Today's students are presented with a confusing perspective on writing that, on the one hand, defines the production of a written text as an act that simply transcribes thoughts and, on the other hand, defines writing as in and of itself an act of knowing. Teachers confound the student writer's schizophrenia by reinforcing the "product" approach to writing. Furthermore, because today's students are influenced and shaped by oral contexts, the emphasis of a print culture creates incredible stress and tension in the individual composer. Writing remains, however, the primary means of retaining self-conscious control over cognitive processes in a world of secondary orality. The act of writing is the process that enables inner speech and oral dialogue to synthesize. Writing becomes the means of structuring the spoken word so that it can recapture the authority it once had in primary oral cultures. The contrasts between oral and written media are central to the problems of teaching writing today. Students must be taught to use writing to explore and know about their own ideas and feelings. Students should see the process of revision as part of the writing-talking relationship. In the process of composing, students must come to realize how their inner speech naturally connects with the culture's general written record. Only then will the habit of private, inner speech, that in a highly literate culture is actually learned in earliest childhood, become a positive and useful way of maintaining individual perspective in a world of often disembodied oral voices. (HOD)