How writers write and learners learn

"Over time and cultures, the most robust and most effective form of communication is the creation of a powerful narrative." ~ Howard Gardner in Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People's Minds.
Before class began Tuesday evening, three references were made to a well-documented but debated phenomenon: a natural inclination toward linguistics but not math. As a mathematically-challenged person, I can attest to the fact that I have greater linguistic abilities than I do in logical-mathematical reasoning. It is a debatable issue because educators can limit their teaching if they teach only to math or linguistic intelligences (because they are the most common) without addressing other intelligences. According to Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences (MI) theory, all students can learn content if they learn through MI applications. Emily's presentation brought back memories about Gardner's theory and my undergraduate teacher education program. In education courses, students learn how to apply the intelligences within their pedagogies. Incorporating all of the intelligences is not easily done in the real world of teaching, but after thinking about MI again, I see new ways to use the intelligences as a means of invention in composition. The intelligences are about how we learn, and they easily lend themselves to process writing. The possibilities for reaching reticent writers through MI is an exciting prospect as well.

When exploring the ways writers write, Samuel Coleridge's compositions may be examined for how they vary from the standard English style of writing. Most of us who are native English speakers, think, speak, and write linearly. We scaffold our discourse, building fact upon fact. Many people from other countries do not think, speak, and write linearly. Some cultures compose their discourse with a more spiral construction; many ideas are explored, and they diverge far off topic before arriving at the main point. Coleridge wrote in such a way. Rex Veeder, in "Coleridge's Philosophy of Composition: An Overview of a Romantic Rhetorician," writes about Coleridge's philosophy: "There must be willingness, then, on the composer's part to accept obscurity as a vital ingredient of the composing process. Working through obscure thoughts in acts of composition assists us in creating an innovative personality" (22). While it is true that Coleridge was creative, his innovativeness made him difficult to read. Veeder shares with us Linda Flower's thoughts about Coleridge: "Coleridge's 'inspirational' model for composition is a threat to the teaching of composition," and Ross Winterowd's assertion that Coleridge's "theory of composition or rhetoric lacks purpose" (20). The problems of Coleridge's composition lie in the fact that his "method for composition is defined by a circular rather than linear approach to the structure of an essay" (26). For teachers of English composition, such writing presents problems with the way we view organization.

Coleridge wrote in a way that Ann E. Berthoff describes in "Learning the Uses of Chaos" in our Norton anthology: "Meanings do not come out of the air; we make them out of a chaos of images, half-truths, remembrances, syntactic fragments, from the mysterious and unformed" (648). Berthoff asserts that we must look beyond linear composing when she writes, "Learning to write means learning to tolerate ambiguity, to learn that the making of meaning is a dialectical process determined by perspective and context" (649). This is a lesson for those who teach composition. Our students' diversity in thinking and writing means that they do not all write linearly, and we educators must make "dialogue out of chaos" in order to reach others and form communities with our students.