Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in American Studies, clip 9 of 11

Abstract

Brief excerpt from interview: In my own experience as a poet and as a critical scholar, I think that writing has the capacity to alert you to things you didn't even realize you were thinking sometimes. Writing can be helpful at getting at certain subconscious ways in which you are grappling with particular issues. Writing can be helpful for students to organize their ideas, and it teaches them to think deeply about something before they respond in certain ways. So writing can be a great mediating practice between thought and dialogue. I think it also allows them to think of how they can better and more clearly communicate their own ideas, their own emotions, and also listen to others. So even though it's not apparent that writing can do that, in asking them to write in response to readings or class discussions makes them have to be better listeners and then to organize that listening, what they have retained through that listening, in order to write about it.