ILS Colloquium

Agenda

20 June 2019
15:30 - 17:00
Drift 21, Sweelinckzaal

Huub van den Bergh

Writing

Utrecht University

Writing is a complex process. Writers have to pay attention to a lot of different dimensions while writing: ‘What do I want to say?’, ‘How can I formulate it in the right way?’, ‘Will my readers understand what I have written?’, ‘Did I choose the right words?’, ‘Is my spelling correct?’, ‘Did I make grammatical errors?’, to name a few of those dimensions.

Paying attention to all these dimensions puts an enormous constraint on a writers’ working memory. In this respect it has been shown empirically that writing costs as much cognitive energy as playing chess, and is much costlier than reading (difficult texts).

In this talk I will try to show that what goes on in a writers’ head, and how this changes during writing. I also will give some examples of how this type of research might improve our writing education.