Hello friends, it’s been a minute. I hope you’re all doing well. Today I want to talk about a little often unnoticed aspect of writing: meaning. I think it’s not controversial for people to realize that words mean things. It seems a fact that’s as obvious as the reality that water is wet, humans breathe air, and that if you are bad at English, then you will probably not do well in the first language English exams. But I digress.
Words mean things.
And that’s especially important for people to realize, especially when they’re just learning how to write, to articulate their thoughts, and they just don’t know why they are getting things marked down.
The reason I decided to talk about this was that a student of mine recently had an essay come back whereby she was complaining about the grade that she had received, and the multiple comments on her essay that the teacher had given, asking her questions about grammar and otherwise. One of her sentences was: “Driving to the cave, he did some research on his destination,” to which the teacher responded with a snarky, “Doing research while driving?”
Now, the student might very well just read that feedback, nod their head, and then go on, assuming that this is just one of many mistakes that they need to be aware of. But I wonder if they have actually learned the lesson. So, I’m here to make it plain. The reason that they ended up getting points docked and that comment in the first place was that the sentence itself was not logical.
Now, you could argue that, well, the student didn’t know the grammar. Maybe they were weak. Maybe they just weren’t very aware of how to actually put the words in the right place. Why should the world be so cruel to them? Why should they be penalized?
Well, to that I say, at the end of the day, remember, there is a specific meaning to things.
If I told you that water was dry, would I not be telling you a lie? If I tell you that surely all boys are taller than girls, would that not also be a lie considering that you can understand the meaning of that sentence and then cross reference it against reality?
English is for the purpose of communicating. It’s not anything different from that. It’s about being able to articulate your ideas, a reality, what you see, think, and feel about the world.
Every single thing that you write in English has a specific meaning, regardless of whether you’re aware of that meaning or not. And that meaning comes along from the grammar of the sentence, the context of what you’re saying, and the content that you choose to share, all of which are part of the meaning.
When I look at that little example there, I can see a couple of ways that maybe the student could have actually avoided that problem. And the first immediate way is to literally just sit down and re-read what they wrote. Think about what they actually mean when they are writing. Consider for a brief while what came out of their pen.
It is too easy, in many cases, for people to just casually write down a bunch of words, thinking to themselves that they can use a structure, a pre-baked set of words, some phrases that they memorized and want to make use of to show off their vocabulary, erudition, the beauty of the language that they can bring to bear in constructing sentences, paragraphs, and entire essays.
Well, clap clap clap, my dear students. Unfortunately, that’s not going to work. At the end of the day, you have to think about meaning. What does each individual sentence actually mean? How does it relate to the other sentences? How do they come together to construct the overall point that you are going to make?
These are things that you definitely do need to think about, even if somehow or another you’ve been thinking about things like the PEEL method or otherwise as a way of organizing things. For that matter, let’s talk about the PEEL method for a quick bit.
The reason that we teachers suggest in many cases that you use the P-E-E-L method is not necessarily that it is always the best way of writing. There are some people who take artistic liberties or otherwise, and of course there are many different types of writing beyond argumentative or informational writing. But I use this example just to prove a simple point.
When you start with a point, you proceed with an example, explain the example, and link it to the overall essay prompt that you’re trying to respond to, you are actually engaging the way that other people construct meaning, and trying to create things in the most efficient possible way. By telling someone a piece of information that they didn’t know before, giving them an example of where it applies, providing a valuable elaboration on how that relates to your point, and then linking it to the entire idea of what you’re trying to say.
Now that’s a very valuable meaning-making exercise, of course, but it’s only one of them, and it is a subset of all that there is.
At the end of the day, merely because you have a hammer, that doesn’t mean that everything is a nail. You cannot use the P-E-E-L method for everything. At the end of the day, you need to look at the individual prompt that you have to respond to, and then you have to understand what it entails—meaning what you have to do—and then from there begin to formulate a plan for responding. From there, then you decide which kinds of meanings it is that you want to construct.
Although of course, that’s going to be hard if you can’t understand the specific meanings of the sentences around you, that you hear, the ones that you write, the way that sentences relate to one another, and how all of those things come together to create a piece of communication, both the ones that you write and also the ones that you read.
Now, if that seems like an overload of information for you…Please don’t worry.
If you learn nothing else, then let it be this: every single thing that you read means something, and every single thing that you write means something.
Check to see if it is the correct meaning. Ask yourself, if this is the correct meaning, then what does that mean about the next piece of information? Are these things ordered in the right way? Should I express things another way? Is the original fine? Can I make it shorter?
All of these little tweaks and additions out there add different things into the overall picture of meaning which you construct through language.
Now, make that picture a beautiful one, even as you learn to appreciate that art yourself in all its dimensions.
