Best of both worlds With Fish

Stanley Fish wrote a column about what colleges writing classes should teach students. He thinks the most important thing students should know in college writing is how to properly set up a sentence. He believes a sentence is an organizations of items in the world and a structure of logical relationships.I agree with a lot of what Fish is saying, but I also have a lot to add onto it. To me, I believe there are many steps to making a good paper; however, the most important is Critical Thinking. Fish states that a lot of writing skills should be covered in high school but aren't. High Schools are doing a very good job in teaching students how to write papers. They are teaching them the simple rules of writing, but can the simple rules be enough for college writing? For Fish,how to properly create sentences can really strengthen a persons writing, but how to get to that point is another important part to making a good paper. 

I bet John hit that ball like a girl.

In Fish's column he talks about how he makes students turn a three worded sentence into a one-hundred word sentence, his examples were "Jane like cake" or "John hits the ball" without losing control of the basic structure. But how can a student do this with a simple three worded sentence? Lauren Herbruck a professor at The Ohio State University Newark suggests to students to ask themselves "How does this section/paragraph/sentence help to develop my thesis?" Relating this to each sentence while you write, can help a lot in the long run because you won't have to go back and fix each sentence to make sure it relates to your thesis.

Although I do agree with Fish that creating a proper sentence is important in the writing world, there's more behind it. How can you type that sentence without accidentally getting off topic of the thesis? In one of the papers I typed in college I described why I believe critical thinking is the most important in college writing; and there's three steps—make decisions and jot down ideas to what you want to go into your paper, do research, and throw out the unnecessary. All these steps are important to getting a good paper because you are taking bits and pieces of your paper, putting it together like a puzzle, and trying to get the pieces to go in the right place to get the best result. 

With critical thinking you get the best of both worlds 

Professor Herbruck stated that critical thinking isn't just important for your class or even for school generally! It's a life skill... probably the most important one you can learn. Someone with critical thinking skills is able to understand the logical connections between ideas and identify, construct and evaluate arguments. detect inconsistencies and common mistakes in reasoning. Can "How to create a proper sentence" work both for school and life skills? No!! So therefore with critical thinking you get the best of both worlds.

Ending this blog, I will say, Fish you did make a very good point, BUT critical thinking is the step you should make before you start typing your proper sentence. Teachers at any level, should teach the importance of critical thinking, it can help in so many ways and teach a lot. Your sentences would be a mess because you wouldn't know the three steps to critical thinking. AND since critical thinking is also a life skill, you have to work twice as hard to make sure that you're thinking clearly and rationally about what to do or what to believe.