Composition: Introduction continued

“Eloquence is picked up more readily by those who read and listen to the words of the eloquent than by those who follow the rules of eloquence. .....“They observe the rules because they are eloquent; they do not use them to become eloquent.” St Augustine.

The goal of composition is to be able to learn to express oneself well in writing. St Augustine calls this "eloquence" -- the ability to say well what you want to say -- and he points out here that reading good things is a better way to good writing than studying the rules. This is true of almost everything, by the way.

However, there is some value in learning the rules, just as there is value in learning routes in football so well that you do them automatically. It frees up your mind to get past the basics. Paddy has trouble writing because he doesn't know the rules of spelling yet. When he can spell, he will be able to write much more easily because he won't have to think about each letter in each word.

So this year we will be doing a combination of things for English:

1. Learning some writing strategies.
2. Practicing writing, focusing on different elements.
3. Reading good writing.

We're going to start with paragraphs rather than with sentences or whole essays -- this clip from an old book explains why.



This concludes Lesson 1.