Let me see if, by just writing what I think are the 'take away' things, this summarizes her article.
*"The best practical preparation for learning to write is to read. It is necessary to correlate writing assignments with students' past reading experiences...instructors should encourage students to do extensive reading in the particular form of writing that they will later be expected to write...extensive reading precedes the mastery of productive writing in a particular style.
* ....reading and writing assignments must deal with real situations or subjects about which students wish to communicate
*We must allow students to form their own hypothesis about how written language works; they must write and the writing must be for communicating an idea.
*They need to be able to read their work to a variety of people.
*Only through errors can the learner test hypothesis, revise them and continue to develop; creativity comes with the risk of making errors.
*...errors are valuable
* No factor is more important to the success of language acquisition than motivation.
Even though I enjoyed the article and did a lot head nodding, I felt that she kept beating a dead horse. She could have said the same thing in half the space. Maybe one of her axioms should be to write simply and concisely :-)
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