Feeling and Acting Like a Writer

✍ Scribed by Jean McConochie

• Book ID: 102288291
• Publisher: Wiley (John Wiley & Sons)
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 88 KB
• Volume: 9
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1056-7941
• DOI: 10.1002/j.1949-3533.2000.tb00278.x

✦ Synopsis

AS STUDENTS MOVE forward in the academic world, they are expected to add to their linguistic repertoire a second dialect of the language of instruction-that of the written language. As teachers of English to speakers of other languages, we must help our students to see themselves not only as speakers but also as writers of English. An effective way to help students feel like writers is to introduce them to widely used stylistic features that they can incorporate in their own writing with relative ease.

What Is the Place of Style in Writing?

According to the celebrated 19th-century English literary critic, Matthew Arnold, the only secret of style is this: "Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can" (Russell, 1898(Russell, /1903, p. 136), p. 136). That is, style refers not to the ornamentation of already formulated ideas, but to an essential component of what Emig (1983) describes as "a journey of discovery through language to discover one's thoughts and feelings" (p. 18). This journey is recognized in the recent pedagogical shift of interest from product to process in writing. As part of the process, writers necessarily consider matters of style, for form is an essential component of meaning. That is, we can no more teach composition without mentioning style than we could teach physics without mentioning gravity.