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APTIS Writing Part 4: Sample Questions, Model Answers And Tips

In this article, we will provide you with sample questions, model answers, general tips, and strategies to prepare for APTIS writing part 4.

In this article, we will provide you with sample questions, model answers, general tips and strategies to prepare for APTIS writing part 4.

This article will:

• Briefly explain the nature of the test
• Look at example questions
• Discuss the writing skills required
• Discuss common problems
• Give you tips and advice
• Provide your with strategies to use preparing for your exam and on exam day  

What Is APTIS Part 4 Writing?

Part 4 of the APTIS Writing Test consist of two sections. In the first question, you have to write an informal email to a friend and in the second question, your task is to write a formal email to an unknown person. The first, informal email should be 40-50 words long and you have 10 minutes to complete it. The second formal email should be 120-150 words long and you have 20 minutes to complete this section.

The topic will be the same as the other three parts, in the examples we have been looking at the topic has been ‘travel, but you may have to write about more abstract things such as feelings.

For further details please visit the British Council website  her e . 

Part 4: You are a member of a travel club. You received this email from the club.

Dear member,

I am writing to tell you that the famous travel writer Mr. David Price will unfortunately not be able to attend our next club meeting. Although Mr. Price will not be there to sign copies of his new book Around the World in Eighty Ways, members of the club will be able to buy a copy for the price of twenty-five pounds. If you would like to reserve a copy of the book, please contact the club secretary.

Write an email to your friend (about 50 words). Write about your feelings and what the club should do about the situation. You have 10 minutes.

________________________________________________________________

Write an email to the president of the club (about 120-150 words). Write about your feelings and what the club should do about the situation. You have 20 minutes.

If you would like to access more simulated APTIS writing tests then please visit our exam library  here . 

How To Answer The Question?

You can achieve a score of C1 or above in this section. The examiner assesses you on the following criteria: task fulfillment and register, grammatical range and accuracy, vocabulary range and accuracy, and cohesion.

Task Fulfilment

This not only means answering the question fully but also answering in a way that you will achieve the result you want. In both the questions, you must write about your feelings and what you think the club should do

'Register' is the way we change our language in different situations, depending on the relationships between the speaker and listener, or the author and the intended reader. This is an important part of language use. For example, your language choices will be different when you’re writing to a new business partner and when you’re writing to a friend. To be successful in part 4, you need to show that you can write in both casual and formal registers.

The first question of part 4 asks you to write in an intimate or casual register (one used among family members and close friends). The second question asks you to write in a formal register (one used between strangers or in a business setting). Fortunately, there are standard expressions that we use in letter writing (see APYIS General Tips and Strategies) and you can use them for your response

Punctuation

Using capitals correctly. Good use of commas. Full-stops at the end of sentences, correct use of question marks.

Grammatical range and accuracy

Your grammar should be correct and use tenses and structures relevant to the question. To achieve a high score, you will need to use higher-level tenses and conditional, the Passive, relative and participle clauses. Verbs and nouns should agree. Correct use of countable and uncountable nouns, articles, and determiners are also essential.

Vocabulary range and accuracy

Using the appropriate vocabulary. You should try to use formal words such as ‘attend a meeting’ rather than words like ‘go to a meeting’. With the right level of formality, you are more likely to get the result you want (task fulfillment). Remember that formality and politeness don’t just depend on who you are talking to but also on what you want. For instance, you are more likely to be polite or formal if you want to borrow your friend’s car, than if you want to borrow their pen.

The answers in these sections are longer. Therefore, your response to the question will be around three or four sentences for question one. Question two requires more complex sentences and you should aim for around six. For your answer to be cohesive you will only have to use linking words for contrast examples etc. Sequence words like Firstly, secondly, finally etc. Pronouns, and other referencing words like these/those/that/this.

Tackling the question

The key to writing a good answer is planning. You should not start writing straight away. This won’t save you time because you will have to keep stopping to think as you are writing. And your writing may seem disorganised if it is not planned.

You can use the same ideas in both pieces of writing, but you must not use the same words if you want a high mark.

When you read the situational part of the question there doesn’t seem much to write about. However, the writer (Mr Price) is not coming to give a talk but he still wants to sell the unsigned book for £25.00. It may be difficult to write 150 words if you agree with this situation and so your best option is to disagree.

Writing Plan

•         Explain the situation.

•         I (don’t) feel

Disappointed he’s not coming.

Surprised he still wants £25 for an unsigned book.

•         I (don’t) want to

Buy the book for £25

The book sold to the other members.

•         I suggest

There is a reduction in the price

Mr. Price comes another day

APTIS Writing Part 4: Example Answer To Sample Question #1

Hi Jack, how’s it going?

I’m disappointed about the situation with David Price’s book. I think it’s a cheek that he isn’t coming to the meeting and yet still wants to sell his book. I’m not going to pay £25 for a copy unless it’s signed. Maybe he can reduce the price or rearrange his visit. (52 words)

Dear Club President,

I am writing to you in connection with the sale of My Price’s book for £25 even though he was unable to attend the meeting and the book is unsigned. Firstly, I am upset by this situation, I do not consider it to be very fair and because of this, I do not intend to buy a copy. Furthermore, I am sure that the other club members feel the same way, and, in my opinion, this is not beneficial to the club.

To resolve this situation I suggest that we either ask Mr. Price to sign copies of his book, which will allow us to sell it at £25 per copy or arrange for Mr. Price to give another talk at a later date. For me, this would be the best option as I am still extremely interested in hearing what he has to say about his travels as well as asking him a few questions.

Yours sincerely,

APTIS Writing Part 4: Sample Question #2

Part 4: You received this email from the president of the technology club.

We are writing to inform you that the trip to the science centre to see the robotics display has unfortunately been canceled. Although many of you were looking forward to this excursion, we did not reach the necessary number of participants to continue. However, we hope to reschedule this event for next month. Please let us know if you would like a refund or if you would like to hold your spot for the new date.

Write a short email to your friend (about 50 words). Tell your friend your feelings about this and what you plan to do. You have 10 minutes.

