Functions of Outlining among College Students in Four Disciplines

This collaborative, naturalistic study examined the functions outlining served for 122 students in four undergraduate classes, each in a different discipline. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of the students outlined at some time, and they variously inter-mingled outlining with other strategies across a wide spectrum of the composing process. However, outlining functions varied widely according to the assignment and the teacher's guidance. The study identified 5 functions: 1) students' use of generic formats to guide their work on a paper; 2) students' use of outlining as a bridge between content and structure; 3) students' use of outlining to impose order on their own ideas; 4) students' use of outlining to generate, preview, and evaluate modes of arrangement of their writing; and 5) students' use of outlining to summarize progress and to motivate their writing projects. However, some students used the generic 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 parts that their teachers expected. The study suggests the benefits of examining 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.