Teachers should see composing as the active formation of understanding by the imagination, an act of sorting and selecting experiences according to our needs and purposes. Developing skill in writing focuses thought and aids recall. In the Age of Information, facility in writing becomes the tool for communication and collaboration. Without training in the development and presentation of ideas in writing, postmodern citizens are crippled. Access to information, life-saving or entertaining, full participation in modern culture, and even economic survival depend on the ability to communicate logically through text.
Text based discourse provides for the sharing of ideas, a necessity for survival.
Through collaborative textual exchange, readers and writers construct their collectivity, negotiating beliefs, values and actions. Many disciplines today share and develop this perspective on the creation of knowledge in communities, suggesting that social life is essentially a rhetorical process. Current trends in composition reflect the community building idea. They build writing communities, sharing and correcting each other's writings. Formulaic and purposeless composition assignments decrease as writing instruction accommodates new modes, such as hypertext sequencing, and new forms, like web pages.