_ ________________________________________________________________

Write an email to the president of the club (about 120-150 words). Tell them your thoughts about this and what you would like to do. You have 20 minutes ion. You have 20 minutes.

APTIS Writing Part 4: Sample Question #3

We are writing to let you know that the potluck picnic has been postponed. Unfortunately, the weather forecast is not in our favour and it is going to rain all week. It will now take place next Friday, which is June 16th. The event is still free to attend and advance food tickets are $5 for 2 meals or $7 for 2 on the day. There will be food from over 10 different countries, so come hungry. If you plan on bringing a dish, please contact the coordinator so we can finalize the menu.

Write an email to the coordinator of the club (about 120-150 words). Tell them your thoughts about this and what you would like to do. You have 20 minutes.

________________________________________________________________  

APTIS Writing Part 4: Sample Question #4

I know that you were all very excited to meet famous nature photographer, John Lethbridge, at our meet and greet social event. Unfortunately, John has just emailed and is unable to attend. However, the social will still continue as planned with an exhibition of his work on display. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please email us if you have any questions or concerns.

Regards, Angela

__________________________________________________________________

Hopefully, you had a chance to practice on the above sample questions. Now we will provide example answers for APTIS writing test part 3.

APTIS Writing Part 4: Model Answers To Sample Question #2

I am so bummed out that the science trip was canceled. I was really looking forward to checking out the new display on robots. Although I can get my money back, I might just tell them to hold my place so I can go when it gets rescheduled. You should come too!

Speak soon,

Dear President,

I am upset to hear that the science trip has been canceled. I know a lot of my fellow club members are disappointed because we have been waiting for this for months. We have heard amazing things about the robotics display. However, I am happy to know that the trip is being postponed to a future date. I am really looking forward to it.

I appreciate that you are offering refunds but I would like to reserve my spot for the rescheduled trip. Moreover, I would like to help you advertise the trip to ensure that we have enough students to go on the next one. I can make posters or advertise it to the students in my class. I might post about it on my social media.

Let me know if there is anything else I can do.

APTIS Writing Part 4: Model Answer To Sample Question #3

i.e. informal style

The potluck picnic has been canceled for this week because of bad weather. I am a little upset because I really wanted to try your mom’s paella, but I will have to wait until next week. I hope you are looking forward to tasting my homemade kimchi rice!

i.e. formal style

Dear Coordinator,

Thank you for the email.

While I am upset that I have to wait until next week, I appreciate that you postponed the event because of the bad weather. Nobody likes getting wet and even if it stopped, the ground would be muddy. I also think many people would cancel or just not show up last minute!

I am writing to you to let you know that I am bringing homemade fried rice with kimchi. It is a traditional Korean dish that is very popular. It is a little bit spicy, but I think everyone will enjoy it. I think I will have enough for 30 portions. Is that enough? Should I make more?

Also, I would like to buy 2 advanced food tickets. I can bring you the money to your office on Monday.

Regards, SooBin

APTIS Writing Part 4: Model Answer To Sample Question #4

Hey Gian Marco,

I am so upset. The photographer that I told you about has canceled. I am a big fan of his work and I wanted him to sign a photo for me. I will probably still go to the exhibit, but it won’t be the same.

Dear Angela,

Thank you for your email.

I am upset to hear the news about John Lethbridge, who can no longer attend the event. I had been looking forward to the social for months with the hope that I could meet my favourite photographer. I have followed him and his work for years. In fact, he is the reason I started taking photos! I know I will still enjoy the exhibit, but it won’t be as great.

I have spoken to others and I know that many fellow club members are also quite disappointed in this. We purchased tickets with the promise of meeting our idol. Do you think the club can try to reschedule his appearance?  It would be great if he could come to our next social or if we could arrange another time.

Please let me know if this is possible.

Regards, Patricia

Top 10 Tips For The APTIS Writing Test

Tip 1: Use the right register.

This is the level of formality, friendliness, politeness you use when you write. Knowing and being able to use the correct register when you write (and speak) shows that you can use English well. Using the correct register is more likely to get you the solution you want and so, it is also important for task achievement.

Tip 2: Know the correct spelling.

English spelling is difficult but when you learn the standard phrases, you can also learn the spelling. This will make spelling easier. We will look at other difficult words that occur often later. UK English and USA English sometimes have different spellings. It is not important which one you use but you should be consistent in every question.

Tip 3: Improve your typing speed.

Unless you opt paper-based version, APTIS writing test is computer-based. So the faster you type the better. Just make sure your typing speed isn’t too slow.

Tip 4: Know the word count.

You lose marks if you write too little and waste time if you write too much (it isn’t counted). Therefore, you should know how many words should write and how long you have for each question. Then you can practice them at home. Remember that formal sentences are generally longer than informal sentences.

Tip 5: Read model answers.

Doing this will give you a good idea of what to expect. Think about the things the examiners are looking for and look at how accurate the grammar is. Ask yourself ‘is it cohesive and clear?’ ‘Is the vocabulary wide-ranging or repetitious?’ and ‘is it well planned?’.

Tip 6: Get used to the timings

Make sure that you know how long you have for each part and don’t go over that time. Practice ant home with a timer will stop you from getting any horrible surprises. If you know an APTIS examiner or trainer speak to them and ask them what you need to do to improve.

Tip 7: Check your work

It is easy to lose points for making silly mistakes. Check what you have written. Look at spelling and punctuation. For grammar check- prepositions/dependant prepositions/verb-noun agreement/countable and uncountable/tenses. Remember you can "flag in" option. You can always come back to a question where you had a doubt.

Tip 8: Finish in time

You don’t get any marks for blank spaces, so always write something. Even if you think it’s bad, and you might be surprised, it is better than nothing.

Tip 9: Stay on topic

This is again about answering the question and affects task achievement. If you are asked for an opinion you should give one. If you have to say, for example, why you are applying to join a club. Then you should write about clubs in general.

Tip 10: Practice makes perfect!

Doing practice tests will help you build your concentration levels and your instinct. More than that, practice will improve your English and help you with the timings you need to complete the test with the best result.  If you would like to increase your APTIS score by practicing more APTIS tests then please check the exam library in our website  here . There you will find largest simulated APTIS test database. Totally free with no registration (we won't even ask for your email).

