SQR5

Alyssa Vasquez

Ashley Favata

Kristen Garcia

ENG 1301.28

Instructor: Trang Phan

10/2/10

Writer-Based Prose: A cognitive Basis for Problems in Writing

Linda Flower. “Writer-Based Prose: A Cognitive Basis for Problems in Writing”. College

English, Vol. 41, No. 1. (1979), pp. 19-37

Summary:

Flower’s article states that ineffective writers often produce “writer-based prose.” Writer-based prose is used as a thinking process but of what we like to express because we are writing based on our experiences. When writing based on our own thoughts and feelings that we consider, this is called egocentric because we only consider on what we think and feel about on certain things, and never consider the readers perspective, just as long as we understand what we are trying to say but have no consideration if the reader is going to understand it. “The style of Writher-Based prose also has its own logic. Its two main stylistic features grow out of the private nature of interior monologue, that is, of writing which is primarily a record or expression of the writer’s flow of thought” (27). We need to take the readers-based prose into consideration because we are not just writing for us but for readers to read, even though writer-based prose comes naturally to us because we recognize its ties to our episodic memories. “In the best of all possible worlds, good writers strive for Reader-Based prose from the very beginning: they retrieve and organize information within the framework of a reader/writer contract” (14).

Question: What is Writer-Based Prose? How does it affect our writing?

Response:

Linda Flower suggests that effective writers need to do more than just relay their own interpretation or expression of some concept. Ineffective writers, those who produce “writer-based prose” are those writers who do not consider the reader. This article leads me to believe that as students we’ve been taught to write the five paragraph essay but we were rarely taught to write for a reader, but instead on a topic that we intend to write based on our own experiences. This is creates and egocentric because we only write what we understand and communicate with our selves but not with the reader. As a student, I write while exploring ideas in my mind to create a well written essay, but mostly I never have the reader in mind, so I just go with the flow of creating an essay that is understandable and hopefully good enough to catch the reader’s attention. Since writer-based prose is a natural thing to all writers, we need to learn to work with our ideas before writing to help write a reader-based prose. As we develop the skills to write a reader-based prose, it would help us communicate our ideas better to the reader, enough to prove our point in the writing.