Contemplation: Sentence or Citation?

What is most important to becoming a great college writer? Sure there are many different aspects that tie together that you can do correctly to make you good, but getting down to the nitty gritty, there should be a certain aspect of writing you believe is most important that you often end up focusing on more than all the other elements of writing. I am attending the Ohio State University at Newark in my first year of college.  In an assignment through my English 1109 class, we were introduced to Stanley Fish. In his blog What Should Colleges Teach? Part 3, he states that the most important aspect in writing is that organizing and structuring sentences. He stresses that this has become the biggest issue and most important because of how students are taught in high school. He ends up with students in his class that didn't learn basic writing skills while in high school.

While I agree with Fish that yes, making sure that you are able to provide organized sentences, I believe that it is more important to be able to correctly cite the sentences you have in order to give credit where due, and to show why what is in your sentences is important because you wouldn't want people thinking the information your giving them was false or unreliable.

Really though, why should we believe you?

For my English 1109 class, we were told to pick what we felt was most important and give good reasons as to why we felt that way through an Analytical Research Essay. Like Fish, I was able to gather data for my assignment. With his gathering, he had sampled answers from students about being able to craft good sentences with random words.

For me, I had surveyed students on which part they felt they struggled with the most in college and 60% of them ranging from all grades whether it be freshmen or seniors had agreed that correctly citing was the biggest problem for them. At the Writing Studio located on my college campus I was able to sit down and observe  Peer Writing Consultant Elijah Lithuluxa and student Trey during his writing help session. Trey was struggling with writing his citations out correctly. He had all of the information he wanted to say but wasn’t able to give credit correctly because he wasn’t citing right, which made his information useless.

When I was in high school we did talk about citations just like we talked about writing good sentences, but like Fish claimed, good sentence structure wasn't covered as in depth as it should have been, likewise with citations. Both are very important, I do think you need to know how to craft your sentences first with the information you are going to be using but it is more important to prove what you're saying so people will believe your points.

Take that, Fish!

Fish says structuring your sentences is the most important to college writing and I agree that yes it is important, but not MOST important. What do we do in college? We’re required to spew information back to our professors that has meaning and isn’t just bogus we rattled off the tops of our head. So where did we get this good information from then that we are creating into our own sentences that Fish talks about? That’s right, other people. In a nutshell, all college writing is, is showing meaning through your paper weather it be using statistics, persuading using an other's credibility to back up your own idea, or using sources to inform the reader of your knowledge gained and what you have learned from your sources. THERE IS VIRTUALLY NO PAPER THAT YOU CAN WRITE IN COLLEGE THAT DOESN’T NEED CITED!

Citations should be something everyone is able to do correctly. It should be taught, and taught extensively as soon as you’re required to write papers for any kind of schooling, in AT LEAST high school. Nonetheless, it should be required to be able to come to college. For every class we take in college, there is going to be a paper that we write that has some type of citation in it.

Citing is the most important part in college writing.

There are no loopholes to get out of citing.

It has to be done every single time.

If done incorrectly, everything you say is wrong, or is plagiarism.

Knowing how to cite is your key to getting through college.

Mic drop, Kimberly out.