Making meaning through writing

People have used signs and symbols to communicate and make meaning from experience and information since ancient times. Symbol systems have evolved from depictions in wood carvings and cave paintings through the ancient Egyptians' invention of writing to the development of alphabetic systems.

Thinking involves the creation and manipulation of signs and symbols. Seel and Winn (1997) contend that, because people represent and manipulate ideas and objects symbolically in their minds, "thinking and communication can occur only when objects of thought can be represented by signs" (p. 298). Writing is one of the instruments or 'media' of thinking that is used to mentally execute cognitive activities, to strategically organise information and to make meaning of different forms of knowledge. Through writing, learners can connect the various components of the subject matter to each other as well as to what they already know, thus creating meaning from what they are learning.

• Seel, N. M., & Winn, W. D. (1997). Research on media and learning: Distributed cognition and semiotics. In R. D. Tennyson, F. Schott, N. Seel, & S. Dijkstra (Eds.), Instructional design: International perspectives. Volume 1: Theory, research and models (pp. 293-326). NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc. Ltd.