Acclaimed writer Hunter S. Thompson famously typed out The Great Gatsby and A Farewell to Arms word for word in order to feel what it’s like to write a masterpiece. He was also striving to develop his writing skills. This method might seem extreme, but it’s rooted in a profound understanding of how linguistic immersion can enhance one’s own abilities.
Don’t be too quick to dismiss Thompson as crazy. Have you ever tried typing entire books verbatim? Well, I’m proud to say I’ve done something similar and achieved immensely positive results.
Fourteen years ago, I got my first job at a test prep agency. Paying me around 8 to 10 dollars an hour and recognizing my skills as a typist (my maximum typing speed is 156 words per minute), the company circumvented copyright issues by having me type out entire SAT tests. As a naive nineteen-year-old eager to earn some money, I obliged.
The impact of this monumental task proved significant. For me, typing out the SAT was akin to hanging out with a group of well-educated people. And one thing that happens when we hang out with certain people long enough is that we begin to behave and speak like them. So, after immersing myself for a summer in the language of skilled writers, I, too, became a better writer, if only for a semester or two.
For these reasons, when I began my education at Vanderbilt as a transfer student, I wrote with much more precision and rapidity, often employing more advanced vocabulary, more sophisticated grammar, and easier-to-follow organization. My very first college essay, which delved into the complexities of race-conscious affirmative action in higher education, received 100%, the first perfect score the professor had ever given in his ten years at the university. I attribute that success in large part to the countless, masochistic hours I spent mimicking the SAT.
Interestingly, there is some research to substantiate my comparison between typing out the SAT and hanging out with better writers. In the 1970s, social psychologist Howard Giles proposed with his communication accommodation theory that listeners adjust their speaking style, vocabulary, and pronunciation in response to speakers. What Thompson and I did lacks the social components of linguistic accommodation but retains its mimetic elements.
Of course, it has been fourteen years since I typed out the SATs, so I do not write as quickly and articulately as I used to. I have, however, picked up one more way to develop as a writer, and I now regularly ask some of my students to hone their writing skills by mimicking other people’s sentence structures and vocabulary using what professionals call “sentence imitation exercises” (a.k.a. “syntax imitation exercises” and “modeling”). Here’s a simple example: take a complex sentence from a favorite author, and swap out words to create a new, original sentence that mirrors the original structure.
For fear of boring students to death, I have yet to assign them large passages to type out verbatim, but who knows? Maybe you can give the Hunter S. Thompson task a try and let me know how it goes!
About Milestone College Consulting
Milestone College Consulting is a small but dedicated team of indefatigable teachers and college application consultants led by Vanderbilt summa cum laude graduate Raymond Chuang, who has had fourteen years of experience in getting students accepted to top universities. Raymond drinks lots of coffee and energy drinks and is also a professional jazz pianist and amateur theremin player. Right now, he also teaches writing and serves as an advisor of the press team at an international high school in Taiwan. If you want to boost your academic performance and chances of acceptance to your dream schools, check out our expert editing services, book an appointment, or contact us immediately!
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