Gulaid Hassan

Professor boczkowski

English 1109

4/17/2013

Fish Chronicles

           

        

    I think good essay needs more than a good sentence structure. After reading fishes opinion on a good essay, I really have to say that I don’t agree with everything that he said https://carmen.osu.edu/d2l/lms/content/viewer/view.d2l?tId=5447898&ou=10797129 , and after spending a lot of time a the writing studio, I had the opportunity to obtain a lot of information which made me revaluate how I assemble my essays from this point forward.  A good essay does not only need more than a good sentence structure, but it also needs to have a lot of points and those points need more than one way of emphasizing them. Some of the points include a good introduction, which needs to get the readers attention and become a good outline for the essay. The introduction needs to start with a good thesis that’s also going to lead you to the conclusion of the essay after reading it.

            The main reason why I believe a good essay needs more than a good sentence structure, is because an essay would not be considered a good sufficient essay without highlighting all the main points that you want to get across in the introduction of the essay. When I was at the writing studio I came across a student who is majoring in literature and she literarily changed my idea and prospective on a good essay, and her idea was, in the introduction of your essay. http://classweb.gmu.edu/WAC/philosophy/professors/sample_papers_introductions.htmlYou have to get your point across without really detailing and highlighting your story in only one paragraph, and on the course of your story you have to led your story connect and lead itself.

            When I was in the writing studio while I was doing my observation analysis, I learned a lot of beneficial ideas on how to write a good college essay http://newark.osu.edu/academics/degreesatnewark/english/thewritersstudio/Pages/index.aspx. A good college essay needs more than just a good sentence structure and most peoples idea of having good essay has to contain at least 5 paragraphs, first one being your introduction, then you needs at least 3 body paragraphs that highlight all of your points that were mentioned in the introduction. The 3 body paragraphs have to contain your ideas and quotations, and that has to lead to your conclusion and in the conclusion you have to let the reader know what lead you to finish the story in the conclusion.

            Everybody that I shadowed all had one thing in common which was an essay is complete with not only a good sentence structure but with also an idea driven from ones mind and quotes. A good essay cannot only contain ones opinion, it has to also have references that have a good lead. You cannot have a story based on only one person’s opinion; you have to make your readers know that you have other people that agree with you, and you have to show it in a format that lets the readers know the difference between your words and other people quotes in a format that does not confuse the reader.

            In conclusion, I do not believe a good essay needs a good sentence structure, but I also believe in all the points mentioned in the above introduction and the body paragraphs, fishes story makes logical points but I personally believe you cannot get your point across in an essay with only a good sentence structure. You need to have a topic for your story and a good thesis that can lead the reader to the conclusion.  

Fishy Business

After reading a blog post in the New York Times: “What Should Colleges Teach”, which was written by Dr. Stanley Fish, his main argument in the article is that Colleges should teach the basics of a sentences structure. Fish says that to be able to write in college students must be able to know what the correct way of writing a sentence.

With that statement that he makes I must say that I disagree with what he says. Ok, yes knowing how to write sentences is important for writing in general but it is not the be-all, end all when it comes to writing in college. That brings me to my central argument that in my opinion, I believe that the thesis should be at the forefront of the college English classes because without the thesis there essentially would be no paper.


Dr. Stanley Fish giving a lecture at a colleg class

Some people may wonder what good-old Stanley Fish did before he wrote his blog (“What Colleges Should Teach”); I was one of those people. Dr. Fish is a distinguished professor who taught at many different colleges and Universities across the country. He is currently a professor at Florida International University.

In Stanley Fish’s Piece about “What should Colleges Teach”, the way I read it, or what I think he wants us to believe is that a colleges primary focus when it comes to English, is that teachers should not just keep their attention on a SENTENCES STRUCTURE.

Now I get that it’s important to know the structure of a sentence but it doesn’t need to be the FOCUS of a student’s entire semester while in college. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed reading his blog and seeing what he thought what important for students to know what the structure of a sentences is and I agree that a lot of students don’t fully understand the structure, but I don’t think it needs to be the focus of the class.

In my English 1109 class at the Ohio State Universities branch campus at Newark my teacher focused on one question of “What Is College Level Writing” and the classes final Paper was based on that question while only discussing one important aspect of College writing, I chose to talk about the thesis statement.

