Teaching Thinking By Teaching Writing By Peter Elbow

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When reading "Teaching Thinking by Teaching Writing" by Peter Elbow, I discovered many of the ideas he favors is how I start off my writing for most writing assignments. I tend to free-write when getting out of my thoughts without being interrupted by any outsider looking in or sources to result to. Then once I 'm done, if the assignment requires sources or I just feel I need another opinion and feel I 've been looking for extra help such as needing sources to include within my writing. I feel my best writing comes from me when I free writing first. I realized what I have been practicing for many writing projects is called first order thinking, then I later apply a second order thinking for the correctness.
First order thinking is when you free-write without any real direction and control. Second-order thinking is controlled thinking and what many refer to as critical thinking. Elbow, favors towards first order of thinking because he feels that is when people 's best work is done.
Elbow says that when writing in first order, we really have no clear direction and structure and it causes our writing to not be valuable. Now that I have noticed the cons he brought attention to, I agree with what he said because I always write with really no direction because everything seems to flow when there is no direction. However; I do structure it later, which is another time when second order thinking comes in hand. Elbow had a lot of negative things to say about second order thinking, but he did recognized that first order does have cons, so it best to use both orders as a team. They work well when the orders are utilized together and the correct way. They are not perfect when used separately, but they can have a strong chance of creating great work when

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