Reference no: EM132989706

Directions: Please read the passage by writing researcher Heidi Estrem (below). After you read, write a short essay in two to three paragraphs that answers the following questions:

What is Estrem's main argument about writing? Use at least one quote from the reading to explain your answer.

Do you think it might be useful for students to think about writing this way? Use examples from your own experience to explain your answer.

"Writing" by Heidi Estrem

Writing is often defined by what it is: a text, a product; less visible is what it can do: generate new thinking. As an activity undertaken to bring new understandings, writing in this sense is not about crafting a sentence or perfecting a text but about mulling over a problem, thinking with others, and exploring new ideas or bringing disparate ideas together. Writers of all kinds-from self-identified writers to bloggers to workplace teams to academic researchers-have had the experience of coming upon new ideas as a result of writing. Individually or in a richly interactive environment, in the classroom or workplace or at home, writers use writing to generate knowledge that they didn't have before.

Common cultural conceptions of the act of writing often emphasize magic and discovery, as though ideas are buried and the writer uncovers them, rather than recognizing that "the act of creating ideas, not finding them, is at the heart of significant writing" (Flower and Hayes 1980, 22). Understanding and identifying how writing is in itself an act of thinking can help people more intentionally recognize and engage with writing as a creative activity, inextricably linked to thought. We don't simply think first and then write. We write to think.

Texts where this kind of knowledge making takes place can be formal or informal, and they are sometimes ephemeral: journals (digital and otherwise), collaborative whiteboard diagrams, and complex doodles and marginalia, for example. These texts are generative and central to meaning making even though we often don't identify them as such. Recognizing these kinds of texts for their productive value then broadens our understanding of literacy to include a rich range of everyday and workplace-based genres far beyond more traditionally recognized ones. Naming these as writing usefully makes visible the roles and purposes of writing (e.g., Barton and Hamilton 1998; Heath 2012).