In their landmark studies, Flower and Hayes conclude that “novice” writers differ from “good” writers in the way novice writers fail to construct a problem in the same ways as expert writers. Novice writers tend to repeatedly read a prompt in hopes of finding some kind of direction for the writing situation. Meanwhile, “good” writers use the writing prompt as a way to articulate and define their own understanding of the rhetorical situation to which they are responding.

s this foregrounding of problem-posing.