In a world where having a certification to prove your language competency is increasingly common, there is certainly pressure to add one to your CV.

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A Complete Guide To The Aptis Writing Exam

Part 1: Basic personal information. Form Filling 3 minutes                                                                   

Part 2: short informal texts. 20-30 words each.

7 minutes total.

Part 3:  Social network Conversation.

30-40 words per answer. 10 minutes total.

Part 4: Informal email.

About 50 words. 10 minutes. Short and simple, but  informal, personal, emotional.

120-150 words. Formal, Impersonal, polite but assertive. One Paragraph = One Idea. Clear Division of Paragraphs.

British Council

Aptis advanced writing test, what is the aptis advanced writing test like.

The information below and the preparation materials are relevant for Aptis Advanced and Aptis ESOL Advanced.

In this part of the test you will be able to demonstrate your ability to use written English in real-life situations. There are three parts to the Writing test.

You will interact in a social media-type written conversation, write an email and write a short article for an online publication. All tasks are marked by an examiner.

The maximum time allowed for the reading component for Aptis Advanced is 45 minutes.

Part 1: Three written responses to questions

In this part, you will have a social network type interaction. You will receive three questions and need to respond.

Part 2: Formal writing

In this part, you will read an email from an authority. You need to respond to the email in 120 –150 words, using the notes provided, expressing how you feel about the situation.

Part 3: Article for website publication

In this part, you will write an article for a website that is both informative and interesting. Notes about the topic are provided and you need to use the information to help write the article. The article needs to be between 180–220 words.

Top tips for the writing test:

• make sure you fully understand the question and respond appropriately
• plan what you are going to write before you start
• remember to review your writing and correct any errors, before moving to the next question
• keep to the word limit – there is a word counter to help you keep track.
• focus on accuracy.

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Aptis Advanced: Writing Test 1

• October 17, 2021 October 17, 2021

Aptis Advanced: Writing Test 1 with Sample C1 Answers

Here’s our first Aptis Advanced Writing Test. So far, the British Council seems to have provided only one example of each task, so until we have more information about the question-types, we’re going to use those examples here. (For example, we need to know whether Part Three is always based on figures and tables, as in the sample test.) However, we’ve prepared the C1-level sample answers ourselves, as always.

Unlike the other Aptis writing exams, which consist of four tasks, there are only three parts to the Advanced Writing Test. We’ll start with a brief overview of what each part entails, then give you the test questions.  This will be followed by a video explaining each part in more detail, and giving you sample answers at C1.

We strongly recommend that you do the test yourself before looking at the Aptis Advanced Writing Test with sample C1 answers. This is why we’re going to give you the blank exam paper first. Try to do the test within exam timing. The total time allowed for the writing test is 45 minutes . All writing tasks are marked by examiners.

Before you start writing, here are some important points to bear in mind.

Advice Checklist:

• make sure you fully understand the questions
• plan what you are going to write, then edit your writing before clicking to the next question
• answer the questions without going off-topic
• keep to the word-count
• use level-appropriate grammar and vocabulary
• check your spelling and punctuation
• use a variety of sentence structures and paragraphs where appropriate

And remember the ABCDE of writing:

• A CTIVATE YOUR IDEAS! Brainstorm for things you could include.
• B EGIN TO PLAN! You’re allowed p en & paper, so jot down a basic outline.
• C ONSIDER THE CONTENT! What language and vocabulary could you use?
• D O IT! Remember to time yourself to see how long each part takes you.
• E RROR-CHECK IT!   Always read your work carefully to check for mistakes.

Aptis Advanced Writing Test 1

Part one : three written responses to questions.

The task consists of interacting in a social media-type written conversation in a chat room. You have received three messages and have to respond briefly to each.

You are a member of a history club. You are talking to three other members in the history club chat room. Talk to them using sentences. Use 30 to 40 words per answer. You have 10 minutes in total. Answer all three questions.

History Club Chat

Sam: Hi! Welcome to the club. I was interested in history at school and I studied it at university. What about you?

Miguel: Welcome. Can you tell me something about the history of your country?

Michelle: Who is your favourite person from history, and why are you interested in him or her?

Part Two : Email response

For this task you read an email and have to respond to it using the notes provided.

You have received this email from your local supermarket. Read the email and the notes you have made. Write a reply using all the information in your notes, and express how you feel about the situation.

You should write between 120 and 150 words.

Dear Customer

Thank you for shopping at our supermarket. We value your custom and would like to hear about your most recent shopping experience. Firstly, we want to know your opinion of our staff. Were they able to help you in any way? (1) We would also like to know what you think about the organisation of the store. Was it easy to find the products you wanted? (2) . Finally, we would like to hear your suggestions for improving the customer shopping experience. (3)

Yours faithfully,

Customer Services

• Staff seem very young – don’t always know about products
• Every month products are moved – difficult to find what you want
• Music plays all the time – very irritating – prefer silence!

Part Three: Article for website publication

The third task consists of writing an article for a website that is both informative and interesting.

Things You Should Know is a website that accepts short articles from members of the public on subjects of popular interest. You have been asked to contribute an article on the subject of Public Surveillance Systems. You have already done some research on the subject in note and diagram form. Use information from your research notes to help you write an article that is both informative and interesting.

Write between 180 and 220 words.

Notes on Public Surveillance Systems

– CCTV cameras used in public areas (streets, shops, banks)

– Increasing number of private homes installing CCTV

– Benefits: allows monitoring of public safety / can provide evidence in criminal cases

– Drawbacks: threat to individual liberty / intrusion into individual privacy

Numbers of Public CCTV Cameras

Source: Comparitech Paul Bischoff @pabischoff

(We’ve updated the figures and info from the British Council version in order to make the task more realistic – and more interesting!)

In this video John talks you through each part of the test, highlights useful language in the C1 sample answers and gives you advice. You’ll find the script for the Advanced Writing Test below the video.

