Write to Learn
by Valerie Balester, Executive Director
Do you remember when you received a bifurcated grade on a paper—something like A for Content and C for writing? Conventional wisdom is that “writing” is something we do after we gather content and decide upon arguments: writing is the part where we select words, organize, punctuate, and put thoughts into language.
But there’s another way to look at it. Thinking about content and arguments is as much a part of writing as selecting and arranging words. That part of the process where you think up what to say, often by reading, taking notes, or talking to others, is sometimes called pre-writing, but there’s really nothing prior about it. It’s an essential element of the writing process.
And it happens that we think not only before we write, but as we write and revise. Writing generates new ideas. Writing is not simply organization, grammar, style, and mechanics imposed upon thought.
When we assign writing in the major, we are not simply asking students to communicate an idea already formed or a concept already learned. They are not “just writing”—they are also thinking within their new disciplines. To invite students to communicate in our disciplines is to teach them to think like we do: to value certain arguments over others, to understand the nature of evidence, to use particular formats, to present data in certain ways, and so on. What kinds of arguments will a mathematician make to prove a theorem to her peers? And how might a biochemist report on research in a way that will gain him a grant?
Your students won’t learn this from a technical writing class taught by someone outside your discipline.
When you assign writing in a W or a C course, consider whether the task serves to strengthen students’ understanding of content—will writing about history help them to consider what history is from a philosophical as well as a factual perspective? Can they use the facts they learn in physics and apply them to a real-world problem to help them learn at a deeper level?
Think of writing as another mode of learning, one that can engage students in a highly satisfying way and that can let them demonstrate to you how much they have really been able to enter into your discipline. Challenge students to think as well as to communicate. And spend some class time discussing how writers in your discipline think, how they organize arguments, view evidence, and present ideas. You’ll see much better writing and learning as a result.
