do not share common frames associated with writing assignments. Teachers
have an understanding of each assignment that leads them to have fairly spe-
cific expectations for student responses, yet students will have a different un-
derstanding, as well as a perception of the teacher’s expectations that are far off
target. Furthermore, when students are writing about anything other than them-
selves, they generally lack sufficient background knowledge for meaningful
communication. And because writing tasks commonly lack a context, students
frequently do not recognize that they must create a context for each essay they
produce. The necessary frames are missing and must be created. Adding to stu-
dents’ difficulties: The lack of a context makes formulating a viable intention
quite challenging because the language act associated with most classroom
writing tasks is artificial. Intention grounds all oral discourse, yet writing typi-
cally is produced in response to a teacher’s assignment. Students’ “intention,”
then, is merely to meet the demands of the assignment, which renders the inten-
tion and the language act arhetorical. On this basis, we understand that even if a
student is able to construct an appropriate frame for a given paper, the paper
will fail as a social action if there is no viable underlying intention.
These problems are not insurmountable, but they are troubling and chal-
lenging. Too often, we find our schools skirting the problems by relying exclu-
sively on self-expressive or personal writing, which simply creates more
problems. Viable assignments must engage students in the sort of writing they
will encounter in college and the workplace, and it most certainly has nothing
to do with self-expression. Such assignments also must be highly context-
ualized without being overly long. They must provide students with success
criteria as a means of sharing expectation frames. Students should not have to
guess what a successful response entails.
Teaching Tip
Cognitive grammar suggests that students can improve their writing if they un-
derstand the need to contextualize the writing task. Students have a tacit un-
derstanding of the importance of context in speech; this is part of their
communicative competence. Therefore, asking them to discuss a paper in
work groups and then to produce an oral composition prior to writing may
serve as a bridge between speech and writing that leads to better
contextualization.Cognitive Grammar and Language Acquisition
Chapter 2 noted that there are two dominant models of language acquisition,
the induction model and the association model. The differences between these
models is central to cognitive grammar and mark a clear departure from
206 CHAPTER 6