Aptis Advanced Writing Test 1 with Sample C1 Answers

Sam: Hi! Welcome to the club. I was interested in history at school and I studied it at university. What about you ?

Hi Sam! Interestingly enough, history wasn’t something I was really into when I was really young. But after seeing the film Gladiator I became totally obsessed with Ancient Rome – I even took up Latin, and ended up studying classics.

Well, in the first millennium BC there was a lot of immigration from continental Europe, and the Celts established themselves. Then after that there was the Roman Conquest of the British Isles, and they stuck around for about 350 years!

I’d say Leonardo Da Vinci, the Italian polymath, as he left such an amazing legacy. He was such a trailblazer – designing functioning robots, digital computers and even building the first heart valve. He was so ahead of his time!

Thank you for shopping at our supermarket. We value your custom and would like to hear about your most recent shopping experience. Firstly, we want to know your opinion of our staff. Were they able to help you in any way? (1) We would also like to know what you think about the organisation of the store. Was it easy to find the products you wanted? (2). Finally, we would like to hear your suggestions for improving the customer shopping experience. (3)

Dear Customer Services

I am writing in response to your email requesting customer feedback.

Firstly, during my latest visit I found the staff well-disposed towards customers. However, they are not well-informed about the products, which I feel is not helpful. I understand that many are students who are only working part-time. Could they not be given more training?

Regarding store layout, I find it frustrating never being able to find the items I need. It seems to be your policy to ‘circulate’ basic necessities such as bread, probably in order to boost sales by forcing customers to walk past products they may otherwise not see. I would appreciate your moving things around less frequently.

Finally, I wish to address the irksome ‘elevator music’ constantly playing in the background! I would suggest you get rid of it altogether.

I trust you will find my feedback useful.

Yours faithfully, John Harrop

Say Cheese!

Would you be less likely to commit a crime if you knew you were being filmed?

These days it’s pretty safe to assume that almost everything we do is recorded. What with ever-cheaper technology and the miniaturisation of recording devices, CCTV surveillance systems have become so commonplace that we barely notice them. And it’s not just in public areas – many home-owners are having security cameras installed.

Many people feel reassured in terms of safety by the streets being constantly monitored. Videos are increasingly used as evidence in criminal cases, and can provide a reliable alternative to eye-witnesses’ possibly faulty memories. However, opinion is divided; pressure groups argue that our civil liberties are under threat, and that having no privacy is far too high a price to pay.

What’s really interesting, though, is the relationship (or lack of one) between cameras per capita and crime. Statistics show that Japan has the fewest CCTV cameras but also the lowest crime rate, while crime is highest in London, although there are many more cameras. Beijing falls between the two, both in terms of CCTV and crime.

So it’s difficult to come to any solid conclusions … though it is tempting to extrapolate the fact that the Japanese seem to be more law-abiding than the Brits!

Work on your writing skills with Aptis Advanced: How to Write an Article .

Check out our Top Tips for passing the Writing Test.

We’re working on Aptis Advanced Writing Test 2, but meanwhile you could also practise with the Aptis General and Aptis for Teachers tests – all practice is good practice!

You’ll find all these and more in our Guide .

And remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel – make sure you click on the bell so that you’ll receive notifications when we publish more Advanced Tests. You’ll find four Advanced Speaking videos there so far.

2 thoughts on “Aptis Advanced: Writing Test 1”

Thank you so much for the sample test and answers!

You’re welcome Hajar! Good luck with your studies. All the best John and Chris

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Index terms

Keywords: , designing a writing class to foster engagement.

1 The signs at the edge of town say, "Entering Moscow, Idaho. Population 25,060." This is a small hamlet in the midst of a sea of rolling hills, where farmers grow varieties of wheat, lentils, peas, and garbanzo beans, irrigated by natural rainfall. Although the town of Moscow has a somewhat cosmopolitan feel because of the presence of the University of Idaho (with its 13,000 students and a few thousand faculty and staff members), elegant restaurants, several bookstores and music stores, and a patchwork of artsy coffee shops on Main Street, the entire mini-metropolis has only about a dozen traffic lights and a single high school. As a professor of creative writing and the environmental humanities at the university, I have long been interested in finding ways to give special focuses to my writing and literature classes that will help my students think about the circumstances of their own lives and find not only academic meaning but personal significance in our subjects. I have recently taught graduate writing workshops on such themes as "The Body" and "Crisis," but when I was given the opportunity recently to teach an undergraduate writing class on Personal and Exploratory Writing, I decided to choose a focus that would bring me—and my students—back to one of the writers who has long been of central interest to me: Henry David Thoreau.

2 One of the courses I have routinely taught during the past six years is Environmental Writing, an undergraduate class that I offer as part of the university's Semester in the Wild Program, a unique undergraduate opportunity that sends a small group of students to study five courses (Ecology, Environmental History, Environmental Writing, Outdoor Leadership and Wilderness Survival, and Wilderness Management and Policy) at a remote research station located in the middle of the largest wilderness area (the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness) in the United States south of Alaska. In "Teaching with Wolves," a recent article about the Semester in the Wild Program, I explained that my goal in the Environmental Writing class is to help the students "synthesize their experience in the wilderness with the content of the various classes" and "to think ahead to their professional lives and their lives as engaged citizens, for which critical thinking and communication skills are so important" (325). A foundational text for the Environmental Writing class is a selection from Thoreau's personal journal, specifically the entries he made October 1-20, 1853, which I collected in the 1993 writing textbook Being in the World: An Environmental Reader for Writers . I ask the students in the Semester in the Wild Program to deeply immerse themselves in Thoreau's precise and colorful descriptions of the physical world that is immediately present to him and, in turn, to engage with their immediate encounters with the world in their wilderness location. Thoreau's entries read like this:

Oct. 4. The maples are reddening, and birches yellowing. The mouse-ear in the shade in the middle of the day, so hoary, looks as if the frost still lay on it. Well it wears the frost. Bumblebees are on the Aster undulates , and gnats are dancing in the air. Oct. 5. The howling of the wind about the house just before a storm to-night sounds extremely like a loon on the pond. How fit! Oct. 6 and 7. Windy. Elms bare. (372)

3 In thinking ahead to my class on Personal and Exploratory Writing, which would be offered on the main campus of the University of Idaho in the fall semester of 2018, I wanted to find a topic that would instill in my students the Thoreauvian spirit of visceral engagement with the world, engagement on the physical, emotional, and philosophical levels, while still allowing my students to remain in the city and live their regular lives as students. It occurred to me that part of what makes Thoreau's journal, which he maintained almost daily from 1837 (when he was twenty years old) to 1861 (just a year before his death), such a rich and elegant work is his sense of being a traveler, even when not traveling geographically.

