Sondra Perl

Early life Born in Newark, New Jersey, Perl was the oldest of four children: two boys and two girls. Her father, a businessman, owned a fire alarm company, and her mother was a homemaker. After growing up in Millburn, New Jersey and graduating from Millburn High School, Perl moved to Boston to attend the all-female Simmons College. She graduated in 1969 with a degree in art history. Graduate work Source: The project explored pedagogy as outlined by what is known today as The National Writing Project. She also spearheaded the CUNY Writing Across the Curriculum program, mandated by the CUNY Board of Trustees in 1999. Along with her studies of composition theory & rhetoric, felt sense, embodied knowing, digital composing, new media, creative nonfiction, memoir, Holocaust, and genocide studies, she specializes in autobiography, biography & life-writing; composition theory & rhetoric; digital humanities, textual & media scholarship; and pedagogy. In 2011, she mentored a Ph.D. student project, The Writing Studies Tree, as a faculty advisor. She retired in 2016. Her involvement with The Olga Lengyel Institute yielded her roles as founder and director of the Holocaust Educators Network and creator of the New York City Summer Seminar. == Methods ==

Recursive writing process Much of Perl's work in composition theory stems from her skepticism toward the idea of the writing process as a linear procedure. Instead, Perl argues that writing is recursive, or that writers refer back to previous stages of the writing process as they progress to later stages of the process. Writers are constantly rereading their work and assessing its representation of their goals for a particular piece of writing. Perl also argues "felt sense," or the feelings and reactions surrounding the writing manifested when the writer rereads the work, inform the writing process in a way that relies on a holistic sense of the writing already present in order to move forward. Felt sense Felt sense is a sensation used by writers during the writing process that is difficult to measure. It refers to the way the words flow in a piece of writing and the feelings surrounding the reader's reception to that flow. Perl describes felt sense as the physical reactions writers experience to their writing, such as when they pause while reading their work aloud. It may also represent the experience a writer has when they interact with a topic; what comes to mind when the writer encounters a topic embodies this felt sense. Think-aloud protocol Composition theorist Janet Emig inspired Perl's use of the think-aloud protocol in her composition and pedagogical research. In understanding the composing process and how students write, Perl employed a think-aloud protocol by asking students to speak out loud as they composed. This method of research offers a firsthand explanation of particular behaviors being performed by study participants. It continues to be used by researchers today as a way to understand the nuances of the writing process that may not appear on paper. It often points to recursive behavior as writers continue to reference previous steps or text from their composition. Perl process Source: Perl developed her own writing process based on her research of the recursive writing process and its elements of felt sense. Fellow composition theorist Peter Elbow outlines Perl's guidelines as a basic four step process writers can apply to any piece of work: • Focus on what's in your mind and consider what may cause restraint • List multiple ideas to write about • Frequently reference your 'felt sense' to keep your writing on track toward your goals • Interrogate the meaning, direction, and shortcomings of your writing == Works ==

"The Composing Process of Unskilled College Writers" Inspired by Janet Emig's research of student composition, Perl's dissertation explores how students write and the process they follow to do so. As a teacher, Perl wondered why some students were better writers and whether it had to do with their cognitive development, their attitudes toward writing, or something else. Calling on think-aloud protocol, Perl's study translates recordings of students speaking as they compose into composing schemes. These schemes represent codes of behaviors students exhibited as they wrote, allowing Perl to study how the writing process unfolds over time. Perl discovered that the recursive writing process, or returning to their topic, earlier writing, or felt sense, helps students make meaning in their writing. Students who instead over-engage in surface-level editing find writing to be exhausting because they feel they need to be correct in their writing. Through this study, Perl concluded that writing as a process of discovery was more beneficial to student writing than teaching a reliance on rules. A process of discovery also allowed unskilled writers to make sense of what they write and feel more connected to it. == Selected bibliography ==

• "The Composing Processes of Unskilled College Writers". Research in the Teaching of English. 13 (4): 317–336. • "Understanding Composing". College Composition and Communication. 31 (4): 363. • Writing True: The Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction. co-authored with Mimi Schwartz; 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Cengage, 2014. • On Austrian Soil: Breaking the Cycle of Hate, A Teaching Memoir. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2005. • Felt Sense: Writing with the Body. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 2004. • "From Confusion to Compassion: The Transformative Power of Response Journals." In Teaching the Holocaust. Ed. Marianne Hirsch and Irene Kacandes. New York: MLA, 2004. • "Dear Peter: A Collage in Several Voices." In Writing with Elbow. Eds. Pat Belanoff, Marcia Dickson, Sheryl Fontaine and Charles Moran. Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2002, 253–267. • "Early Work on Composing: Lessons and Illuminations." In Perspectives on Writing: Theory, Research, Practice. Eds. Beth Boehm, Debra Journet and Mary Rosner. Stamford, CT: Ablex, 83–98. • Composing a Pleasurable Life in Women/Writing/Teaching. Ed. Jan Schmidt. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1998, 239–253. • ''Through Teachers' Eyes: Portraits of Writing Teachers at Work''. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1986/1998 (with Nancy Wilson). • "Facing the Other: The Emergence of Ethics and Selfhood in a Cross-Cultural Writing Classroom." In Narration as Knowledge: Tales of the Teaching Life. Ed. Joseph Trimmer. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1997, 173–190. • Landmark Essays on Writing Process. Edited volume. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Press, 1994. • "Book Review of An Open Language: Selected Writing on Literacy, Learning, and Opportunity," January 2007, https://archive.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/2369 • "Reflections on the Writing Process," (with Elaine Avidon), The Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 3, June 1981, https://archive.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/1858 == References ==