ENGLISH 101

This will be a good course for you

1.    if you want to improve your writing skills, which you will

2.    if you appreciate how vital it is to express yourself well in writing and to communicate clearly and effectively with others via writing;

3.    if you recognize that writing clarifies and organizes your thinking far better than spontaneous speaking, being more articulate and artful and impressive;

4.    and if you want to discover how much more your mind contains and can generate through the medium of writing than by mere vocalizing in a gush of speech.

“How do I know what I think till I see what I say?” is an exclamation I’ve heard attributed to “a silly old woman” and derided as the nonsense of a babbler.  But it’s more profound than that, I think.  None of us knows, or knows very clearly or thoroughly, just what we think until we convert inchoate notions into words and syntax—into precisely articulated, rhetorically effective language.

That is what writing does as it moves from rough draft to polished prose.  For that reason writing is an essential tool of thought and a vital medium of intellectual advancement.

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