Does the Keyboard Spoil Your Grades?
Shari Wilson, a college teacher for years, noticed that many students in her composition courses earned about a letter grade higher when they wrote their essays in class. She tried to figure out why a real paper and pen made such a big difference in writing quality, but she could only speculate. One of her conjectures was based on her observation that students who use pens spend less time fiddling around with options and formatting in Microsoft Word. Another was that writing the old-fashioned way brings one closer to the writing process, making it more personal.
I think her best explanation was that pouring too much time into an essay kills spontaneity. As she put it, “the process of writing in-class in a timed situation seemed to discourage the kind of overwrought, constipated writing that some students produce with a typed paper.” I agree. In our society of printed pages, I think that people often forget the connection between writing and speaking. Of course, written and oral communication have differences, but fundamentally, they are both the same process. The focus of modern curriculum on rewriting, editing, and “the writing process” detracts from the basic truth that writing is saying, rather than just arranging words.
What a computer does is move the dynamic of writing even further away from that of regular speech. Editing is so easy with a word processor that it tends to make writing into a sort of construction project, rather than a way of expression. Some people like to put words together like bricks, but when others try it they get bogged down in the details, so busy with saying something right that they forget what they have to say. Wilson’s in-class essays fall upon both types of writers:
True, some students choke. They deliver half a paper. What is on the page is poorly thought-out and incoherent. Yet some, relieved of the need to think and rethink the topic, find themselves rising to the challenge. After outlining for 15 minutes, they find themselves churning out coherent paragraphs that stand together as a unified essay. I’ve never been able to predict which way a student will perform.
Wilson’s observation is not new. Back in the sixteenth century, the French essayist Montaigne remarked that when it comes to eloquence, “some have such a facility and promptness… that they are ever ready upon all occasions; and others more heavy and slow, never venture to utter anything but what they have long premeditated, and taken great care and pains to fit and prepare.” Those people who are by nature spontaneous, holds Montaigne, must write quickly or not at all. “We say of some compositions that they stink of oil and of the lamp, by reason of a certain rough harshness that laborious handling imprints upon those where it has been employed.” That explains why some students’ essays get worse with editing.
At any rate, whether you would rather set forth your message all at once or painstakingly prepare it, it is crucial to learn how to present it well. Let your speech be slow or sudden, but let it be eloquent. As Montaigne says, “he who remains totally silent, for want of leisure to prepare himself to speak well, and he also whom leisure does no ways benefit to better speaking, are equally unhappy.” Words are worth mastering, because words are gold.