In the fifth and final episode of the current podcast series, Episode 207, Andrew Pudewa and Julie Walker discuss the quintessential language art: thinking. One of the challenges students face is the struggle of not knowing what to write. Can thinking be improved? Most definitely! Andrew and Julie discuss various ways teachers and parents can help their students develop their thinking skills through learning to write with Structure and Style.
You can’t think a thought if you don’t have the words to think it in. It may exist in your brain as a vague thought or image. You may know what it is, but unless you can come up with words to 
describe it, it is destined to stay locked in your brain. IEW’s Structure and Style processes provide students with tools to unlock those ideas from their brain, to move them from the brain to the hand, and then to have them appear on the page as words brought to life. They move the student from describing a sunset on the Grand Canyon as simply “beautiful,” to having him sharing the wide range of colors that he saw, the changes in lighting that he witnessed, the sounds that he heard, and the shivery feeling he felt from the cold winds blowing over him. And in writing those thoughts down, he is able to transmit them to the reader, who encounters the scene miles away from the great precipice, perhaps from the comfort of a soft sofa in a sunny, summery spot, and who is transported for a moment to that same blustery edge.
Francis Bacon, the sixteenth-century English philosopher, once said, “Reading maketh a man full; conference [speaking] maketh a ready man; and writing an exact man.” Listen to the podcast to learn more about why the language arts are critically important to developing strong and exact thinkers.
