Bizzell tells us "What We Need to Know about Writing...

I really liked this article because it merged two methods into one to create a valid and better understanding of the writing process. She did not choose one or the other and then bad talk them or say one was better, like some other articles we've read. Bizzelll chose to integrate the inner-directed mode of thinking and outer-directed to come to a conclusion on composition studies. Inner directed people are concerned with the thought process while writing and having thoughts before being in a social setting. The outer directed people thinking that thoughts come from social settings, people can influence them or you can take a stand. It was made clear that everyone comes to a consensus that it takes language to develop thoughts. This corresponds with the idea that each discourse community has their own language, ways of doing things and rules to follow. This is what makes them a group, the common characteristics they share, there are many discourse communities and people can belong to more than one. They just need to know what makes them apart of one or how to be part of one.

The inner directed theorists have a 4 stage model of developing language. 1. Individual, 2. Experience, 3. Society and the last one being the Writing situation. With an isomorphic model as Bizzell puts it, we can connect these stages with the outer directed thoughts and get the importance of what we need to know about writing. Inner directed theorists think that organizing ones thought can be taught, with their stage models. "Once students are capable of cognitively sophisticated thinking and writing, they are ready to tackle the problems of a particular writing situation" (390). They think that altering info to fir the thoughts of its reader is not bad because it does not change the point of the paper, it is just worded differently.

In contrast, the outer directed theorists think that social context help shape and condition thoughts. This sis something that cannot be taught it should be an innate habit. They think that no one can teach the rules of a discourse community because one needs to be part of it in order to truly understand it. The students are already placed in a discourse community of the school and the one they were born in and when writing a paper they may be unaware they are entering another one.

The article continues to go on and use Flower and Hayes model of the cognitive processes to show what they mean. Flower and Hayes are inner direct theorists. The fact that they use Protocol analysis as their tool to search is a problem with in itself because it is not accurate because writing is something that is not scientific. Flower and Hayes model lacks credibility because it "does not tell us how to proceed through the composing process, but only that in proceeding, there are certain sub processes, we must include if we want to compose successfully" (394). They answer the 'why' but not 'how' part of the process. To make student writers and see how they go about doing something they need to be gaining it through social context and we need to put them in situations where they are tested. This is how the outer detected models come into play. "What's missing here is the connection to social context afforded by recognition of the dialectical relationship between Thought and language. We can have thoughts for which we have no words, I think, but learning language, though it doesn't exactly teach us to thinking, teaches us what thoughts matter" (395) I agree with this quote because it is true and I know that through experience. Vygotsky's notion of he mind and how it works also suggest that we need the inner and outer models to understand it. The translating and planning aspect of Flower and Hayes model should not be separated, as they have it but connected and influenced by society. When readers are reading a piece of work they connect to it on a social level, they look at the experiences to relate to the character etc. The students cannot fake to be part of the discourse community as Bartholomae states it, they need to understand the discourse community before writing for them.

Flower and Hayes spoke about goals and they stem from knowledge, but the bigger question is however does the knowledge come from?...Answer: experience, society, others. The problem then is that poor writer cannot create goals because they lack knowledge on the discourse community they are writing for. Poor writers need to be taught the conventions of discourse communities. "if language using isn't rule governed in this sense, however, it still may be regular-that is, we may be able to group situations likely to share a number of language-using features. But to do this is to describe the conventions of discourse communities" (405).

To do this we need a "hidden curriculum" as Bizzell put it. We need to open their eyes to other communities without denying their own they already have. Once students are not apart of the community they are automatically perceived as wrong. For example, "The result for students who don't share the school's preferred world views is either failure or deracination" (407). Teachers need to focus on the real world and teach students the conventions of it.