Writing skills are clearly inseparable from academic pursuit. How productive are graduate students in the world? Boice (1993) shows surprising data about the failure of academic writing accomplishment: (a) 50% of graduate students fail to write their doctoral dissertations – even if they finally finish their dissertations, they take too much time to do it; (b) 50-80% of the lecturers holding doctoral degrees fail to conduct research and publish their research papers in refereed journals.
How can it happen? There are two major reasons why writing skills are hardly acquired by academicians. Firstly, writing skills are considered as tacit knowledge which is acquired either incidentally or poorly. Many professors – who are also prolific writers – did not start necessarily their career as university lecturers. Many of them started their career as journalists. Thus, their writing skills were not necessarily trained during their tenure as professors, but were developed much earlier for the purpose of doing something else (i.e. writing for publication). Secondly, writing skills are hardly acquired because they require a high degree of hard work, creativity, open-mindedness, and perseverance. When we deal with writing, we are very likely to feel unsure whether what we are writing is acceptable for public. For those asking for direct and prompt feedback, such an unsure experience can be devastating. The writing process, which is commonly dull and tiring, is very likely demotivating for many people.
Personally speaking, writing skills are highly related to our academic pursuit and learning experience. At this point, I set to discuss my personal experience regarding my efforts to improve my writing fluency. I employ three major strategies to do so, namely learning to write from reading passages, being engaged in self-talk, and practicing writing fluency through low-stakes writing. Firstly, writing skills are inseparable from reading skills. Reading activities serve two purposes. On the one hand, reading passages provide much information that trigger my thought to develop. I obtain much information, ideas, and conceptual framework. At this point, through patiently taking notes and seeing the patterns, critically conneting what I have had in my mind to the newly-acquired information and/or concepts, I usually can monitor my comprehension. I do this critical reading as well as taking notes to ensure that I construct the knowledge that is particularly very personal for me. On the other hand, reading activities also allow me to see different discourse repertoires. I finally know well that there are different genres in the writing products. Writing for academic purposes is obviously different from writing for personal purposes. While we can put a combination of recount and personal experience in the writing for personal purposes, we must avoid as much as possible personal reference to write for academic purposes. There are a set of underlying principles that govern each type of writing.
Secondly, in addition to taking notes and identifying the discourse patterns of the passages I read, I also get engaged in what-so-called “self-talk.” This self-talk technique is in fact a way to make things visible, tangible, and highly meaningful for myself. It is also called as thinking aloud. So far, I always do it regularly since I happened to enjoy listening to my sister “thinking aloud” when she was learning. In my childhood, we spent time learning together. But soon, my sister occupied the living room with her voice, reciting facts that I did not know yet. Interestingly enough, much knowledge that I heard through her thinking aloud was still in my mind even until this day. From socio-cultural perspective, the concept of self-talk was introduced by Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934).
Thirdly, in companion to self-talk, I also get engaged in low-stakes writing, such as journal or diary writing. I do it as much as possible, using both computers and hand writing. I myself found that low-stakes writing – writing done with the purpose of expressing ourselves as well as taking notes for our personal uses – are just as powerful as learning from other people. When I get used to writing on a daily basis, I make sure that the writing fluency is strengthened.
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