Hyper-Writing: Motion and Emotion Set to Text

Flavia Laviosa, US

Flavia Laviosa is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Italian Studies at Wellesley College. She coordinates language and film courses, and directs study abroad programs in Italy. She holds a Ph.D. in Foreign Language Education and Master’s degree in Humanities, both from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She also studied for a Master’s Degree in European Film Studies and Criticism at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and completed her Italian Laurea in Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Bari. Her training of foreign language teachers in the United States, Mexico and Europe has helped her to earn international recognition as an Educator and Curriculum Consultant.
E-mail: flaviosa@wellesley.edu

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Introduction
Theoretical discussion

Introduction

Writing is both a linguistic skill and the ability to express meaning and communicate a message. In order to accomplish these goals, students benefit from opportunities to experience the language outside the classroom. Teaching and learning writing tend to be methodical, aseptic, and claustrophobic if conducted only within the walls and halls of one’s institution. It is therefore desirable to engage in a form of instruction where students experience ‘writing’ in the streets, theaters, stores, and in open markets where they can see, hear, smell, touch or be touched, feel and taste the sounds, the colors, the texture, the light, and flavor of the language they are learning.

Theoretical discussion

Writing is an intellectual skill, the product of moments of inspiration, and the result of reflection and revisions. The ability to write involves knowledge of spelling, grammar, syntax, register, while the factors that produce writing are linguistic, emotional, cultural, and personal (experiences). Usually writing is a solitary, quiet, and introspective activity, but it can also be interactive, dialogic, and communicative. This skill is often perceived as sedentary and deskbound, while it is fundamentally a physical, kinesthetic, multi-sensory, emotional, psychological, relational, and social activity. In other words, writing takes place when movement and experiences, memories and emotions, feelings and thoughts are in harmony.

Furthermore, writing may be inspired in any place, situation, setting, environment, and time. Like a painter, a photographer, a film director, an anthropologist, and an archeologist, a writer works creatively on location and s/he needs a set, a landscape, and people where language and experiences can interact, and the evocative power of memory inspires his/her writing.

Foreign language instructors would need to take into consideration the following learning aspects involved in the process of writing:

• The emotional languages of writing
• The multi-sensory experience in writing: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile, olfactory
• The multi-modal texts of writing

Knowing the steps is not enough to perform like a professional dancer. What drives a ballerina is not technical perfection, rather, self-expression through dance so that she can convey not only a story, but also communicate something deeper. In a similar way, participants to this seminar will explore and discuss ways to practice the steps to perform the dance of writing.

In conclusion, writing is a humanistic, multi-sensory, multi-modal, multi-textual, and multi-intellectual skill, through which motion and emotion become text.

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