"Writing" is self-paced, but a narrow view of writing

In "Writing as a Mode of Learning," Janet Emig indicates that writing is self-paced, and that "one writes best as one learns best, at one's own pace" (12). I'm reading and rereading this in context to try to determine whether this has anything to do with procrastination. Out of context, I could jump up and say that if writers ideally write at their own pace, we must be careful of pushing deadlines and labelling writers "procrastinators" for not meeting those deadlines.

But I hesitate to say that's what Emig was really getting at. She elaborates on the sentence in question by saying that "to connect the two processes [writing and learning], writing can sponsor learning because it can match its pace" (12). Now this may still imply that students have to write at their own pace, but I don't think that is Emig's point here. I think she's saying that students learn through writing because they only go as fast as they put words on paper. In fact, I think she's using the narrow view of writing I mentioned in my last post--actually sitting down and putting words on paper, not considering an assignment, thinking about a topic, doing research, and so on.

This reading of Emig is supported when she cites Sartre, who said he couldn't write anymore because listening to himself on tape was no kind of way to revise. He might need to review his words slowly, or he might want to skim through, but where writing and reading allow for that kind of self-pacing, talking and listening to a recording do not (13).

Emig, Janet. "Writing as a Mode of Learning." 1977. Cross-Talk in Comp Theory: A Reader. Ed. Victor Villanueva. Urbana IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2003. 7-16.

Writing vs. Doing Homework

It just occurred to me as I am reading old process literature, that it was quite easy to skip over procrastination based on certain approaches to studying process.

A certain segment of process researchers were looking for a scientific way to study writing. They used tape recorders and coding systems. They wanted to be objective and to have replicable results. These are essentially lab-based studies, then. The researchers would set up the lab, give the student an assignment, and study them on the spot, likely asking the student to talk through their thoughts and actions as they wrote.

This kind of research is useful and even important, but by being lab-based, it loses the ability to study procrastination at all. I mean, I suppose some students would still delay in a lab environment, but it's a rather different kind of situation than being given an assignment to turn in within a week, let alone by the end of the semester.

This makes some sense, in that the researchers were more interested in writing itself, not "doing homework." On the other hand, psychology researchers have tended to be more interested in the "doing homework" side, and this explains why I have found more of their research to be directly relevant to my study.

Procrastination is a Process Issue

So I'd like to go over the state of research in procrastination in writing over time.

The sixties seem to be the last decade devoid of procrastination research. However, this decade is far from being irrelevant. In the sixties, we are introduced to "process pedagogy," a way of teaching writing that emphasizes "process"--the steps writers go through as they produce a document--over "product"--the final document. A product-oriented pedagogy asks "What does good writing look like?" But with a process-oriented pedagogy, the question is, "How do I produce good writing?" The distinction here is that knowing what makes for a good product doesn't explain how one goes about producing it.

So why is process pedagogy relevant to my study of procrastination in writing? Because procrastination is not an element of the written product, it's an element of the writing process. Theoretically, a product-oriented pedagogy shouldn't care about procrastination. As long as the paper turns out okay, it doesn't really matter when it was started.

But in process pedagogy, writers are expected to go through certain steps in producing their work. These steps may not be hard and fast--we can divide simply into prewriting, drafting, and revising. But because of the time crunch in procrastination, some of these steps may be rushed or skipped.

I need to go back to some early process literature to see if anyone hints at issues of procrastination or time crunch.

Citing a self-help book

I've noticed several articles cite that procrastination rates may be "as high as ninety-five percent." My impression was that this number was frequently cited because it was the highest, not because it was the most accurate. I flipped to the reference page. The reference? Overcoming Procrastination, published by the Institute for Rational Living. I was a bit concerned that we were citing a book here, not a study. And not the most scholarly sounding book at that.

I requested the book. I opened it to the first page. Here's the opening:

How many college-level individuals procrastinate? Often? Seriously? No one seems to know. Incredibly, this important question has not inspired many factual studies. Our guess? About ninety-five percent. (Ellis and Knaus 1)

So it's just a guess? And this thirty-year-old guess is still being cited? The authors aren't even researchers; they're psychotherapists. Which is not to say they don't know what they're talking about, but rather to ask why on earth serious researchers keep citing them instead of doing some actual research on the numbers. I wonder if some of the citations were borrowed from other sources without checking the original source. It's not a scholarly source. It's a self-help book.

Work Cited

Ellis, Albert, and William J. Knaus. Overcoming Procrastination, or How to Think and Act Rationally in Spite of Life's Inevitable Hassles. New York: Institute for Rational Living, 1977.

Procrastination and Learning Disabilities

I'm not particularly interested in learning disabilities, but I do care about diverse learning styles in the classroom. For my purposes, the label LD tends to obscure that diversity, so I didn't find "Procrastination and Motivation of Undergraduates with Learning Disabilities: A Mixed-Methods Inquiry" all that useful.

Students with LD were more likely than others to procrastinate (144). The researchers found that self-efficacy is differently related to students with learning disabilities than those without. (Self-efficacy is how good you think you are at something.) Apparently non-learning disabled students were less likely to procrastinate, the more self-efficacy they had with the task (144). But LD students have comparatively inflated self-efficacy (145). Compared to those not considered learning disabled, those with LD are more likely to think or claim they can handle academic tasks they aren't so great at. Perhaps because of this, self-efficacy isn't closely related to procrastination in students with LD.

