Elements of Writing: For Teachers and Students

My first goal is to get students and teachers to think differently about writing, to change their perspective. But the perspectives I offer may not be easy to accept, whereas some of you may see these perspectives as a given. Certainly, there is nothing new about what I have gathered here, except for the perspectives that evolve from how I order this information to help us understand how we use language and how we communicate. I believe we will understand each other as a result. Sometimes, thinking differently about something we think we already know promotes growth. You may find this book helpful in many ways, including improving your writing, or helping others to do so. The more you understand how you have come to use language, and what language does, the better you will write. But if those linguists who affirm that language is thought are accurate, then the more clearly one understands one's language the more clearly one may also think! The overall goal of this book is to get students and teachers to think-and talk-more clearly about how they use language to communicate in writing, but also in speech. I believe better writing, and teaching of writing, will result. The Elements of Writing is not a data dump of information! Instead, this book attempts to be transformative, to change the reader's thinking. Metaphorically, I hope to help you shed the chains of inaccurate and dysfunctional thinking about writing. In this respect, I hope you will challenge my concepts, and test them in your day-to-day experiences.