Traveling a Good Deal in Moscow

I have traveled a good deal in Concord…. --Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854; 4)

4 For Thoreau, one did not need to travel a substantial physical distance in order to be a traveler, in order to bring a traveler's frame of mind to daily experience. His most famous book, Walden , is well known as an account of the author's ideas and daily experiments in simple living during the two years, two months, and two days (July 4, 1845, to September 6, 1847) he spent inhabiting a simple wooden house that he built on the shore of Walden Pond, a small lake to the west of Boston, Massachusetts. Walden Pond is not a remote location—it is not out in the wilderness. It is on the edge of a small village, much like Moscow, Idaho. The concept of "traveling a good deal in Concord" is a kind of philosophical and psychological riddle. What does it mean to travel extensively in such a small place? The answer to this question is meaningful not only to teachers hoping to design writing classes in the spirit of Thoreau but to all who are interested in travel as an experience and in the literary genre of travel writing.

5 Much of Walden is an exercise in deftly establishing a playful and intellectually challenging system of synonyms, an array of words—"economy," "deliberateness," "simplicity," "dawn," "awakening," "higher laws," etc.—that all add up to powerful probing of what it means to live a mindful and attentive life in the world. "Travel" serves as a key, if subtle, metaphor for the mindful life—it is a metaphor and also, in a sense, a clue: if we can achieve the traveler's perspective without going far afield, then we might accomplish a kind of enlightenment. Thoreau's interest in mindfulness becomes clear in chapter two of Walden , "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For," in which he writes, "Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?" The latter question implies the author's feeling that he is himself merely evolving as an awakened individual, not yet fully awake, or mindful, in his efforts to live "a poetic or divine life" (90). Thoreau proceeds to assert that "We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn…. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor" (90). Just what this endeavor might be is not immediately spelled out in the text, but the author does quickly point out the value of focusing on only a few activities or ideas at a time, so as not to let our lives be "frittered away by detail." He writes: "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; … and keep your accounts on your thumb nail" (91). The strong emphasis in the crucial second chapter of Walden is on the importance of waking up and living deliberately through a conscious effort to engage in particular activities that support such awakening. It occurs to me that "travel," or simply making one's way through town with the mindset of a traveler, could be one of these activities.

6 It is in the final chapter of the book, titled "Conclusion," that Thoreau makes clear the relationship between travel and living an attentive life. He begins the chapter by cataloguing the various physical locales throughout North America or around the world to which one might travel—Canada, Ohio, Colorado, and even Tierra del Fuego. But Thoreau states: "Our voyaging is only great-circle sailing, and the doctors prescribe for diseases of the skin merely. One hastens to Southern Africa to chase the giraffe; but surely that is not the game he would be after." What comes next is brief quotation from the seventeenth-century English poet William Habbington (but presented anonymously in Thoreau's text), which might be one of the most significant passages in the entire book:

Direct your eye sight inward, and you'll find A thousand regions in your mind Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be Expert in home-cosmography. (320)

7 This admonition to travel the mysterious territory of one's own mind and master the strange cosmos of the self is actually a challenge to the reader—and probably to the author himself—to focus on self-reflection and small-scale, local movement as if such activities were akin to exploration on a grand, planetary scale. What is really at issue here is not the physical distance of one's journey, but the mental flexibility of one's approach to the world, one's ability to look at the world with a fresh, estranged point of view. Soon after his discussion of the virtues of interior travel, Thoreau explains why he left his simple home at Walden Pond after a few years of experimental living there, writing, "It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves" (323). In other words, no matter what we're doing in life, we can fall into a "beaten track" if we're not careful, thus failing to stay "awake."

8 As I thought about my writing class at the University of Idaho, I wondered how I might design a series of readings and writing exercises for university students that would somehow emulate the Thoreauvian objective of achieving ultra-mindfulness in a local environment. One of the greatest challenges in designing such a class is the fact that it took Thoreau himself many years to develop an attentiveness to his environment and his own emotional rhythms and an efficiency of expression that would enable him to describe such travel-without-travel, and I would have only sixteen weeks to achieve this with my own students. The first task, I decided, was to invite my students into the essential philosophical stance of the class, and I did this by asking my students to read the opening chapter of Walden ("Economy") in which he talks about traveling "a good deal" in his small New England village as well as the second chapter and the conclusion, which reveal the author's enthusiasm (some might even say obsession ) for trying to achieve an awakened condition and which, in the end, suggest that waking up to the meaning of one's life in the world might be best accomplished by attempting the paradoxical feat of becoming "expert in home-cosmography." As I stated it among the objectives for my course titled 36 Views of Moscow Mountain: Or, Traveling a Good Deal—with Open Minds and Notebooks—in a Small Place , one of our goals together (along with practicing nonfiction writing skills and learning about the genre of travel writing) would be to "Cultivate a ‘Thoreauvian' way of appreciating the subtleties of the ordinary world."

Windy. Elms Bare.

9 For me, the elegance and heightened sensitivity of Thoreau's engagement with place is most movingly exemplified in his journal, especially in the 1850s after he's mastered the art of observation and nuanced, efficient description of specific natural phenomena and environmental conditions. His early entries in the journal are abstract mini-essays on such topics as truth, beauty, and "The Poet," but over time the journal notations become so immersed in the direct experience of the more-than-human world, in daily sensory experiences, that the pronoun "I" even drops out of many of these records. Lawrence Buell aptly describes this Thoreauvian mode of expression as "self-relinquishment" (156) in his 1995 book The Environmental Imagination , suggesting such writing "question[s] the authority of the superintending consciousness. As such, it opens up the prospect of a thoroughgoing perceptual breakthrough, suggesting the possibility of a more ecocentric state of being than most of us have dreamed of" (144-45). By the time Thoreau wrote "Windy. Elms bare" (372) as his single entry for October 6 and 7, 1853, he had entered what we might call an "ecocentric zone of consciousness" in his work, attaining the ability to channel his complex perceptions of season change (including meteorology and botany and even his own emotional state) into brief, evocative prose.