 I admire Dr. Fish for his work and what he has accomplished in his life, but he talks about sentences structure like that’s all a student needs to know and ok, if all he wants to stress to his students the importunateness of sentence structure that’s alright to do in his course and its his opinion I just don’t think spending a whole semester on one topic is the smartest move.

That paper I was talking about, yes I focused on one aspect of college writing for what I believed was to be important for a college paper. My professor got us (his students) prepared for that paper. He focused on multiple parts involved in the writing process. In the

Tutoring session at the OSU Newark Writers studeo

course of the semester we got ready for the paper and for the last 8 weeks my professor had his students go to the OSU Newark Writers studio to observe other student writers so that we could implement the experiences of those observations and find some link between the observations and the topic of our paper.
After the 8 weeks of observing where done we need to interview the student writer and his/her tutor and ask them question based on our time we spent observing.

I talked about the aspects of a theses and what it does for not only the statement but for the entire paper. In one of the questions for the interview I asked the student writer why she thought the thesis was important to a paper. She stated that “A thesis is like offering a claim for your paper and what you’re going to talk about in your paper”. After the interview I wondered how I would see how I would use her opinion in my paper.

This student gave her opinion on what she thought a thesis statement was just as I have given my opinion on Dr. Stanley Fish’s blog on “What Colleges Should Teach”. When it comes to writing and learning about writing in college all the students and teachers will have their own opinions on what is important in the long run. Stanley Fish was not right or wrong in what he said in his blog because opinions are open to everybody. So I think the question still rages on, WHAT SHOULD COLLEGES TEACH?               

Back to the Future: What Colleges Should Teach Today

Doctor Fish is experienced professor at Florida International University in Miami, Florida. After having distinctive experiences on numerous of different school such as University of Illinois, Chicago, also at Duke University, North Carolina. He makes a blog, at the New York Times What Should Colleges Teach? Part 3 answering questions about the educational system. Especially about what the most significant aspect of writing is.

Each person has its own idea to what
is college level writing 

Making his statements over the important aspects of the education, he comes to claim the core of writing an English paper lies, on analyzing sentences, breaking them down to its simplest form, seeing how well you write a sentence, and how it works together to convey desired meaning as one of his students states after doing many years of experimentation. Without any concrete research and only anecdotal reports Doctor Fish contends “I can only cite local successes in my classes and the anecdotal reports of former students who have employed it in their own classes”. It might be anecdotal reports, but and it might even be bias as he is reporting only students he had in the past, it still valid as one of his students, Lynn Sams, after many years of experimentations, she has concluded “the ability to analyze sentence, to understand how the parts work together to convey desired meaning, emphasis, and effect is . . . central to the writing process.” From her you can clearly agree to Doctor Fish’s statement.

With research and observations I have done at The Ohio State University at Newark’s Writer’s Studio, 

I have come to find that analyzing sentence is a big part of the writing process. As students have to read and do research to find credited information to base their paper on, and understand what they are writing, and make it also understandable to the reader. But that’s not all I have observed, the bigger portion of my research which was mentioned on my essay was emphasized on thesis. I agree with what Doctor Fish had to say, but across the years teachers have evolved and have been stressing and complicating more the idea of thesis.

Maybe they took in considerations to what Patrick Sullivan had to say about professors that grade placement exams for upcoming new freshmen’s on his article called "Whats College-Level Writing". They mention how students getting out of high school don’t have the required English skills needed to pass the minimum requirements on the English placement exam, making the grading professors disappointed, having to lower the standards. That leads to different professors not knowing exactly where the bar on “what college-level writing” really sits.

There is really no argument to make for what is exactly
college-level writing

I can safely say that asking exactly what is the most important aspect of writing a college-level English paper is like saying “flying planes is dangerous”. There is many different ways one can go about about it, and many different possible meaning, asking a professor that grades paper for a living it’s very ambiguous to the subject. Doctor Fish MIGHT had been right back in 2003, but as professors have got new expectations towards students, they have gotten new ideas to what is college-level writing. Now teachers are focusing more on the thesis and other structures of the paper, writing well written sentences and structuring them is now something that should come with you from high school well taught and well developed, as some teachers come to , there are been required to teach more material with shorter time.

As I refine my skills with the knowledge I gathered with this course I can come to understand the core reason to why English is so ambiguous. As many different people have different thought about life in general, including writing. They create different opinion to where the “college-level” sits, with them having different implications to the problem generates a cloud of equivocations to the educational theory of the concept. Leading to many problems to come. Amen!

