That '70's Article

So at risk of bashing an already well-beaten horse, I too was surprised and confused by having to read an article on writing from 1977. In researching peer review effectiveness in writing I quickly learned that it's difficult to find pertinent information that's more than two or three years old. "So why this article?" asks everyone in the class. Because there are still some interesting ideas here, that's why. Once notion that really stuck with me is that unlike other the forms of language process, writing is the only one that bares a tangible result. Talking, listening, and reading yield no language fruit, while you can hold what you've written in your hands, unless you draw it on a cave wall or something. We have paper now so, you know, no need to write an essay on a cave wall or anything. When considering teaching English 1000 next year, I constantly think of all the features of learning to write that might be frustrating and potentially disengaging for students; not being able to effectively convey their thoughts through writing; having a negative experience with peer review; not understanding the construction of a form of essay. However, in all of my pessimism, I never stopped to think about how writing might offer students an incentive where other mediums can not. Good, bad, whatever their writing might be, after they've completed it, they can hold it in their hands--or behold it on their screen--and say, "I've done this. I've accomplished this." It's not something abstract or a speech that has vanished in the air, an article invisibly stored in the mind. Emig notes how Vygotsky, Luria, and Brunner have noted a significant connection between writing and learning, and continues to explain that, "Successful learning is also engaged, committed, personal learning," (Emig 126). When applying this to teaching English 1000 for me, it means that if students can become in engaged in writing, enjoy writing, then it might be another effective way for them to learn--learning in English 1000, but more importantly, learning in any class, in any arena in their lives. Writing becomes another tool in their belt in which to engage knowledge, if of course, they adopt it as a form of "personal learning". That kind of puts the pressure on me as the instructor, but it also gives me incentive. Writing can immediate gratification where other forms of language processes cannot. I think within this potentially frustrating and disengaging process of composition that we will begin in the fall, small incentives like this might offer enough for some students to continue down the path and adopt writing as tool for learning. I can only hope.