Writing, Thinking, and Learning

Well, I’ve been a little behind schedule with my bibliographic essay, but I finally realized what I want to write about. During the semester, it has been a continual revelation to discover the way I learn as I write. I always knew that writing was a laborious chore and that it was hard to get from start to finish in a productive and understandable way; but I didn’t really know why. My favorite phrase from the reading assignments was a statement by Ben Rafoth. He helped me to understand that the problem of writing is not merely a problem of arranging words, letters, sentences, and paragraphs; it is, in fact, a “thinking problem” (Rafoth 76). Janet Emig made a similar connection in her article about writing and learning. The simultaneous process of writing (or typing), reading, thinking, and reasoning provokes a style of learning that is almost impossible to duplicate. Drawing from these two sources, I want to write my bibliographic essay about the relationship that writing has with learning and thinking.