Jago Chapter 5

Side note: Wasn't the Gettysburg address actually penned in a half an hour? Jago makes Lincoln sound like the Basho of speech writing, "...he had chosen his words and crafted his thoughts with accuracy and order." That sounds like Lincoln wrote a Haiku!

Side note 2: Jago did it again! "Chilling, not rigorous thinking, is the mental state of choice[for teens]." Arrrggg! The stupid stereo-typing of adolescent perspectives! I hate that!

I believe that Jago is absolutely correct in her assertion that the process of writing: how to translate from brain to page, is the most difficult part of writing. I am interested in Jago's "Block Method" for helping students write essays, generate ideas, and become better writers, ect. ect. Being able to write well is so damn important, I am convinced that even most college students are crappy writers.I feel that Jago overlooks cultivating the coherency of thought and flow in paper writing. Jago mainly focuses on generating ideas for critical paper writing (which I agree with, I think students must feel that the topics they are writing about are relevant, instead of an eight page paper on silt.) but she does not address how to help student transcribe what they are thinking into writing.
When you write you have to own what you are saying. I think that most students sort of view writing process as something that is "above them"-I know I certainly did. Whenever I wrote something in high school I tried to copy academic writing when completing an essay- and I was rewarded for that effort. I never had an authentic voice and didn't believe in what I was writing. I wrote what I thought was expected. When I read over my friends paper's now, I sort of see a parallel from my high school days. Their papers usually consist of other people's quotations, mixed in with some personal thoughts incoherently thrown into a nonsensical order on the page. I would always wonder, "did Kathy even read this all the way through? "
The best advice about writing I received was from my favorite Professor at Western, and its so simple: "What do you want to say Ashley? What do you really want to say? Don't give me fluff, I don't care about what other people think. I want to know what you think." Simple I know, but no one had ever put it to me so straight before. No teacher in high school had ever told me that my opinion was that important. Owning my language was the first step for me in becoming a comparable writer...well, at least my papers make sense all the way through.
I wish that Jago had some advice about helping students cultivate a personal voice in writing. Jago does say this, however, which I agree with: "you don't know what you really think until you write it down."
I believe that once someone starts to see themselves in what they write (instead of writing to a form,) they take greater care with the content.