Big idea number three. Writing is a problem-solving activity. Many students who take first-year writing courses wonder why it's a requirement of university education. I have no plans on becoming a professional writer, a student might say, so why do I have to be here? Another student might respond, yeah, what does this writing course have to do with my major?
I don't see how this class helps me become a better professional. These questions and others like it raise reasonable concerns about the relevance of writing instruction to a university education. So how do university writing teachers typically respond? The best answers to such questions describe writing as a problem-solving activity that travels to virtually every educational and professional context. When defining writing as a problem-solving activity, teachers mean, writing helps us describe problems that are relevant to our personal or professional lives.
For example, maybe you feel frustrated about how people use social media to weigh in on important political topics. Writing can help you describe that problem to yourself and others. Writing helps us define the different components of problems that are relevant to our personal or professional lives. For example, maybe you feel frustrated about how people use social media to weigh in on important political topics, but don't want social media to go away entirely.
Writing can help you identify and describe aspects of social media use that you find concerning, as well as identify and describe aspects of social media use that you think are worth protecting. Writing helps us consider different perspectives associated with problems that are relevant to our personal or professional lives. For example, maybe you feel frustrated about how people use social media to weigh in on important political topics, but know that other people might not agree with your perspective.
Writing helps you listen to perspectives that are different from your own, and provides you an occasion to explain why your perspective should be heard and considered more carefully. Writing helps us measure whether or not our perspectives produce consequences that align with our purpose. For example, maybe you feel frustrated about how people use social media to weigh in on important political topics and want to create better solutions.
By defining the problem and proposing a solution, you can determine whether others share your concerns and may want to initiate the type of change you propose. Writing records the current state of our thinking and thus creates an occasion for us to rethink whether the problems we define and solutions we propose are effective. For example, Maybe you feel frustrated about how people use social media to weigh in on important political topics and want to create better solutions.
By defining the problem and proposing a solution, you can determine whether others share your concerns and may want to initiate the type of change you propose. If they don't, writing helps you reflect on whether your perspective needs to change, whether you need to define the problem differently so that others can see it with greater clarity, whether the solution you propose needs to consider additional factors to be effective, and so on. We emboldened the action verbs in the previous examples to underscore the fact that writing is more than a simple record of your ideas or feelings.
Writing is also an activity that you can engage in to describe, define, and solve problems that are relevant to your personal and professional life. By learning to write more effectively, you increase the probability of solving the problems that matter to you. You also create an occasion for others to learn from your good work.