Talking: A Writing Tool

While I enjoyed Emig’s idea about how writing engages us on multiple levels forcing our “hand, eye, and brain” to work simultaneously and to stimulate both sides of the brain, I also especially felt inspired by the relationship of talking and writing (125).

Talking as a form of free-writing is something that I feel I have hinted to myself as a possibility but have never put into practice. I notice that when my students come to my office hours just to discuss their topic or thesis idea, their ability to synthesize and then communicate through writing what they want to say improves. I wonder how well incorporating this into the classroom would help their brainstorming process? I encourage my students to find the place and time that they like to write. I also teach free-writing, clustering and outlining, but I think that talking is what these students like best. I even feel that speech being their chosen form of communication is why they feel like they struggle with writing. I imagine an exercise where, much like peer review, students in groups of 2-3 talk out their ides or how they see their future paper coming together with their peers, who then write down what they hear the student saying. Upon receiving what their classmates hear them saying, their written revision might make more clarifications. It would be interesting to see how well students would respond to this exercise in action.