What is the difference between writing to communicate and writing to learn?

The difference between writing to communicate and writing to learn has everything to do with the intended audience. In writing to communicate, a writer takes a public stance. On the other hand, writing to learn is a more reflective process in which the writer engages in an inner dialogue as he or she chooses the words that best express meaning.

The story of how young Sumerians learned to read provides a fitting illustration. Sumerian students were assigned to copy lists of written words on the back side of their teacher's tablet. Time was on their side. (Did you catch my play on words?) As they wrote, they began to develop an awareness of the power of words in the process of deliberation. They documented their feelings, thoughts, trials, and joys, in writing that is still preserved today.

The cultural historian Walter Ong wrote "Writing is consciousness-raising." When a writer expresses the thoughts of a character, he is learning from the consciousness of another human being, whether real or imagined. As Wolf says, ". . . the ability to see another's thoughts makes us doubly aware."

I've kept a journal since I was a senior in high school. The things I've learned about myself are invaluable. The beauty of it all is that no one will ever misunderstand what I've written because I'm not trying to communicate to an audience, this writing is just for me.

And so I close with this quote, "Every child, scrawling his first letters on his slate and attempting to read for the first time, in so doing, enters an artificial and most complicated world; to know the laws and rules of this world completely and to practice them perfectly, no single human life is long enough. Without words, without writing, and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity." -- Hermann Hesse