One more thing, the researchers note in their literature review that procrastination is still less studied than other parts of psychology. In their review of PsychINFO in 2006, they "found 11,374 articles on self-efficacy, 4,056 articles on self-regulation, and only 422 articles with procrastination as a key word" (138). So while I'm personally impressed with the amount of studies on procrastination in psychology, especially in the past couple of years, there's still a lot of room in the field. It's pretty much under-studied across the board.

Work Cited

Klassen, Robert M., Lindsey L. Krawchuck, Shane L. Lynch, and Sukaina Rajani. "Procrastination and Motivation of Undergraduates with Learning Disabilities: A Mixed-Methods Inquiry." Learning Disabilites Research and Practice 23.3 (2008): 137-147.

Procrastination and Lack of Feedback

I'm really happy to have found "Individiual Differences in Academic Procrastination Tendency and Writing Success" by Barbara A. Fritzche, Beth Rapp Young, and Kara C. Hickson. These researchers are interested in composition. As in, they actually cite compositionists in addition to psychologists. They're not just looking at what psychologists have found about procrastination, they're looking at what compositionists have said about the writing process.

In particular, Frizche, Young, and Hickson are studying the relationship between feedback and procrastination. They hypothesized that high procrastinators would be less likely than low procrastinators "to seek feedback on their writing prior to submitting it for a grade" (1550). On the other hand, they figured that those high procrastinators would see a bigger improvement from the feedback they did get.

They found that "high procrastinators wrote their papers early only when they received feedback" (1554). I'm looking at the numbers, but I can't tell much from them. I'm guessing this means that many high procrastinators received feedback without starting early, but few or none started early without receiving feedback?

Fritzche, Young, and Hickson conclude that "students may be able to mitigate some of the negative outcomes associated with their procrastination tendency by seeking feedback on their writing prior to turning it in for a grade" (1554). I'm a bit troubled by this phrasing. Feedback mitigates the problems with procrastination? What if the lack of feedback was the real problem, not the procrastination? It seems like the researchers are implying that problems caused by procrastination and problems caused by lack of feedback are independent, but that students can make up for a lack in one area by improving in another. But at this point I see no reason to assume the two are independent, especially considering that the researchers have already demonstrated a relationship between procrastination and not seeking feedback.

In the end, the researchers suggest something of a bridge between composition pedagogy and counseling psychology. Instead of relying solely or mostly on counseling to work on procrastination, teachers can help in how they structure assignments. They suggest that "requiring or making available writing center consultations, teacher student conferences, or peer workshops can provide students with an additional deadline: if they habitually procrastinate to their deadline, the extra incentive to complete at least some work earlier" (1555). They also suggest breaking up larger assignments into chunks that are turned in before the final draft.

Okay, so we already do all this, right? But composition research suggests feedback for a different reason, doesn't it? Feedback is good on its own, it's not just a way of forcing students to work on their papers earlier. But I'd say Fritzche, Young, and Hickson are actually on to the way these techniques are really used by Practioners in composition. I think we do often use peer review to force students to produce a draft, rather than making them have a draft so they can participate in the independently important peer review. Am I wrong?

We really need to straighten out what we know about procrastination, what we think about procrastination, and what we do about procrastination. Otherwise we could be going at this all wrong. Like, if procrastination isn't the real problem, then artificially removing procrastination by compelling students to turn in multiple drafts isn't going to fix the problem. Whereas if procrastination is correlated with something (like lack of feedback) that is directly harming the student's writing, getting at that issue should be more helpful.

Work Cited

Fritzche, Barbara A., Beth Rapp Young, Kara C. Hickson. "Individual Differences in Academic Procrastination Tendency and Writing Success." Personality and Individual Differences 35 (2003): 1549-1557.

It's not poor study habits that cause procrastination

Laura J. Solomon and Esther D. Rothblum (1984) conducted a study to see if procrastination was about more than merely poor study habits. Apparently this was a common belief among psychology researchers in the 80s. They figured there were plenty of possible reasons to procrastinate that hadn't been studied: "evaluation anxiety, difficulty in making decisions, rebellion against control, lack of assertion, fear of the consequences of success, perceived aversiveness of the task, and overly perfectionistic standards about competency" (503). In the end, they determined that major reasons for procrastination other than poor study habits/time management boiled down to fear of failure and task aversiveness. (You may recognize these terms from Onwuegbizie and Collins's article cited in my last post. Solomon and Rothblum designed the questionnaires Onwuegbizie and Collins used.)

This is really important because, as Solomon and Rothblum point out, if time management isn't the major cause, we might not want to act like it's the only solution. If our students are procrastinating because they're afraid we'll grade them harshly, maybe the more helpful thing to do would be to help them be more comfortable being evaluated. Review drafts without grading them. Avoid making ad hominem comments on papers (the dreaded "I expected more from you"). Don't put an undue amount of emphasis on a single assignment (break it up into mini-assignments if necessary). If our students are procrastinating because they don't like the actual act of writing, help get them comfortable. Lots of in-class writing. Talk to students about their ideas before having them turn things in. Have them talk to each other. Have them write informally. Use mini-assignments that can later be used as jumping off points for or even sections of larger papers.

As for which factor accounted for most of the procrastination, the answer is statistically complicated. A large group of students reported task aversiveness, but the small group of students who reported fear of failure often reported that as their only reason for procrastination. So both angles are important to tackle.

Work Cited

Solomon, Laura J., and Esther D. Rothblum. "Academic Procrastination: Frequency and Cognitive-Behavioral Correlates." Journal of Counseling Psychology 31.4 (1984): 503-509.