10 I certainly do not expect my students to be able to do such writing after only a brief introduction to the course and to Thoreau's own methods of journal writing, but after laying the foundation of the Thoreauvian philosophy of nearby travel and explaining to my students what I call the "building blocks of the personal essay" (description, narration, and exposition), I ask them to engage in a preliminary journal-writing exercise that involves preparing five journal entries, each "a paragraph or two in length," that offer detailed physical descriptions of ordinary phenomena from their lives (plants, birds, buildings, street signs, people, food, etc.), emphasizing shape, color, movement or change, shadow, and sometimes sound, smell, taste, and/or touch. The goal of the journal entries, I tell the students, is to begin to get them thinking about close observation, vivid descriptive language, and the potential to give their later essays in the class an effective texture by balancing more abstract information and ideas with evocative descriptive passages and storytelling.

11 I am currently teaching this class, and I am writing this article in early September, as we are entering the fourth week of the semester. The students have just completed the journal-writing exercise and are now preparing to write the first of five brief essays on different aspects of Moscow that will eventually be braided together, as discrete sections of the longer piece, into a full-scale literary essay about Moscow, Idaho, from the perspective of a traveler. For the journal exercise, my students wrote some rather remarkable descriptive statements, which I think bodes well for their upcoming work. One student, Elizabeth Isakson, wrote stunning journal descriptions of a cup of coffee, her own feet, a lemon, a basil leaf, and a patch of grass. For instance, she wrote:

Steaming hot liquid poured into a mug. No cream, just black. Yet it appears the same brown as excretion. The texture tells another story with meniscus that fades from clear to gold and again brown. The smell is intoxicating for those who are addicted. Sweetness fills the nostrils; bitterness rushes over the tongue. The contrast somehow complements itself. Earthy undertones flower up, yet this beverage is much more satisfying than dirt. When the mug runs dry, specks of dark grounds remain swimming in the sunken meniscus. Steam no longer rises because energy has found a new home.

12 For the grassy lawn, she wrote:

Calico with shades of green, the grass is yellowing. Once vibrant, it's now speckled with straw. Sticking out are tall, seeding dandelions. Still some dips in the ground have maintained thick, soft patches of green. The light dances along falling down from the trees above, creating a stained-glass appearance made from various green shades. The individual blades are stiff enough to stand erect, but they will yield to even slight forces of wind or pressure. Made from several long strands seemingly fused together, some blades fray at the end, appearing brittle. But they do not simply break off; they hold fast to the blade to which they belong.

13 The point of this journal writing is for the students to look closely enough at ordinary reality to feel estranged from it, as if they have never before encountered (or attempted to describe) a cup of coffee or a field of grass—or a lemon or a basil leaf or their own body. Thus, the Thoreauvian objective of practicing home-cosmography begins to take shape. The familiar becomes exotic, note-worthy, and strangely beautiful, just as it often does for the geographical travel writer, whose adventures occur far away from where she or he normally lives. Travel, in a sense, is an antidote to complacency, to over-familiarity. But the premise of my class in Thoreauvian travel writing is that a slight shift of perspective can overcome the complacency we might naturally feel in our home surroundings. To accomplish this we need a certain degree of disorientation. This is the next challenge for our class.

The Blessing of Being Lost

14 Most of us take great pains to "get oriented" and "know where we're going," whether this is while running our daily errands or when thinking about the essential trajectories of our lives. We're often instructed by anxious parents to develop a sense of purpose and a sense of direction, if only for the sake of basic safety. But the traveler operates according to a somewhat different set of priorities, perhaps, elevating adventure and insight above basic comfort and security, at least to some degree. This certainly seems to be the case for the Thoreauvian traveler, or for Thoreau himself. In Walden , he writes:

…not until we are completely lost, or turned round,--for a man needs only be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost,--do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature. Every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations. (171)

15 I could explicate this passage at length, but that's not really my purpose here. I read this as a celebration of salutary disorientation, of the potential to be lost in such a way as to deepen one's ability to pay attention to oneself and one's surroundings, natural and otherwise. If travel is to a great degree an experience uniquely capable of triggering attentiveness to our own physical and psychological condition, to other cultures and the minds and needs of other people, and to a million small details of our environment that we might take for granted at home but that accrue special significance when we're away, I would argue that much of this attentiveness is owed to the sense of being lost, even the fear of being lost, that often happens when we leave our normal habitat.

16 So in my class I try to help my students "get lost" in a positive way. Here in Moscow, the major local landmark is a place called Moscow Mountain, a forested ridge of land just north of town, running approximately twenty kilometers to the east of the city. Moscow "Mountain" does not really have a single, distinctive peak like a typical mountain—it is, as I say, more of a ridge than a pinnacle. When I began contemplating this class on Thoreauvian travel writing, the central concepts I had in mind were Thoreau's notion of traveling a good deal in Concord and also the idea of looking at a specific place from many different angles. The latter idea is not only Thoreauvian, but perhaps well captured in the eighteen-century Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai's series of woodblock prints known as 36 Views of Mt. Fuji , which offers an array of different angles on the mountain itself and on other landscape features (lakes, the sea, forests, clouds, trees, wind) and human behavior which is represented in many of the prints, often with Mt. Fuji in the distant background or off to the side. In fact, I imagine Hokusai's approach to representing Mt. Fuji as so important to the concept of this travel writing class that I call the class "36 Views of Moscow Mountain," symbolizing the multiple approaches I'll be asking my students to take in contemplating and describing not only Moscow Mountain itself, but the culture and landscape and the essential experience of Moscow the town. The idea of using Hokusai's series of prints as a focal point of this class came to me, in part, from reading American studies scholar Cathy Davidson's 36 Views of Mount Fuji: On Finding Myself in Japan , a memoir that offers sixteen short essays about different facets of her life as a visiting professor in that island nation.

