Looking back on my past writing instruction, I can recall two distinct recommendations from teachers regarding pre-writing. The first was outlining, something which I never found useful given that if I didn't any idea what I was going to write, what the heck was I suppose to write in an outline?! I found that these outlines are useful only at the step directly before writing, and not one second before; the outlines from my writing teachers never proved helpful. This seems like something that the teacher had found useful in her past and was trying to force onto her students, not all of whom found it nearly as useful as she did. The second example of pre-writing was brain-storming, a form which I found entirely more helpful. The forms of brain-storming ranged from simple free writing to elaborate concept maps (the point and format of which I can't quite remember). I found this method entirely more useful than trying to start with an outline. Brainstorming was something that allowed the students to pour out all of their ideas and to be able to see where they lead. Though now that I think about it, the methods of brain storming taught by my teachers in the past seem more controlled than my methods of brainstorming that I use now, which generally include an entire white-board and several pages in a note book which, to the inexperienced eye, would seem to be written in code!
Reflecting on these styles taught by my writing teachers, I have realized how personal the 'pre-writing' step is. I haven't seen a method that works for everyone, and in fact, such a method might not even exist. Regardless, I believe that it is important that students be allowed to exercise their own pre-writing processes (or lack thereof) if they are to develop into independent writers, and not the 5-paragraph-essay drones pumped out by the public school system.
Question regarding the Encomium of Helen: Is rhetoric, or the creation of an argument, as simple as this? It seems that the argument would prove logically invalid due to the fact that, from my point of view, many alternatives could have been left out. Is the problem not over simplified, and by that reasoning, the conclusion also over simplified?
