Murray and Emig

I agree with Murray more so than Emig. While I believe that writing is a process best left unfinished, I also believe in the creative nature of the process. Process is best left with wide boundaries that open the mind to creativity. Emig concentrates far too much on the role of learning as it relates to writing. While I do not deny that writing plays a pivotal role in learning, I feel that to concentrate too much on the learning takes away from the writing itself. Murray advocates a method that is student centered and works to promote creativity within the author's understanding of the material. His first five implications deal strictly with the student: Let the student use his own language, let the student organize his ideas, let the student decide his subject matter, ect.

Emig has the same praise for writing and its usefulness in the world of academia, but she has far too much to say on the ultimate goal of writing as it relates to learning. To embellish upon a point I made in class today, there is only so much learning involved in writing. Learning through the process of writing requires that the student be actively engaged in the subject matter. So much academic writing---abstracts for example---only offer the writer an opportunity to rephrase the words of the original author. This at best resembles repetition, which as a learning tool has its uses, but it only goes so far. It does not develop analytical skills. It does not enhance the author's ability to make an argument and support it with text.

The ideal model may fall somewhere between Murray and Emig's ideal. We should take from Murray's article the ideals that writing is a creative, never-ending process that should be student-centered. From Emig, we should promote the ideal of writing as a tool for learning, although we should stress that the writer needs to think about the words he is putting on paper in more than just a surface sense. This may be why in matters of literary analysis I am so reader focused. What did I personally take away from the texts? In matters of literary analysis, when I read an article by another author critiquing the original material, what is my understanding of the ideas the author is writing about? (This applies both to the text being studied and the companion reading.) I feel that as long as a reader clearly understands the concepts, the reader should be free to discuss his opinion on the matter and how he or she would implement the ideas of the author to the original text.