The+Right+to+Think

= The Right to Think =

I remember the first time I taught a first-year composition course at Western Michigan University. The undergraduate catalog listed this course as "English 105: Thought and Writing." What an unusual description, I remember thinking to myself. Thought and writing? Isn't this stating the obvious? Doesn't //all// writing require thought...

While writing and thinking seemed a natural coupling, I soon realized these two activities do not automatically coincide.Students are often called upon to write under pressure and to adhere to specific time, generic, and topical constraints. Further, much of what students write within the classroom is assessed. When viewed merely as an “assignment” to be “graded,” writing can become just one more task a student completes.

I believe the act of writing is more than simply a task on someone’s daily to-do list. The act of writing involves thinking. Serious thinking.

I am not alone in believing thinking and writing are intimately connected. Vicki Spandel, in //The 9 Rights of Every Writer//, also supports the role "long thinking" plays in the writing classroom. She asserts, “ Serious writing requires long thinking…It takes reflection, the courage to dive below the surface, the willingness to live with a topic for a long period of time, turn it over and over in your mind, and decide for yourself what questions to ask about it” (Spandel 5).

This passage speaks to the important role reflective thinking plays in the writing process. Students rarely write “deep” insights spontaneously. Any good writer needs time to quiet her hectic world, retreat into her mind, and simply think. Spandel calls such reflection an “inner monologue;” she explains, “For it is there in the quiet of our own minds…that we learn to make sense of it all. It is there, in that internal world of the mind, that we develop the philosophy from which we write” (6).

While Spandel's description of "serious thinking" might resemble a form of meditation, I do not believe this is the only way a writer can quiet her mind. I believe good writing often stems from good reading. By good reading, I mean students "read as writers." Every time students encounter a new genre in my classroom (literary, professional, academic, etc.), I encourage them to think about the choices writers make. Students analyze a writer's tone, language, sentence structures, grammatical conventions, target audience, and purpose for writing. Students consider how the text being studied may or not adhere to generic conventions and how this text exists within a particular context. Students do not simply respond to a new text spontaneously; instead, they are given time to think about the text, its genre, its context, as well as their own reactions to this text as a reader. Students are also given time to think about their own ideas before creating texts of their own. In other words, thinking, reading, and writing are valuable, interconnected components of the writing process.

**In my class**, students enact their "Right to Think" in these ways:


 * Students are offered “think time" and silence in class. There is no such thing as spontaneous writing.
 * They are also encouraged to write on “their time” by publishing and responding to writing outside of class (e.g. threaded discussions, blogs, wikisites, etc.).
 * Sometimes the best ideas come at 3:10 in the morning after hours of caffeine-induced insomnia. Exchanging writing online encourages students to think and write in their own time.
 * I grade using a portfolio system, allowing students ample opportunities to revisit and revise their writing. They have long lengths of time to add new ideas as they continue thinking about their writing.
 * Students are exposed to various genres of writing to read...as they read, they also think, discuss, imitate, reject, and respond. In other words, they read to write.



Erinn Bentley, 12 July 2008