I used to hate writing. I really did. This apprehension used to make me end up thinking why I should write. To my surprise, however, the more I write, the more I feel I like writing. That's probably because I learned new things about myself as well as about the world through writing; in personal narrative, I learned what I like, and I became aware of how to argue through argumentative essay. Also, I got to know why people are getting obssesive to their appearance from my persuasive essay in communication class. Like my experience, people learn a lot of things through writing, and in this sense, I absolutely agree with the mimetic, one of the philosophies of composition.
As you can assume, what "mimetic" means basically "imitate." In other words, we can imitate the real world under the name of writing, and we can put ourselves in so many different shoes. In the mimetic, therefore, good writing means good thinking, that is, your writing is totally contingent on how you think. In this thinking process, we are exposed to various possibilities, which helps broaden our perspectives through logic and reasoning. Thus, we might be able to say to teach composition is to teach students how to live since life goes on by making a decision at every corner of our lives, and we can do this better by thinking critically. That's why we have to teach composition.
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3 comments:
To me, there is something still daunting about beginning a lengthy research paper. I have to own up to my own expectations and those of my professor before I begin.
I do agree that there must be a mimetic approach in teaching 1301. I am concerned that with too much of this approach the students will not reach the rewarding stage of writing. I don't know the solution, but hopefully there is a bridge between the gap.
Jeong wrote that "in this thinking process, we are exposed to various possibilities, which helps broaden our perspectives through logic and reasoning." Yes, writing is an exercise that stretches the brain beyond where it would normally go in unspoken musings or even in spoken utterances. Writing is its most useful when it stretches the brain to think beyond the first words that come to it, which doesn't always happen in speech. But as our essay this week from Britten shows, sometimes writing can dampen the spontaneity of the spoken word. Thus, as the essay asserts, too much writing (revision of thought) can be counterproductive. The trick for me is to know when I've done enough.
I think you are correct when you say that the more we write the easier it gets, at least in comparison to our first classes of writing. The writing process can be a complicated one in which apprehension can occur. I think you make some really great comments about the writing process in general.
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