Fish Out of Water:What Kind of Skills Should a Writer Have?



how to make high school
students write better.

I agree with Dr Fish's article Colleges Teach, Part 3, because middle school and high school should have writing skills, because it will get the kids ready for college and  it will help kids improving writing. I think that any kind of studnet should have to learn writing skills because it makes them smarter and it will get them writing papers.

I think that school from first through senior year should have some kind of writing skills and sentences figured out because you want to know what you are in doing college and know how to write a sentence and make it sound good, You want to make sure you are doing the right thing and you want to look up things.

Because Dr. Fish, is saying that some of the schools are shut down because srome of the teachers don’t want to teach the kids how to write or have them learn anything about writing that way you want to talk to the teachers and see why they aren’t teaching you guys any writing.

He want to make sure that teachers are using sentences and making them sound good because you have to have sentences and make them in your own words because you don’t want to use anyone else’s word and say that you are done with your paper because you took someone else words right of their mouth.


it is talking about fish.

You can use thesis statements too and you can use any other words in your paper, you just need to look over what Dr. Fish said in his paper. Just t like using sentence, because you don’t want to mess up on things and you want to see what else he is talking about. You have to keep a good eye out because you don’t know if he put anything else on his blog. That would be mean if he did because you wouldn’t know what he was talking about and it wouldn’t make sense because he added more words to his paper.

But I do agree with some of his stuff because he wants the college kids to learn how use sentence and how to use them right. you don’t want to mess up sentences so that why you look over them. You want to make sure that you are looking over your paper and make sure you did everything right because you are supposed to look over what Dr. Fish said. You want agree with him sometimes and other times you just want to think why he is saying this because he want to have kids to be smart.

His name is Dr. Stanley Fish, he went to college under the age of 25 but didn’t finish. He dropped out of school and then went back a year later and he didn’t know what his major was so he just stayed in college and just kept up with it. He didn’t want to drop out again so he became a teacher of college students and taught them how to make sentences and how to put a topic into the sentence. You have to have a good one because you can’t have a sentence without a topic so they just made one.

How are you going to start a paper if you don’t have a topic and how are you going to make it sound good? But when I worked with Jonathan and Josh at the Writer's Studio at OSU Newark they just talked about thesis statement and how to put it into a paragraph.

Following the Gills of Fish: Structure in College Writing

After I read Stanley Fish’s Article I could say that I do agree with what he says. He makes many good points of how college English classes should be taught and the curriculum that should be within them. Right off the bat Dr. Fish says that high school and middle schools are not teaching to the best of their ability and informing the students of the correct information. This makes it difficult for students to be at college professor’s expectations.

Dr. Fish states in his article that he believes that because students cannot write proper English sentences this is why their college writings are not up to standard. This could be taken into many views. College writing has a lot of components and singling out sentences seems very harsh. This statement is true but there is more to college writing than that. Students do not believe they can do the college professors expectations because they were not taught properly. Finding out what is most important to college writing could take many years and a lot of different opinions.


Stanley Fish helped me realize what college writing was about along with the sessions and classes I've had throughout this first year English class. Reading this article put college writing into a different perspective by saying sentences are extremely important. If you tried reading a book or even paragraph without punctuation it is extremely difficult. Along with reading a sentence when it doesn’t have the correct requirements. Finally realizing this and hearing it from another person helps notice how important it really is.

Although I do agree with Stanley Fish in some perspectives, but I also have my own thoughts on what college writing is about. I believe that in order to have a well written paper structure needs to be applied. Without structure a paper would be extremely hard to read and follow. Saying that structure is important lets both students and professors get a larger view about college writing. Structure lets a paper have a flow and helps with the bigger picture.



Student being tutored

 For eight weeks I have been visiting the Writers studio and watching other people write their college papers. During these eight sessions there was a lot to learn and a lot to figure out about what is most important for college level writing. I found out that in order to have a well drafted and organized college paper there has to be some form of structure. Without structure the paper would be extremely hard to read and it would be easy to get lost. It would almost be like trying to follow a map with no clue where you are. These eight sessions let us students have a better grasp on college writing.

Map showing the outline and structure

When searching to find an article that related with what I believe college level writing is I found this article that I agree with completely. This article also states when and where having organization in a college paper would be important. This article says that organizing your thoughts and making an outline will help have a better final paper. This article basically sums up exactly how I feel about organization in college writing.

