Berthoff, Ann E. Forming, Thinking, Writing: The Composing Imagination. Rochelle Park, New Jersey: Hayden, 1978, 248 pp..

Berthoff, Ann E. Forming, Thinking, Writing: The Composing Imagination. Rochelle Park, New Jersey: Hayden, 1978, 248 pp..

In the book Forming, Thinking, Writing: The Composing Imagination (FTW), author Ann E. Berthoff has created a freshman writing text for composition teachers. I say created in the fullest sense of the word, for the book underscores an ongoing relationship between cognative reasoning and affective modes of thinking. Berthoff offers a philosophy and a series of graduated exercises to encourage developing forms then writing and thinking. Her theory of composition is based on the precept that writing arises from the chaos inherent in all meaning. The work of the composer is to observe, study, find forms for and articulate that meaning. Writing is presented as a tool for giving form to meaning and for uncovering and articulating the dialectic of relationships “seeing relationships is the book’s working concept of thinking (6).”

In FTW, forming concepts, writing and thinking are tied closely to observation. To sharpen observation, it is suggested that students start with drawing and then move to keeping a journal about an "organic object" such as a walnut husk or a milkweed pod, studying it closely for several periods over a span of time. To make sentences, students travel the composing "continuum" in a Bloomian fashion moving from observing chaos, to list making, to categorizing and relationship building. "You continually name and define, rename and redefine.....You take a general idea and bring it down to earth with lots of naming--examples, comparisons, demonstrations...just as you convert a generalized figure to a particular object by looking at it in a certain way (79)." Students are given examples of how to form paragraphs by evaluating the relationships between sentences, and structuring and restructuring paragraphs. Although writing is presented as a continuum, the process, and progress is iterative. It is a continuing dialectic, back and forth, from the specific to the general. FTW also offers a model for composing. HDWDWW (How do We Do What We Do) prompts students to organize their writing by naming the agent, action, manner and purpose of their particular chaos of meaning, then making sentences, stating oppositions, drawing up definitions and articulating relationships.

Reading plays an integral part in the writing process. Writing prompts or "invitations" are preceded by paragraphs that range across the curriculum, coming from areas such as philosophy, Alfred North Whitehead; anthropology, Margaret Mead; the bible; and cartoons, Jules Feiffer. Invitations also offer grocery lists and student works.

Evaluation: FTW offers a treasure trove of theory and exercises to enrich the teaching of English 101-102, with strong emphasis on encouraging student to play with their thoughts. The book is definitely heavy reading, packed with philosophy, and sentences and paragraphs that demand rereading. It is also a pure delight to find a text that treats students as individuals capable of higher thinking and deserving of writing by some of the better minds our world has to offer.