The Epistemic Approach: Writing, Knowing and Learning Essay

The Epistemic Approach:   Writing, Knowing and Learning

According to Dowst Kenneth, in his article, entitled: The Epistemic Approach: Writing knowing and learning state that, he was unable to recall any comments that I have written on a students essay; it’s diagnosed strengths or weaknesses or even what I hoped to accomplish by the assignment given because at that time, I had no clear idea how to handle this essay. Today, however I would take an “epistemic” approach to the teaching of writing; the activity of writing seen in this light is the activity of making some sense out of an extreme complex set of personal perceptions and experiences of an infinitely complex world. The epistemic approach uses the “communication triangle” to classify theories of discourse and it also serves to classify approaches to teaching writing; it four essential elements are: writer, reader and reality   with language being its central focus. The purpose of this article is to let students beware that writing has to have a real connection to their knowledge and themselves.
The formalistic approach focuses mainly on the characteristics of the language of the text in itself; its’ goal in writing is to produce well-made prose artefacts. The referential approach sees written language primarily as a representation (or even “imitation”) of a pre-existing and knowable reality. In a sense, such an approach sees the ideal language as transparent, letting the real nature of things shine through the words clearly and without distortion. Its’ goal in writing is to enable students to compose those words that exactly fit the actual structure of things and events.