Writing Learning
Drafting / / July 04, 2021
There are people who have a facility to speak, but when they must express themselves in writing they find serious difficulties in the face of lexical, syntactic, spelling, distribution or synthesis. (What a hurdle for many to have to comply with the boss's "tell me in writing", the need to write an exam, present a report or answer an unfamiliar letter! )
Those who find it difficult to express themselves in writing lack grammatical knowledge, have no practice, and perhaps no will to do so! learning. Because this art is learned: nobody is born knowing it. It is obvious that, as in all art, mastery is easier and faster for some than for others. Improvement is achieved through constant practice, accompanied by careful observation, criticism and, above all, the great push that enthusiasm and the tenacious desire to advance culturally.
The following expressions by the writer Leopoldo Lugones constitute an excellent lesson to ponder:
Learning everything that writers have discovered with their experience to make the use of the language more effective is an advantage. And this has to be systematic, although it is seen, like the handling of any tool. Which is to say, it requires learning. Anyone who wanted to exempt himself from achieving what has already been achieved, to do so only by dint of talent, would lose in such a strong desire much time that he would have dedicated to creating.
Well, this is what, in sum, all those who - and many are - claim to protest grammar as tedious and 'condemn it as useless. It would seem foolish to them to maintain that learning architecture is detrimental to construction. To appreciate the contradiction in all its magnitude, one only has to state it: write well, without learning to write ...
The thing is, you don't just write well by learning grammar. As it is an art, it also requires models (that is, imitation) and own experience (that is, practice). You learn to write by writing, reading other writers, and studying the language. But all this is grammar, as you can see: applied and analytical art of writing correctly. To use only one of the three means is to reduce, who does it, his possibility of doing it better, condemning himself to verbal misery, if he does not read or methodize; to perpetual imitation, if he only reads without methodizing; to sterile purism, if only methodized. This is bad grammar, but incomplete. The exclusive methodization (that is, the teaching of rules and loose examples) is what generally gives this erroneous idea of grammar, not because it is bad, but because it is taught badly. Grammar is inevitable. The illiterate rustic who expresses himself well by nature, does grammar without knowing it.
We can conclude that learning the art of writing implies the imposition of a discipline formative, beneficial for the integration of a cultured personality, well equipped to act socially.
Writing well is expressing yourself adequately. And this is nothing more than the externalization of the supreme human condition: knowing how to think straight.