Shaping at the point of utterance: an investigation of the composing processes of the deaf student writer.
All writers face the challenge of making meaning on a blank page. They struggle to make meaning for themselves and to communicate this meaning to the potential readers of their texts. Although, in this way, the <it>act</it> of writing can be perceived as a solitary endeavor, the <it>activity</it> of writing, as one aspect of literacy development, is embedded in a sociocultural framework and must be considered not only from the perspective of an individual's mental functioning but from the social context in which it exists. What follows is a preliminary report from a larger case study examining the composing processes of four deaf student writers. This broader study aspires to the goal of sociocultural research, which is to understand the relationship between human mental functioning, on one hand and cultural historical and institutional settings, on the other (Wertsch, 1995). From such a perspective, individual mental processes and sociocultural setting are understood in terms of this relationship, and human action is understood in the context of interrelated moments. I focus on one 'moment' of the writing process that I will term, to borrow a phrase from Stephen Krashen (1977) and James Britton (1978), 'shaping at the point of utterance.' In other words, I will explore what deaf writers do as they face the 'challenge of the blank page.'
Mayer
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95 Ferrier Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4K 3H6.