Why is Fish right?

Reading this article “What Should College Teach? Part 3” I realized that I wasn’t the only one who saw something wrong with the way education was being taught now a days. “High schools and middle schools are not teaching writing skills in an effective way” As Stanley Fish said, this is true because what happens most of the time is students aren’t shown what to do and what steps they should take. It effects students a lot because they won’t know how to write great papers and the most important part is, being taught how to write excellent papers or get a clear understanding on what writing is.

Why is the professor saying

While in college I got a great opportunity to go get extra help and ask questions at The Ohio State University Writing Studio, This resource helped a lot thru English. This is a place where you go when needed extra help or when you didn’t get a full understanding in class and need to ask someone more questions on the topics. Resources like this is needed in high school too. When your teacher examples something and you don’t understanding who would you turn to? This is why something like this would help a lot.

 “A well-organized piece of writing supports readers by making it easy for them to follow, while a poorly organized piece leads readers through a maze of confusion and confounded or unmet expectations” as Kathleen Cali said in her article Learn NC, Organization is key and very important when it comes to writing. You want to make sure your reader continues reading and get a full understanding.

How it feels when reading a paper that's not organized

Coming to college I’ve learned that my writing skills are horrible because I didn’t get a full understanding on writing. In high school we were given an example of the assignment and were told to have our paper look “somewhat” like that. In college, there’s no examples and you have to figure it out on your own. On top of that you also have to know how to give credit to someone and make sure your quoting other people correctly.

You also have to “Show Not Tell” as my professor would say, give your audience a picture of what you’re talking about. Get deep into detail and “show” as much as possible. Sounds easy but it’s not at all.

Back in middle school and high school we’re not taught how to write citation’s or know how to quote a quote correctly and so on. If we don’t know the basics than how are we going to be successful in college?

I think it’s very important for teachers to lay out what exactly they want from us in our writing and give us a full understand on what “writing” is. For them to take time and help us through it.

Personally I haven’t learned too much in my teen years how to write exactly. I’ve had many projects, essays and papers where teachers have told us what they want from me and other students. But the whole aspect of how to do it was always missing which I believe is key to success to having a well written paper.

As well as the whole idea that professor Boczkowski taught in class which is showing not telling. That idea is something that students need to learn how to do before coming into college.

 Also, I think clarity is a problem that affects so many students. Professors assume you already have a full understanding on everything that has to do with their subject that their teaching, so the fact that they don’t have clarity in everything they do becomes harder for the students. Since college is so fast paced it’s hard to fully understand some things. 

 It’s so important to really have a deep understanding of what we students are supposed to do. It can’t be stressed enough for teachers that clarifying for students whatever they want from them is important.

 A key worry of teachers should be if their students fully understand what they are being asked to do/ being taught. That is the best way for teachers to get the best out of students, if they teach everything as clear as possible. I think if it is in the teacher’s best interest for the students to succeed or do their best then being as clear as they can is so important and always making sure their students paper are college worthy.