17 The first of five brief essays my students will prepare for the class is what I'm calling a "Moscow Mountain descriptive essay," building upon the small descriptive journal entries they've written recently. In this case, though, I am asking the students to describe the shapes and colors of the Moscow Mountain ridge, while also telling a brief story or two about their observations of the mountain, either by visiting the mountain itself to take a walk or a bike ride or by explaining how they glimpse portions of the darkly forested ridge in the distance while walking around the University of Idaho campus or doing things in town. In preparation for the Moscow Mountain essays, we read several essays or book chapters that emphasize "organizing principles" in writing, often the use of particular landscape features, such as trees or mountains, as a literary focal point. For instance, in David Gessner's "Soaring with Castro," from his 2007 book Soaring with Fidel: An Osprey Odyssey from Cape Cod to Cuba and Beyond , he not only refers to La Gran Piedra (a small mountain in southeastern Cuba) as a narrative focal point, but to the osprey, or fish eagle, itself and its migratory journey as an organizing principle for his literary project (203). Likewise, in his essay "I Climb a Tree and Become Dissatisfied with My Lot," Chicago author Leonard Dubkin writes about his decision, as a newly fired journalist, to climb up a tree in Chicago's Lincoln Park to observe and listen to the birds that gather in the green branches in the evening, despite the fact that most adults would consider this a strange and inappropriate activity. We also looked at several of Hokusai's woodblock prints and analyzed these together in class, trying to determine how the mountain served as an organizing principle for each print or whether there were other key features of the prints—clouds, ocean waves, hats and pieces of paper floating in the wind, humans bent over in labor—that dominate the images, with Fuji looking on in the distance.

18 I asked my students to think of Hokusai's representations of Mt. Fuji as aesthetic models, or metaphors, for what they might try to do in their brief (2-3 pages) literary essays about Moscow Mountain. What I soon discovered was that many of my students, even students who have spent their entire lives in Moscow, either were not aware of Moscow Mountain at all or had never actually set foot on the mountain. So we spent half an hour during one class session, walking to a vantage point on the university campus, where I could point out where the mountain is and we could discuss how one might begin to write about such a landscape feature in a literary essay. Although I had thought of the essay describing the mountain as a way of encouraging the students to think about a familiar landscape as an orienting device, I quickly learned that this will be a rather challenging exercise for many of the students, as it will force them to think about an object or a place that is easily visible during their ordinary lives, but that they typically ignore. Paying attention to the mountain, the ridge, will compel them to reorient themselves in this city and think about a background landscape feature that they've been taking for granted until now. I think of this as an act of disorientation or being lost—a process of rethinking their own presence in this town that has a nearby mountain that most of them seldom think about. I believe Thoreau would consider this a good, healthy experience, a way of being present anew in a familiar place.

36 Views—Or, When You Invert Your Head

19 Another key aspect of Hokusai's visual project and Thoreau's literary project is the idea of changing perspective. One can view Mt. Fuji from 36 different points of views, or from thousands of different perspectives, and it is never quite the same place—every perspective is original, fresh, mind-expanding. The impulse to shift perspective in pursuit of mindfulness is also ever-present in Thoreau's work, particularly in his personal journal and in Walden . This idea is particularly evident, to me, in the chapter of Walden titled "The Ponds," where he writes:

Standing on the smooth sandy beach at the east end of the pond, in a calm September afternoon, when a slight haze makes the opposite shore line indistinct, I have seen whence came the expression, "the glassy surface of a lake." When you invert your head, it looks like a thread of finest gossamer stretched across the valley, and gleaming against the distinct pine woods, separating one stratum of the atmosphere from another. (186)

20 Elsewhere in the chapter, Thoreau describes the view of the pond from the top of nearby hills and the shapes and colors of pebbles in the water when viewed from close up. He chances physical perspective again and again throughout the chapter, but it is in the act of looking upside down, actually suggesting that one might invert one's head, that he most vividly conveys the idea of looking at the world in different ways in order to be lost and awakened, just as the traveler to a distant land might feel lost and invigorated by such exposure to an unknown place.

21 After asking students to write their first essay about Moscow Mountain, I give them four additional short essays to write, each two to four pages long. We read short examples of place-based essays, some of them explicitly related to travel, and then the students work on their own essays on similar topics. The second short essay is about food—I call this the "Moscow Meal" essay. We read the final chapter of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma (2006), "The Perfect Meal," and Anthony Bourdain's chapter "Where Cooks Come From" in the book A Cook's Tour (2001) are two of the works we study in preparation for the food essay. The three remaining short essays including a "Moscow People" essay (exploring local characters are important facets of the place), a more philosophical essay about "the concept of Moscow," and a final "Moscow Encounter" essay that tells the story of a dramatic moment of interaction with a person, an animal, a memorable thing to eat or drink, a sunset, or something else. Along the way, we read the work of Wendell Berry, Joan Didion, Barbara Kingsolver, Kim Stafford, Paul Theroux, and other authors. Before each small essay is due, we spend a class session holding small-group workshops, allowing the students to discuss their essays-in-progress with each other and share portions of their manuscripts. The idea is that they will learn about writing even by talking with each other about their essays. In addition to writing about Moscow from various angles, they will learn about additional points of view by considering the angles of insight developed by their fellow students. All of this is the writerly equivalent of "inverting [their] heads."

Beneath the Smooth Skin of Place

22 Aside from Thoreau's writing and Hokusai's images, perhaps the most important writer to provide inspiration for this class is Indiana-based essayist Scott Russell Sanders. Shortly after introducing the students to Thoreau's key ideas in Walden and to the richness of his descriptive writing in the journal, I ask them to read his essay "Buckeye," which first appeared in Sanders's Writing from the Center (1995). "Buckeye" demonstrates the elegant braiding together of descriptive, narrative, and expository/reflective prose, and it also offers a strong argument about the importance of creating literature and art about place—what he refers to as "shared lore" (5)—as a way of articulating the meaning of a place and potentially saving places that would otherwise be exploited for resources, flooded behind dams, or otherwise neglected or damaged. The essay uses many of the essential literary devices, ranging from dialogue to narrative scenes, that I hope my students will practice in their own essays, while also offering a vivid argument in support of the kind of place-based writing the students are working on.

