Supporting the Development of Writing Abstraction with Technology

This chapter overviews the concept of writing abstraction as conceptualized by Moffett (1992a) as two progressions writers must learn to negotiate. In the first progression on audience, students learn to make verbalizations to the self, then write informally to peers who understand the student's language, then formally to distant others who require more abstract or culturally accepted conventions. In the second progression on topic, students learn to write about sensory stimuli experienced, then to retell past experiences, and finally to propose more abstract generalizations and theory. To help students develop the capacity for writing across these continua, the authors recommend emerging communication tools and networks for accessing and writing to increasingly distant others, as well as emerging Web 2.0, multimedia, and research tools for capturing and writing about experiences or conceptualizing generalizations and theory. The chapter closes by noting future research directions in writing across audience and multiple modes with digital tools.