Reel Me In The Details

For my last Assignment in my English 1109 class I was told to read an article written by Stanley Fish called “What Should Colleges Teach? Part 3”. In this article Stanley argues that middle school and high school English teachers are failing at preparing their students for college level writing. Fish states "I cannot see, however, why a failure of secondary education relieves college teachers of a responsibility to make up the deficit." Fish is saying that why should college English professors have to deal with the consequences of the mistakes of middle and high school English teachers. I in the other hand don’t believe that our secondary teachers should get the blame for freshmen college students not knowing the basic skills of writing. I think that every student is different, and what I mean about this is that some students could have not paid attention in their English class therefore could have not learn the basic writing skills properly. In my opinion it just depends on the type of student you are and how much you are willing to learn from your class.

Stanley Fish

Fish also tries to argue that an important skill that high school teachers fail to teach and that should be taught in college is sentence structure. Even though I do agree with fish that sentence structure is an important skill to know for college level writing, I also think that detailing is also very important.

Details are important in writing a college essay

In my first year on college at, Ohio State University at Newark, I took an English course that required me to observe an hour tutoring sessions at the Writer’s Studio. The tutoring session that I observed was between Chelsea (the Peer Writing Consultant) and Madeleine (the Student Writer). The purpose for this assignment was to find out “ What does a college level writer do?” and all the information of five weeks of observing had made me realized that most of the time Chelsea would be helping Madeleine add more detail into her research paper.

In my opinion, I feel that details are important in writing an essay because they bring clarity to a reader. Adding details to an essay helps the reader see from your point of view. Your readers will be able to understand your topic by adding details like statistics of definitions, so that the argument is in words they can understand as well. Details can really help the reader better understand the claim that you are trying to argue.

Details can really help the reader better understand the claim 

In my first week of observing the tutoring session, Madeleine was having trouble describing a picture she had found on the Internet discussing about healthy food products. After reading it together Chelsea told her that she needed to be more descriptive and that she should make a list of every little thing that was drawing her eye about the picture and when she was done to added to her paper. This made me realized that by adding descriptive details it made the whole picture come to life without looking at the picture. 

You may also use details to help back up your claim. Supporting details guide the readers to the main idea and it also shows that credibility in your writing. On the fourth week of observing the tutoring sessions Madeleine’s professor that just suggested her to put more evidence to support her main idea. That entire day Chelsea was helping Madeleine search for evidence to support her main idea.

I believe Stanley Fish when he tries to argue that sentence structure is an important skill that should be taught in schools in his article “What Should Colleges Teach? Part 3”, but I also feel that it is important to learn about details in writing a college paper. The amount of detail you contribute to your paper will make a big difference on how it looks and how the readers will get to visualize it and understand your main idea. This is only my opinion on what I think is important in college level writing and it’s probably not the only skill that should be taught in a classroom. Either way I hope to find out of more English writing skills through out my college years.