
procrastinated for about 10 minutes (which is not that bad, all things considered). I then read the
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second question. I skip it because I think I already answer it. I then go to the next question and
answer it. Talk about how much I liked writing short stories during high school.
Minutes 6-10: Third recording continues. I talk about the stuff I dont like about writing. Which
is a lot. Repeat question again. Get frustrated for not being able to answer. Which is actually the
exact thing I hate most about writing: not being able to translate my thoughts into words.
Another problem is not being able to translate an idea from Spanish to English.
Minutes 11-15: Start talking about my writing process, mention how I never really learned
anything in high school. Talk about how I dont think I have a set writing process. Realize that at
this point it sounds like I am completely inept at writing when in reality I am not that bad.
Minutes 1-5: Fourth recording session starts here. Return from procrastination session number
317678. Go back and read the work Ive done so far, try to see where I am at the moment and
where I am headed, talk about changing some sentences to clarify my ideas.
Minutes 6-10: Trying to decide whether go back and do revising or not. Decide to do a little bit
of revision despite not being done with the whole portrait. After doing the revising I go back to
working on answering. Get uncomfortable with the idea of other people reading my first draft but
suck it up. Decide I am done writing.
SESSION 2: Pretty much the exact same setting as session 1. Except this time its Valentines
Day. I have the same documents opened as last time, with the addition of the peer reviewed
versions of my portrait of a writer. Same websites opened as last time.
Minutes 1-5: Fifth recording starts here. Start by reading the comments from my peers on my
previous draft. Go comment by comment, deciding what to revise based on each comment. First
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comment is about adding more details regarding my place of origin. Add more details as
suggested by my peers.
Minutes 6-11: Continue reading comments from peers, and revising my portrait of a writer.
Spent over 4 minutes trying to revise the same sentence because I am not completely
comfortable with it. Get frustrated and decide to take a short break.
Minutes 1-5: Sixth recording starts here. After my short break, I have the perfect way to revise
the sentence I had trouble with. Add more details about my inspirations for writing. Also talk
about why I like fiction and specially short stories. Finish revising the first two paragraphs.
Minutes 6-10: Start revising paragraph three. Add more details about my high school experience.
Not much going on besides that. Move on to the next paragraph. Define what I consider to be a
moderately long paragraph.
Minutes 11-15: Add more details about all the stuff I have learned in this class. Start falling
asleep. A lot of quite time after I finish adding those details because I am almost falling asleep
now.
Minutes 16-20: Mention how I dont get writers block because of having too many rules, but I do
get writers block whenever I am not able to translate a certain idea from English to Spanish.
Mention how I had to erase a sentence because it no longer had any connection to the main idea
of the paragraph. Explain why I cant use Spanglish because it doesnt feel right to me.
Minutes 21:23: Last minutes of the revising process. Only paragraph left is the conclusion. Focus
on addressing the fact that I do like writing even if I dont have the same passion that actual
writer have.