Length
is one indicator of competence in a freshman writer's text. Typically,
the underprepared freshman writer, who may or may not be placed in a basic
writing course, has difficulty elaborating text.
One reason for underdevelopment may be that the student, as an
inexperienced reader and writer, does not know the conventions of the genre she
is being asked to produce. Another reason may be that the writer simply has
nothing to say on the topic she has been assigned because her vital interests
and concerns lie elsewhere than in standard classroom topics. Yet another
student writer may be so self-conscious about his inadequacies as an editor that
he does not venture much on paper to be judged by a teacher or peer reader.
Consequently, basic writing and first-year composition courses often start by
encouraging production of text.
Simply producing a lot of text gives the writer more confidence in his ability "to write," and it gives him enough text that he can dare to revise by deleting. unnecessary words and redundancies and still have enough text left over to comprise an essay. The writing teacher often prizes length, moreover, because she has learned that some errors in production are simply a sign of inexperience in writing when the student feels invested in his writing, and she knows that the writer's growing experience will enable him to eliminate some errors without giving a great deal of conscious attention to them. Furthermore, thoroughness of discussion is a marker of academic literacy, and the ability to produce a large quantity of text shows the student's awareness of the conventions of the discourse community he is attempting to join.