“Writing is learned by imitation,” the great writing teacher William Zinsser wrote. “Students often feel guilty about modeling their writing on someone else’s writing. They think it’s unethical—which is commendable. Or they’re afraid they’ll lose their own identity. The point, however, is that we eventually move beyond our models; we take what we need and then we shed those skins and become who we are supposed to become.”
There’s a great deal of wisdom encapsulated in Zinsser’s words—for both students and teachers. In my experience as a teacher and writing tutor, the best writers are invariably the students who read widely and well. There’s a feel for the language, an intuitive grasp of both sense and structure that can’t be had any other way than by burrowing one’s nose in books. This sense develops organically in the mind of the student who reads regularly.
