Why I Write

Learning Takes and Employs Various Approaches

Learning takes and employs various varying approaches to encourage and ensure that students develop an in-depth understanding of their learning materials. Comparison and contrast exercises are certainly the aspects of interactive learning that provided the students with an opportunity to share various scholars’ schools of thought. Through integrating individual’s views with the respective scholars, students generate new and more insights into their works and conceptualize their intended messages. As such, this paper delves into discussing some literature source encompassing “Why I Write” by Didion (1976), “Life in a New Language” by Hoffman (1998), and “Basmati Rice: An Essay about Words” by Thomas (1984) through comparison and contrast to establish why writing is seen as form of invention and to identify some aspects of similarities and differences.

Invention through Writing

In understanding that an invention according to Somekawa and Smith (1988), refers to a unique method, novel device, process, as well as composition, writing in the above three highlighted essays consequently is a perfect invention. For instance, Didion, Hoffman, and Thomas have in their own unique ways used writing to compose their thoughts. As a process, they have collected their ideas, emotions, and life experiences together to create seamless, educative, and entertaining narratives. As a method, they are able to express themselves from various points of view. Being a novel device, they have successfully managed to communicate with their respective target audience.

Writing as a Vessel to Share Thoughts

In examining the three authors’ works, it is apparent that all have relied on writing as the vessel to share their thoughts with the target audience. As inferred from Didion’s work, the writer needs to inform the audience on why she finds writing to be purposeful. The author elaborates that it is only through writing that she is able to develop and create a grasp of her mental abilities and image. That any thought experience and feelings only become meaningful when put on paper. Similarly, Thomas like Didion finds writing to be intriguing. For example, the writer is of the opinion that he always wakes up early to write with the hope that his thoughts too will rise like the rising sun to fill the blank pages with illuminative information. Moreover, writing delighting since it creates the passage through which he can account for the experiences and observations that he constantly about people he sees across the street and what their conversions are often about from his study. Hoffman like her counterparts finds writing to be the most appropriate technique through which she can share her experiences of having to grow in the different cultural environment. Moving from Poland to Canada, studying in the United States of America and living in London exposed her to various cultural identities to which adapting and copping were always a challenge. In order to express her experiences, she finds writing to be the most applicable method.

Understanding the Audience

Accordingly, all the three authors are noted to have understood their audience. Their choice of vocabulary makes their narratives easy to read, understand, and conceptualize. The language and wordings are more contextual, thus, giving the audience the opportunity to decipher meanings without necessarily having to refer to their dictionaries. Their messages provoke the readers’ thoughts and the way they engage with the audiences make it easy to turn on new pages. For instance, the messages are constructed to pose certain levels if suspense that provokes the curiosity of what could be the information in the next sentence or page.

Stylistic Differences

On the other hand, there exist some notable stylistic differences in the way the authors have presented their intended information. As can be noted, Hoffman’s work is purely a narrative that informs her target audience on the challenges that come with having to live and be exposed in different cultural environments. Didion and Thomas’ unlike Hoffman’s have stylistic devices including the use of imagery, wordplay, and some aspects of poetry that make their literature more educative, readable, and entertaining.

Conclusion

Ultimately, comparison and contrast of the three essays have depicted writing an imperative artistic way of writers expressing their opinions, emotions, feelings, and experiences. As such, effective writing depends on knowing and understanding the audience, appropriate use of stylistic devices, and proper use of language as in grammar, vocabulary, sentence structure.

References

Didion, J. (1976). Why I write. New York Times Book Review, 5, 98-99.

Hoffman, E. (1998). Life in a new language. Foreign dialogues, 17-26.

Thomas, A. (1984). Basmati Rice| An Essay about Words. Canadian Literature Vancouver, (100), 312-317.

Somekawa, E., & Smith, E. A. (1988). Theorizing the Writing of History or,“I Can’t Think Why It Should Be So Dull, for a Great Deal of It Must Be Invention”. Journal of Social History, 22(1), 149-161.