READING AND WRITING:

INTEGRATING COGNITIVE AND

SOCIAL DIMENSIONS
Associate Professor Dr. Saadiyah Darus

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• Reading, writing, speaking, and listening –
“separate skills” – are inter-twined and inter-
related
• Gayle Nelson illustrates the inseparable
connection between cognitive and social
dimensions of literacy
• Suggests literacy and the way we perceive
literacy are embedded in context

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 Cognitive dimension: focus on the
individual
• Who contributed to the notion of individualistic nature
of writing?
• Gere, 1987, p.75 - Individualistic “solo-performer view”
of literacy
• The solo-performer view can be traced to Jean Piaget’s
work
• Piagetian theory was developed from Cartesian
epistemology
• Both emphasize
• The separation of the individual from society
• Focus on the nature of individual thought
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Jean piaget
“solo-performer”
view can be traced
back to Jean Piaget’s
work

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Noam chomsky
Linguistics – dominated by Chomsky – also encouraged a
writer as solo-performer
Only social interaction is necessary, but not social context
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 English literature

Virginia Woolf

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•Composition theorists – research on
composing processes of individuals
•Expressivists – writing as an expression of
self

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Social dimension: focus on
context
•Research on the reading and writing
processes of individual students led to an
awareness
•Cognition is embedded in context
•Reading and writing have a multilayered
social dimension
•Social dimension is complex (Ackermann,
1990)
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• Social contexts for native speakers of English – American university
students
1. Reading and writing in society
2. Schooling
3. Discourse communities
4. Linguistic and rhetorical practice in communities
5. Classrooms
6. Assignments
7. Students’ own intellectual history

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• According to Ackermann (1990, p.179), reading and
writing “are learned technologies that reflect the
cultural needs of a society”
• The needs become the purpose for which an individual
learns to read and write
• Vai people in Liberia – provides an example of literacy
that is not school-related – Vai language is learned with
the help of a friend
• Unusual way

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• Usually, reading and writing are more frequently
learned in school
• The reading and writing instruction received in school
reflects the purpose for which a society needs literacy
• Students also learn the ways or styles of writing that are
valued in their culture
• Japanese schools – emphasize the expression function
of writing
• Arabic schools – emphasize transactional function of
writing

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• The complexity of context increases
• Many discourse communities – within and outside
schools
• To become a member of a discourse community, you
need to participate in the particular literacy of that
community
• Discourse communities – individuals who participate +
linguistic and rhetorical practices that occur in that
communities

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• Linguistic and rhetorical practices within universities
(Bartholomae, 1998)
• A student “has to learn to speak our language, to speak
as we do, to try on the peculiar ways of knowing,
selecting, evaluating, reporting, concluding, and
arguing that define the discourse of our community”
• The discourse changes from an English class to a
biology class

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• Take note that each reader and writer also has his/her
own personal history – interpretation, perspective,
point of view based on personal background and
experience
• Personal history affects
• Readers’ interpretation of texts
• Writing interpretation of tasks
• Content
• Organisation
• Style of writers’ texts

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• Stein (1990) highlights the important function
of audience as shaper of the writers’ words
• It is the readers’ responses to written texts that
let writers know if they (writers) have said “what
they meant” and if that meaning is accessible to
the readers

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 Interaction of the cognitive and
social dimensions
• Flower (1989) suggests 3 possible principles/relationship
between context and cognition – interesting
• Cognition mediates context (not possible)
• Context is mediated by cognition of the reader/writer;
cognition is the agent
• Context shapes cognition (not possible)
• Interactive – mediating power of cognition and directive
cues of context (Must be this – example given on page
322)

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 Chapters focusing on the
cognitive dimension
• Relate to another chapter in this book- Connor and
Carrell
• The study focuses on an essay topic and write an essay,
and on reader/rater who interpret an essay task and
rate/mark the essay
• context cognition
• The findings – students and raters were more concerned
about language use, content, development of ideas
rather than organization

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• The findings have implications for the social
context of ESL classroom
• One question arises – should classroom
teachers who are preparing ESL students to
enter the larger university community be
focusing more on text-internal organization and
fluency and less on overall rhetorical structure?

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• Sarig, using think-aloud protocols, investigates
the cognitive processes of one L2 student while
he is performing a reading-to-write task :
compose a summary by synthesizing 2
newspaper articles
• Findings indicate that composing a summary is
a recursive, interactive process

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 Cognitive activities involved in
summarising
• Performing • Reading, writing
• Clarifying • Understanding
• Linking
previously unknown
words or concepts
• Transforming
• Using cohesion markers
• Revising
• Producing a new text by
deleting, adding,
refining, or re-
conceptualizing
• Replacing a lexical term

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• Sarig’s findings indicate that at least ONE
cognitive operation needs to be explicitly
taught – re-conceptualization
• Spack – ESL undergraduate writing program
should begin with what individual students
bring with them and moves to what their
academic literacy communities will ultimately
expect of them

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 Chapters focusing on the social
dimension
• Contexts that are likely to concern ESL teachers
• – aspects of students’ L1 cultures as they relate to
reading and writing
• - our own ESL reading/writing classrooms
• It appears that what students learn about reading and
writing in their L1 transfers to reading and writing in L2
• Structure our classes so that the social environment
contributes to our students’ becoming better readers
and writers

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• Course design – focuses on students’ discourse
communities
• In adjunct or sheltered ESL courses – students read and
write texts related to their academic disciplines e.g. lab
reports, research papers
• In work related ESL courses - students read and write
texts that are identical or similar to the reading and
writing tasks they perform at work – business letters,
memoranda, daily logs

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• In this way, ESL instructors are contributing to students’
cognitive development as readers and writers in at least
3 ways (page 326)
1. Students tend to be more motivated
2. Students develop a body of knowledge that should
lead to increased reading comprehension and
improved writing
3. Help students in task representation

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 Conclusion
• General patterns that emerge from the
recognition of the social dimension of reading
and writing
• Just as there is no single “correct” way to read
or write, there is also no one “best” method to
teach reading and writing

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 Suggestions
• Use authentic reading texts and writing tasks from
students’ L2 discourse communities
• Use specific classroom practices to make the social
nature of writing more explicit and
• Can contribute to students’ understanding of the
reading/writing relationship
• Classroom activities - make connections between the
literacy task and students’ experiences and backgrounds

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