When Fish talks about the assignment he has students do with making a sentence out of random words I think that this is actually really creative. Having a bunch of random words a trying to put them in a sentence would be hard because we don’t know the order they should be in we can create them ourselves. This assignment would help students be creative with their words and show them how to have a structure with no real structure assigned. Having to analyze the work that they had already done is important to realize what they have done and what they could do better. Having to analyze our own work is important because we need to know what is wrong with the work we have done and it would let the students get a better idea of how sentences should be.

Stanley Fish has many good statements within his blog post. I found it extremely interesting to find out how another professor feels towards college writing. I do think it is important to have students tell what is important about college writing, because then you can get an idea of how they think about college writing. What is college level writing could be one never ending question.

Something Smells Fishy: Analytical Breakdown of “What Should College Teach”

Please don't let this be you!!

All right, so after reading Fish article “What Should College Teach? Part 3”; I noticed he makes many valid arguments about why high school students are not prepared for college level writing. In his article Stanley Fish the dean emeritus of the college of liberal arts and sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago states that “you have to start with a simple but beep understanding of the game, which for my purposes is the game of writing sentences.” In Fish’s article, he argues the fact that high school students have a hard time structuring sentences. I do agree with fish’s argument that high school students are not prepared for college-level writing, but they’re definitely more behind why freshmen struggle in their writing courses.

Now you might be wondering why are freshmen are having such a hard time with writing? Could it be the teachers? Or is writing something that colleges students are not good at? Personally I thought that I was one of those students that sucked at writing when I came to college. Thought my four years of high school I my teacher though me that I could answer every question with a simple 5 paragraph paper. So when I tried doing this in college I did not get the same grades or feedback that I was expecting. As the weeks rolled by and I began to write more and more, I realize that my writing had to evolve and become more detailed oriented. With a lot of practice I began to see improvements. You know that old saying that your high school football couch told you when you kept missing that tackle? Practice make perfect!

All the things that I saw at the writing studio.

Not all students are like me and they can’t just improve their writing with a bit of practice. So what are all of these other students going to do? To answer this question I conducted an experiment at the Ohio state university. For 8 week I went to the writing studio at the Newark branch of OSU (The Ohio state University) to observe a student form English 1010.03 and a Peer writing consultant. My objective for this experiment was to determine an important aspect of college-level writing.

After my experiment, I analyzed all the data and come up with some surprising conclusions. I realized that for a student who struggles to write may prefer to incorporate a process in to there writing. This process includes doing a pre-write, body paragraph (also know as drafting) and post writing.

What is prewriting? Prewriting allows you to do a bunch of research and organize you thought before you write your paper. The prewriting phase is one of the most important parts of the process. According to my experiment the more research you do the better the better your paper will be. There was one example during my observation that truly stood out: on a warm sunny Thursday morning I entered the writing studio to start my observation. When I walked into the studio all I saw was a bunch of paper scattered all over the table. Nichole the PWC and I, where confused on why Eday, the student that I was observing, had all his paper on the table. Eday later explains to Nichole that he need help getting organize his material because the last time he had organized his research he got a great grade on his paper. This moment helped me realize that Eday and many other people could benefit whit just organize there research before they write there paper.

Once the pre-writing portion of the process is over the post-writing portion began. With more information that you have in you pre-write the better your body paragraphs will turn out. During this this portion of the process you want to make sure that you paper flows. The body paragraph is where you present your information and inform your reader about the topic. In my opinion this should be the easiest part of the process only if you do a really good job on the prewriting part.

the better you edit your paper, the better your paper well sound!

IM DONE! No, your not done with your paper at all!! You are forgetting about the most important part of this process, the post writing. Also know as editing. This is where you began to edit your paper checking for grammatical mistakes as well as structural mistakes. No matter how good your paper sounds or looks, some where with in your paper you made a mistake. It is always a good policy to re-read your paper and let other read your paper before you turn it in. Remember letting other people criticize your papers, is only way you will find out what you need to improve on for future papers.

Stanley Fish is a brilliant educator and make a very valid argument about sentence structure in his article but I have to respectably disagree whit him and state that most college’s students and teacher should emphasis a writing process. When looking back at my experiment I can tell that a lot of people could improve there writing with just a few simple steps. Doing prewrite, body paragraphs and post writer would defiantly change you entire writing experience. It will not only reduce writing anxiety as well has make your papers more detail oriented to be successful in college-level writing courses.