23 Another vital aspect of our work together in this class is the effort to capture the wonderful idiosyncrasies of this place, akin to the idiosyncrasies of any place that we examine closely enough to reveal its unique personality. Sanders's essay "Beneath the Smooth Skin of America," which we study together in Week 9 of the course, addresses this topic poignantly. The author challenges readers to learn the "durable realities" of the places where they live, the details of "watershed, biome, habitat, food-chain, climate, topography, ecosystem and the areas defined by these natural features they call bioregions" (17). "The earth," he writes, "needs fewer tourists and more inhabitants" (16). By Week 9 of the semester, the students have written about Moscow Mountain, about local food, and about local characters, and they are ready at this point to reflect on some of the more philosophical dimensions of living in a small academic village surrounded by farmland and beyond that surrounded by the Cascade mountain range to the West and the Rockies to the East. "We need a richer vocabulary of place" (18), urges Sanders. By this point in the semester, by reading various examples of place-based writing and by practicing their own powers of observation and expression, my students will, I hope, have developed a somewhat richer vocabulary to describe their own experiences in this specific place, a place they've been trying to explore with "open minds and notebooks." Sanders argues that

if we pay attention, we begin to notice patterns in the local landscape. Perceiving those patterns, acquiring names and theories and stories for them, we cease to be tourists and become inhabitants. The bioregional consciousness I am talking about means bearing your place in mind, keeping track of its condition and needs, committing yourself to its care. (18)

24 Many of my students will spend only four or five years in Moscow, long enough to earn a degree before moving back to their hometowns or journeying out into the world in pursuit of jobs or further education. Moscow will be a waystation for some of these student writers, not a permanent home. Yet I am hoping that this semester-long experiment in Thoreauvian attentiveness and place-based writing will infect these young people with both the bioregional consciousness Sanders describes and a broader fascination with place, including the cultural (yes, the human ) dimensions of this and any other place. I feel such a mindfulness will enrich the lives of my students, whether they remain here or move to any other location on the planet or many such locations in succession.

25 Toward the end of "Beneath the Smooth Skin of America," Sanders tells the story of encountering a father with two young daughters near a city park in Bloomington, Indiana, where he lives. Sanders is "grazing" on wild mulberries from a neighborhood tree, and the girls are keen to join him in savoring the local fruit. But their father pulls them away, stating, "Thank you very much, but we never eat anything that grows wild. Never ever." To this Sanders responds: "If you hold by that rule, you will not get sick from eating poison berries, but neither will you be nourished from eating sweet ones. Why not learn to distinguish one from the other? Why feed belly and mind only from packages?" (19-20). By looking at Moscow Mountain—and at Moscow, Idaho, more broadly—from numerous points of view, my students, I hope, will nourish their own bellies and minds with the wild fruit and ideas of this place. I say this while chewing a tart, juicy, and, yes, slightly sweet plum that I pulled from a feral tree in my own Moscow neighborhood yesterday, an emblem of engagement, of being here.

Bibliography

BUELL, Lawrence, The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture , Harvard University Press, 1995.

DAVIDSON, Cathy, 36 Views of Mount Fuji: On Finding Myself in Japan , Duke University Press, 2006.

DUBKIN, Leonard, "I Climb a Tree and Become Dissatisfied with My Lot." Enchanted Streets: The Unlikely Adventures of an Urban Nature Lover , Little, Brown and Company, 1947, 34-42.

GESSNER, David, Soaring with Fidel: An Osprey Odyssey from Cape Cod to Cuba and Beyond , Beacon, 2007.

ISAKSON, Elizabeth, "Journals." Assignment for 36 Views of Moscow Mountain (English 208), University of Idaho, Fall 2018.

SANDERS, Scott Russell, "Buckeye" and "Beneath the Smooth Skin of America." Writing from the Center , Indiana University Press, 1995, pp. 1-8, 9-21.

SLOVIC, Scott, "Teaching with Wolves", Western American Literature 52.3 (Fall 2017): 323-31.

THOREAU, Henry David, "October 1-20, 1853", Being in the World: An Environmental Reader for Writers , edited by Scott H. Slovic and Terrell F. Dixon, Macmillan, 1993, 371-75.

THOREAU, Henry David, Walden . 1854. Princeton University Press, 1971.

Bibliographical reference

Scott Slovic , “ 36 Views of Moscow Mountain: Teaching Travel Writing and Mindfulness in the Tradition of Hokusai and Thoreau ” ,  Caliban , 59 | 2018, 41-54.

Electronic reference

Scott Slovic , “ 36 Views of Moscow Mountain: Teaching Travel Writing and Mindfulness in the Tradition of Hokusai and Thoreau ” ,  Caliban [Online], 59 | 2018, Online since 01 June 2018 , connection on 04 May 2024 . URL : http://journals.openedition.org/caliban/3688; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/caliban.3688

About the author

Scott slovic.

University of Idaho Scott Slovic is University Distinguished Professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Idaho, USA. The author and editor of many books and articles, he edited the journal ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment from 1995 to 2020. His latest coedited book is The Routledge Handbook of Ecocriticism and Environmental Communication  (2019).

By this author

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• Furrowed Brows, Questioning Earth: Minding the Loess Soil of the Palouse [Full text] Published in Caliban , 61 | 2019
• Foreword: Thinking of “Earth Island” on Earth Day 2016 [Full text] Published in Caliban , 55 | 2016

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• 62 | 2019 Female Suffrage in British Art, Literature and History
• 61 | 2019 Land’s Furrows and Sorrows in Anglophone Countries
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• 59 | 2018 Anglophone Travel and Exploration Writing: Meetings Between the Human and Nonhuman
• 58 | 2017 The Mediterranean and its Hinterlands
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