Writing: a Holistic or Atomistic Entity?

The marked shift in writing instruction from a focus on writing as a set of separate, sequential tasks to a focus on writing as a holistic gestalt prompted the empirical study reported in this paper. We sought to determine whether any prerequisite relationships existed between five analytical components of ESL composition, namely content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics. Our rationale was that if we could discover evidence of prerequisite relationships between the analytical components, then the results could be used to support the view that writing is a set of separate tasks to be acquired. If, on the other hand, we could detect no evidence of prerequisite relationships, then those results could support the notion that writing is a holistic entity which can't be meaningfully partitioned into components. Our analyses indicated that (1) only one prerequisite relationship (which could have occurred by chance) existed in the data set and that (2) only one latent structure (construct) underlay the data. We conclude by offering citations from other researchers who argue against teaching writing skills in isolation and by offering three approaches to the teaching of writing which acknowledge the interrelation of composition skills. As we indicated in the previous paragraph, there has been a