From Personal Experience

Journal writing has enabled me to understand my writing as a process of learning. I look back at some of my journal entries and realize that perhaps no one but me will ever be able to understand what I wrote. My journals does not read like a narratives but read more like the comments written in a lecture classroom. I often don't write in complete sentences; I explicate my thoughts with an abundance of grammatical, syntactic, and spelling errors; and the structure of the information is barely hanging on by a slim thread.

The beauty of writing this way is tantamount to exhibiting my creative freedom. When I write in what I refer to as my "journals," I don't write for any particular audience. The only critic of my writing is me. I'm not a terribly harsh critic of this sort of writing because I know I have written it without the consideration of an audience. I cannot stress enough how important I think it is for students to write according to such a process. It helps me solidify and clarify my ideas through a process of understanding. I find my journal entries teaching me something I would have never come across had I not freely expressed it. Moreover, this prevents my daunting experiences with writer's block because I can write without hesitation or any sort of apprehension about what my superiors will think.

I remember writing journal entries and free writing frequently when I was in secondary and post secondary school, but the practice began to wane as I climbed the academic ladder. The more important it became to apply this method of learning, the less I found myself using it in a classroom setting. I understand that an organic chemistry or physics course has a vigorous curriculum and must follow a precise timetable to expose students to the necessary information they need to understand the discipline; however, I wonder whether this kind of learning truly helps a student. The process of reflection, forethought, and critical analyses is just as important in a science classroom as it is in a liberal arts classroom. This may seem obvious to some people but if it is evident fact of writing, then why aren't the methods of WAC pedagogy being applied more frequently in the classroom?