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WRITING THROUGH READING
WRITING THROUGH READING
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Scanned, proofed and corrected from the original edition for your reading pleasure. (Worth every penny!)
***
An excerpt from the PREFACE:
Writing Through Reading is a small book of methods and exercises in different kinds of rewriting or retelling another person's thought. I have compiled it in order to provide an inexpensive manual of carefully selected passages suitable for "first practice," trusting that teachers, having once tried the plan, and having trained their students to use it, will continue in it, assigning specimens of their own selection.
The convictions that led to the preparation of the book are as follows: —
1. That not more than one third — at most, one half — of a student's writing should be original.
2. That the rest of his practice should present to him definite, even intensive, problems in expression, in which his incentive is emulation, and his product is of such a sort that not only his teacher, but he himself, can form some fair estimate of his success.
S. That such definite problems are supplied by the various forms of reproduction, the advantages which these offer being: —
A. To the student: —
(a) That he knows exactly what he is doing, and has two standards with which to compare his product— the original, and the versions of his classmates.
(b) That he can write in the classroom, under the eye of his instructor, and subject (while he is writing) to the instructor's suggestion and criticism.
(c) That he discovers that learning to write may be an artistic discipline, conducted not only in accordance with theory, but by practice in the presence of a model, method and theory rising out of practice.
(d) That he is compelled to pay attention to the two essential units of style — the word and the sentence; and to these, not — as too often in rhetorical study — because they appear to be important on their own account, but because, to express the thought of the original, they must be "right." He must extend his vocabulary, refine his diction, and labor over his sentences.
(e) That, since good writing is largely an affair of feeling, — of the ear, — he unconsciously trains his perception of sentence-pattern and sentence-rhythm.
(f) That the rewriting of carefully selected passages of prose and poetry imprints upon his mind worthy ideas which, merely read, would soon be forgotten.
B. To the teacher: —
(a) That he is freed from a large part of his theme-reading.
(b) That he is released from the necessity of a great deal of theoretical talk about writing.
(c) That such talk as is legitimate is suggested by definite problems of practice, common to the entire class.
(d) That he can watch the student in the act of writing ideas which they have in common, so that his relation to the learner is that of an art-teacher to an art-student.
(e) That he can intimately relate the practice of writing to the study of literature.
Professor Marsh pointed out many years ago that the value of written translation as a discipline in English expression lies in the constant compulsion it exercises upon the student of improving and extending his expressional fund and ability. A man who always writes as he thinks, he says in effect, easily falls into set and monotonous forms of wording, phrasing, and thinking. No matter what he has to say, he says it in the same general mode. There is no compulsion upon him to extend or diversify either his vocabulary or his phraseology; and not only his English, but his thinking, suffers.
Professor Marsh's remark seems to me to apply tellingly to most of our students who have for years written compositions or themes. They have achieved fluency, but not discrimination, vigor, or brevity. So long as they write passable English, they feel no compulsion to improve it; and compulsion is hardly supplied by a study of rhetorical rules and principles, or the rhetorical analysis and discussion of literature.
The old-fashioned exercises in reproduction certainly do supply the needed compulsion, for they permit no approximations, no vague thinking, no loose diction. For a student old enough to take them for what they are worth, to realize that they are means and not ends, and to use them with sense and discretion, they seem to me to supply some of the discipline which our present methods of teaching do not. They will, of course, be made strictly supplementary or ancillary to other kinds of writing. Perhaps the best corrective to whatever faults they may have would be offered by oral English, news-writing, letters, and narration. They form a natural introduction to the study of exposition, and a valuable and convenient accompaniment to the study of literature, whether in "thought" courses or...
***
An excerpt from the PREFACE:
Writing Through Reading is a small book of methods and exercises in different kinds of rewriting or retelling another person's thought. I have compiled it in order to provide an inexpensive manual of carefully selected passages suitable for "first practice," trusting that teachers, having once tried the plan, and having trained their students to use it, will continue in it, assigning specimens of their own selection.
The convictions that led to the preparation of the book are as follows: —
1. That not more than one third — at most, one half — of a student's writing should be original.
2. That the rest of his practice should present to him definite, even intensive, problems in expression, in which his incentive is emulation, and his product is of such a sort that not only his teacher, but he himself, can form some fair estimate of his success.
S. That such definite problems are supplied by the various forms of reproduction, the advantages which these offer being: —
A. To the student: —
(a) That he knows exactly what he is doing, and has two standards with which to compare his product— the original, and the versions of his classmates.
(b) That he can write in the classroom, under the eye of his instructor, and subject (while he is writing) to the instructor's suggestion and criticism.
(c) That he discovers that learning to write may be an artistic discipline, conducted not only in accordance with theory, but by practice in the presence of a model, method and theory rising out of practice.
(d) That he is compelled to pay attention to the two essential units of style — the word and the sentence; and to these, not — as too often in rhetorical study — because they appear to be important on their own account, but because, to express the thought of the original, they must be "right." He must extend his vocabulary, refine his diction, and labor over his sentences.
(e) That, since good writing is largely an affair of feeling, — of the ear, — he unconsciously trains his perception of sentence-pattern and sentence-rhythm.
(f) That the rewriting of carefully selected passages of prose and poetry imprints upon his mind worthy ideas which, merely read, would soon be forgotten.
B. To the teacher: —
(a) That he is freed from a large part of his theme-reading.
(b) That he is released from the necessity of a great deal of theoretical talk about writing.
(c) That such talk as is legitimate is suggested by definite problems of practice, common to the entire class.
(d) That he can watch the student in the act of writing ideas which they have in common, so that his relation to the learner is that of an art-teacher to an art-student.
(e) That he can intimately relate the practice of writing to the study of literature.
Professor Marsh pointed out many years ago that the value of written translation as a discipline in English expression lies in the constant compulsion it exercises upon the student of improving and extending his expressional fund and ability. A man who always writes as he thinks, he says in effect, easily falls into set and monotonous forms of wording, phrasing, and thinking. No matter what he has to say, he says it in the same general mode. There is no compulsion upon him to extend or diversify either his vocabulary or his phraseology; and not only his English, but his thinking, suffers.
Professor Marsh's remark seems to me to apply tellingly to most of our students who have for years written compositions or themes. They have achieved fluency, but not discrimination, vigor, or brevity. So long as they write passable English, they feel no compulsion to improve it; and compulsion is hardly supplied by a study of rhetorical rules and principles, or the rhetorical analysis and discussion of literature.
The old-fashioned exercises in reproduction certainly do supply the needed compulsion, for they permit no approximations, no vague thinking, no loose diction. For a student old enough to take them for what they are worth, to realize that they are means and not ends, and to use them with sense and discretion, they seem to me to supply some of the discipline which our present methods of teaching do not. They will, of course, be made strictly supplementary or ancillary to other kinds of writing. Perhaps the best corrective to whatever faults they may have would be offered by oral English, news-writing, letters, and narration. They form a natural introduction to the study of exposition, and a valuable and convenient accompaniment to the study of literature, whether in "thought" courses or...
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