The word writing can mean many things to many people, especially when it refers to a writing-across-the-curriculum program. Often, discussions regarding such programs degenerate into debates over the relative importance of two aspects of writing in the disciplines: writing to learn and learning to write.

I would like to suggest that a healthy undergraduate liberal arts education should provide students with significant training and experience with writing, balanced between three "dimensions": writing as a means of expression and communication, writing as a tool for action, and writing as a mode of learning.

An education that emphasizes all three of these dimensions in a balanced manner will benefit students during and after their academic careers.

Writing as a Means of Expression & Communication

This dimension concentrates on the how of writing, on helping students improve their ability to express themselves in writing and to use writing as a means of communicating with others.

Aside from matters of simple correctness, improving writing is a much more complicated and developmental process than merely memorizing and applying rules.
Progress in written expression is often seen over the course of years, rather than semesters, so attention to writing is vital throughout a student's college career, in the major and out.

Writing as a Tool for Action

This dimension focuses on using writing to get things done in academic, professional, personal and/or civic realms. Over the course of their years in college, students should be given instruction is writing for general academic purposes as well as discipline-
specific purposes. Students should also receive training and experience in writing-related skills and technology connected with their future careers.

As with the previous dimension, courses fulfilling the liberal-arts and major requirements can combine to offer students a thorough training in these practical uses for writing within and outside the academy.

Writing as a Mode of Learning

Our focus in this issue, this dimension of writing taps into the vast potential of writing for improving learning and encouraging student development.

Although the concept has become part of the bedrock of composition theory, the phrase, writing as a mode of learning, originated in Janet Emig's 1981 essay of the same name. Basing her theory on the work of Lev Vygotsky, A. R. Luria, Jerome Bruner, Michael Polanyi, James Britton and others, Emig claims, "Writing serves learning uniquely because writing as process-and-product possesses a cluster of attributes that correspond uniquely to certain powerful learning strategies" (7).

First of all, says Emig, writing is different from listening, talking and reading:

• Writing is a technological device—not the wheel, but early enough to qualify as primary technology; talking is organic, natural, earlier.
• Most writing is slower than talking.
• Writing is stark, barren, even naked as a medium; talking is rich, luxuriant, inherently redundant.
• Talk leans on the environment; writing must provide its own context.
• With writing, the audience is usually absent; with talking, the listener is usually present.
• Writing usually results in a visible graphic product; talking usually does not. (9)

While Emig notes the value, even necessity, of speaking as a part of a good learning environment, she cautions against ignoring the differences between the two (8-9).

Secondly, Emig claims for writing "unique correspondences between learning and writing" (10). Successful learning involves reinforcement and feedback; is connective and selective; makes uses of summarizers such as propositions and hypotheses; and is active, engaged, and personal. Writing incorporates all of these characteristics of successful learning due to its graphic, relatively slow (compared to thought and speech), and permanent nature (10-14).

An old adage says that we don't know what we think until we speak or write our thoughts. Certainly, there are many ways of knowing that don't involve spoken or written language, but in Thought and Language, Lev Vygotsky distinguishes between "inner speech" and "external speech." Not just speech minus sound, inner speech is an entirely separate speech function with its own syntax and mode of expression—the language of our own thoughts.

Moving from inner speech to external speech requires shaping for the benefit of an audience, as James Britton explains: "To embark on a conversational utterance is to take on a certain responsibility, to stake a claim that calls for justification: and perhaps it is the social pressure on the speaker to justify his claim that gives talk an edge over silent brooding as a problem-solving procedure" (29).

Britton's term, shaping at the point of utterance, refers to this movement between inner and external speech, a movement that involves the shaping of thought as much as the shaping of linguistic expression: "How often have we had a student come to us with [a] problem, and in the course of verbalizing what that problem is reach a solution with no help from us?" (30).

Speaking and writing help us to discover (and not just to express) our thoughts. And writing—because of its visual and permanent nature—permits us to re-visit, re-shape, and re-think those thoughts. Writing that focuses on this process of discovery, writing that is more concerned with what the writer thinks than with how that thought is expressed, is termed expressive by Britton and reflective by writing-across-the-curriculum expert Toby Fulwiler.

Expressive/Reflective Writing

Fulwiler views expressive/reflective writing as a key component of a well-rounded, effective education that fosters critical, independent thinking (7). Writing opportunities that give students space to reflect on what they are learning, to make sense of the facts, to connect class content with their own personal experiences—these are writing opportunities that promote intellectual growth and successful learning. Writing is thinking; writing is learning.

Our next issue of  The Why & The How will focus on the practical application of expressive/reflective writing-to-learn techniques to everyday teaching in the disciplines. For now, just keep in mind that the term writing means more than the ability to write clearly or get something done; writing can be a mode of learning.

"What We Talk About When We Talk About Writing."  David Kimmel.  Heidelberg College Writing Across the Curriculum.  2005.