Structure Is Important — Having Something To Say, Even More So
Do we know how to structure our ideas? And if we do, do we actually have ideas to structure?
The form is important but it can never replace the content. Many learn this the hard way, but they are still better off than those who don’t learn it at all.
Bad Thinking
I remember correcting a particularly poor essay when I was a teacher for an English as a second language course. My first reaction was that the student was at a level that was too high for them, that their foundation wasn’t solid enough; in short, they didn’t know enough English to be writing the type of essay that was expected.
However, something was off. Usually, when you read someone’s writing in a second or third language, you can spot foreign grammatical constructions forcibly translated into the language they are trying to learn. Indeed, even when we know we are doing it, it is hard not to do: after all, it is the way our brain structures thought, the way it formulates ideas. Here, though, there was something else. The essay as a whole wasn’t a collection of foreign structures, but a lump of unformulated arguments. I tried to translate it back to the student’s native language and it still made no sense.