Writing to learn and learning to write

Teaching to write has made me more self-conscious of my writing than I ever was in high school or as an undergrad.  I actually always considered myself a good writer until I got to graduate school.  What really struck me about Emig's piece, and everyone's posts thus far, is the idea that more weight and significance seems to be given to written language than to spoken language.  While I can see where this  would elicit arguments and frustration, I can also really see myself buying in to this concept...at least in practice.  I definitely do not agonize over comments I make in class or even preparations for my own class meetings in the same way I agonize over seminar papers and comments on students' drafts (I know, I know, I probably spend too much time grading/commenting, but I can't help it).

I also thought about the ways my students shy away from writing practices in favor of speaking practices: even when we're actually talking about writing.  At the moment they are working on argument analyses and I've been spending class time working with them on analyzing different texts (a magazine ad, a tv commercial, a song, an article) to give them practice with the concept since many of my past students struggled with the difference between an analysis and a summary.  But instead of wanting to verbally work through what they will need to do in their papers, my students wanted to spend the majority of time arguing with the article or talking about the ad/song in a very different way.  They didn't want to apply writing techniques to the class conversation, they just wanted to have a conversation.  

I'm not sure if there's a solution to this problem I'm having, both with my students and myself.  It seems as if Emig doesn't really see the value-difference (if it does in fact exist) as a problem.  And now I find myself agonizing over attempting a conclusion to an informal blog post!  Writing!  It's too much pressure!