Reading is the First, the Last, and Everything in between!

Thank you Dr Fish, for sharing such a well-informed article into what colleges should teach with regards to writing. I would have to agree that evidence has shown middle schools and high schools are not teaching the writing skills necessary in becoming a good writer. You mention that because of this, it does not relieve college professors the responsibility of this deficit. Again, I would have to agree.

But, learning this essential skill cannot be learned over night, learned in the few short years the student attends college, nor should it be only thing taught. What about reading?! It takes years of hard work from the student to learn to read and write well; and I believe it begins with reading. I understand that college professors often times feel obligated to supply the needs the student did not obtain in secondary school, but then we are only learning from the few professors we encounter. 
 
Could you imagine the variety of skills one could have if we started teaching reading and writing classes in elementary school? From my point of view, if I had learned more of these types of skills in secondary school, I wouldn’t be so intimidated and pressured to do well in my current English classes. Not to mention the anxiety I get from my lack of writing skills. 
 
We need to find a way to communicate to these secondary schools and inform them how poorly they are preparing their students for college level writing. But, let’s not just place the blame on high school teachers, let’s spread the wealth and start as low as elementary schools. If my daughter can learn algebra and geometry in elementary school, I am positive she can learn the essentials of reading and writing and continue to build upon that throughout her years in school.

To prove my point even more, I recently observed several writing sessions at the Ohio State University Writing Studio between a Peer Writing Consultant and a student. I notated several relevant moments from each of the 8 sessions that helped answer my question, "What is College Writing?" Each and every session pointed back to the essential skill of reading! I feel that writing does have a place in college level writing; and that is right beside reading. 

I find the exercises you use to reinforce and extend the basic insight very insightful and intellectual. How else is one to understand the game without first gaining an understanding of it? Your question, “What is a sentence anyway?” is a great way to start. I like the fact that you answer this by stating it is a structure of relationships and an organization of items. The first part (structuring) can be done easily, where as the second part (analyzing) takes a bit more thinking. This sentence relationship challenges you to do some critical thinking about how one idea relates to another. Again, one needs to start with reading. 

But, let's break down that reading into simple, basic sentences. Sentences are probably the most important means of communication. Without sentences, we could not obtain facts or details, opinions, sequence of events or understand cause and effect relationships. Without structure, we would be unable to get such meaning from words alone. For instance, take a writer, any writer. We understand their writing by reading it and interpreting it because they formed a relationship with their words. 
 

You state that a sentence is a structure of logical relationships and everything else follows. Everything else follows as long as you have an understanding of what should follow. Instead of using this method in teaching one the basics of writing, how about we use this method in teaching one the basics of reading?

You are cautious to believe the key to writing is imitation and reading many pages, although this has been advised from previous experts. I am not just cautious; I am flat out, without a doubt in disbelief. You can read the same paragraph over and over again and still not understand its meaning. 

You need to break it apart, sentence by sentence, and dissect every word. If you don’t know the definition, look them up! One will be unable to writing properly if one does not understand how to read properly. By learning this skill, we can then understand the thoughts of the author as well as our own. The best readers make the best writers, as Mary Daane explains in the November's Journal of Reading.