Fish on the Hook

Cameron Collins

Collins.1240

Boczkowsi

12/5/13

English 1109

Fish on the Hook

Stanley Fish is the Floerscheimer Distinguished Professor of law at Cardozo Law School in New York City. Fish has also taught at many other Universities including Duke University. Fish has created a post in the New York Times called “What should College teach?” .In this post Fish talks about the importance of sentence structure. While I will agree sentence structure is important it is not the only thing that matters. I have been attending the Writers Studio at the Ohio State University Newark campus and it has made me come to a conclusion that students need a little more push then sentence structure. Confidence it builds people up, makes them believe what they are doing is right. If you don’t believe in yourself what is there to believe in.

            Days in and Days out I have seen students coming and feeling that they have done everything wrong and kind of being hard on themselves about their writing. Now I am not saying that Confidence is the only key to writing but I believe it one that needs to be practiced over and over. Now you say how do you teach confidence? It becomes quite simple you can’t become confident in something until you feel good at it. And to become good at anything you have to practice. Unless you are one of those people like Lebron James and just have a god given talent! There’s one of those sayings that practice makes perfect, and with perfection you can gain confidence. Once you gain that confidence it is one of those things that can never be taking away from you. When you practice things you set up your own rhythm, the way you like to do things, it just get you comfortable. When comfortable you thrive you do the best you can and you do this because you have the confidence not only what you are writing but whatever you are writing.

            When students came in for help at the writer’s studio I got to see how many students didn't have a full understanding of what it was they actually wanted to do. To create a full understanding you need to read the text thoroughly. If it is not read thorough and you misinterpret what it is the Professor is looking for or even what the text is trying to say. If you don’t have that full understanding then you will have no clue or idea how to start your paper. You need to create outlines and take side note of what it is you are reading so you have a good starting spot. Fish is right about sentence structure, but how can you structure a sentence if you do not know what it is you are writing about. Another way to look at it is people need to prepare themselves. Take the time out to understand what it is you are doing and how you need to do it.

Fish proposed a rather bright idea on what colleges should teach. Sentence structure is important it is what makes the paper flow it allows the reader to read with joy. Not having to pause and try to fill in the blanks where students had made mistakes. Where I give credit to Fish’s I also believe that students need to have the confidence in their writing. Not only does the confidence help them personally but it shows in their writing to where you can tell that person knows what they are talking about. Exactly why I feel like you need to understand the text, and understand what things are being looked for.