FUNCTIONS OF OUTLINING AMONG COLLEGE-STUDENTS IN 4 DISCIPLINES

This collaborative, naturalistic study examined the functions outlinin g served for 122 students in four undergraduate classes, each in a dif ferent discipline. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of the students outlined at some time, and they variously intermingled outlining with other strat egies across a wide spectrum of the composing process. However, outlin ing functions varied widely according to the assignment and the teache r's guidance. The study identified 5 functions: 1) students' use of ge neric formats to guide their work on a paper; 2) students' use of outl ining as a bridge between content and structure; 3) students' use of o utlining to impose order on their own ideas; 4) students' use of outli ning to generate, preview, and evaluate modes of arrangement of their writing; and 5) students' use of outlining to summarize progress and t o motivate their writing projects. However, some students used the gen eric outline too broadly to dictate the sequences of idea-generation, information-gathering, and composing, while some used it too narrowly, merely as a sequence of boxes, ignoring the interrelations among part s that their teachers expected. The study suggests the benefits of exa mining a specific strategy instantiated in a particular written form, such as the outline, rather than concentrating only on ''processes,'' as much previous writing research has done.