Chapter 2. Learning to write

This chapter explores the main theories for understanding learning to write in adult contexts, briefly discussing their research underpinnings and showing how they translate into pedagogic practice. Making a broad distinction between theories concerned with texts, with writers and with readers, I will show briefly what each approach offers and neglects and what each means for teachers. The categorisation implies no rigid divisions, and, in fact the approaches respond to, critique, and draw on each other in a variety of ways so that classroom practice often involves a combination of them. I believe, however, this offers a useful way of comparing and evaluating the research each approach has produced and the pedagogic practices they have generated.