Revised version of: "What does writing mean in our system and what should it mean to involve? Why?

Generally writing assignments are given to us as students for the purpose of assessment. Professors want to assess our abilities of deduction and inference based on our own knowledge background, but unfortunately if you don’t infer or deduce the same thing they did or in other words, the same thing they expect you to deduce, you won’t be able to get a good score. In isolation a good score may mean nothing to you, and it may not be important for you if the professor didn’t like your piece of writing, but in the long run, getting poor grades could ruin your future. Therefore, you gradually adapt yourself to the attitudes of the professors and your creativity will vanish forever. After a while you find yourself having no idea of your own anymore but just a copy of your professors’ insight.

Basically in our system they give you a topic and ask you to give your opinion on it. Sometimes a list of topics is given and you need to choose one among them which I think increases your freedom of choice; however, even in the case of the list of topics you may find none interesting. You often find yourself imitating other people’s styles or thoughts, when it is meant to involve your own thoughts. I think the reason why this phenomenon often takes place is that you are not taught how to think properly in the first place, so that when you are exposed to a topic, your thoughts are so disorganized that you can’t put them together and write a whole piece. Different ideas seem to be scattered in your head and you find it hard to organize them. In my opinion, the ability to think about a subject and come up with its pros and cons and also logical reasons to support them is an art.

On the contrary, when you want to write about a topic, first you need to learn a way to organize your thoughts and that can’t be achieved unless you do a lot of reading and familiarize yourself with the styles and patterns used in other writings; however, you should bear in mind that mere reading doesn’t necessarily lead to organized thoughts since there are many people who do so but this doesn’t help them out. Another important point is that sometimes there is no thought to be organized. In that case I believe critical thinking would help, because when you start thinking critically, thoughts and ideas are formed in your mind.

In order to get to know different patterns and at the same time in order not to copy the ideas from the reading materials you’re exposed to, you need to keep a balance between these two which is a hard task. Therefore, first you need to read the material in order to get to know the writer’s point of view and then by thinking critically try to form your own thoughts and opinions about the same article. This reading involves a lot of unconscious thinking and analyzing, then without even noticing it, you acquire what you need.

Writing should involve a lot of research and this research gives you lots of useful information. There are some criteria that should be taken into consideration regarding research. Firstly, good and fruitful research should be done in the realm of valid sources; this way the information you acquire will be accountable. Secondly, one source is never enough. You should look through different sources and read them all thoroughly until you can come up with your own conclusion of the subject. Thirdly, research shouldn’t be done by means of a single medium such as books, but it should involve different sources; for instance, audios, books, articles, TV programs and even interviews with experienced people, etc.

At the end of the day you need to have learnt something from all the time and effort you have put into the process of writing; something that is useful in your real life. The good thing about writing is that although writing seems to be a boring task to many students, when you start, you can’t actually stop writing unless it is an uninteresting topic or you’re required to write a certain number of words for that specific topic. I think this uneasiness towards certain topics stems from the first writings you wrote. If the educational system makes this writing experience—I mean the first one—pleasurable for pupils, they will definitely wish to repeat such an experience in the future, and the more you write, the easier and more interesting it becomes to write. Writing must unravel the mysteries within you, so that at the end of a writing you come to know a new aspect of yourself that you weren’t even aware of before.

In conclusion, human beings search for reasons of each and every thing they do in life and writing is no exception; therefore, if they find a good and constructive reason for that and in fact if they find out how they can benefit from writing, there’s no doubt that they will commit to it. I believe writing is a part of education and if education makes sense, writing will make sense, too. You can’t weigh up its good and bad until you experience it at least once, or you need to ask others who have had this experience. By experiencing writing, after a short time, you will be able to notice the change in your way of thinking and it influences your everyday life. This can be a good reason for you to continue writing.