Composition / Writing

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The Encyclopedia of Education points out that spoken language has existed as long as man has been a recognizable species. It says that written language as we know it is only about 7,000 years old. With regards to composition/writing and the teaching of ti, it is an unsettled field, full of controversy, unresolved questions and various practices and philosophies. Quoting directly now, The work "composition" derives from the Latin "cum" (with, together) and ponere (to place). Etymologically, at least, composition of any kind involves putting things together into a new structure for a purpose. In written composition an understanding of this etymology sheds some light on objectives. The materials to be put together in written composition are the details from personal sensory experience, from vicarious experience (reading, listening, viewing) and from inferences. The structures into which these details are placed derive from personal creation, from productive thinking processes, and from learned patterns of a particular culture. To be a skilled writer, then, an individual must be a skilled observer and perceiver; a skilled reader, listener, and viewer; a skilled "inferencer" of inducer of ideas; a skilled creator of original structures; a skilled thinker and a skilled adapter of traditional cultural patterns. In addition, he must be skilled in the mechanics of setting down the integrated products of these skills so that he reaches the minds and emotions of his readers. The purposes of composition in the schools are to influence perception, integration, thinking, and expression, to enrich the lives of students by giving them new tools for processing information from experience, and to increase their self-perception and environmental awareness."