Keeping Up With Your Topic

   On September 7th in 2009 at  9:30 pm a man by the name of Stanley Fish posted a blog called  What Should Colleges Teach? Part 3. In this article he expresses that sentences are basically the most important thing when it comes to college writing. He made two different types of exercises to help students' with " the most important part of college writing. the first exercise has students do a simple task, which is to replace nonsense words with better words. Easy right? Then the second part of his exercise to better sentence stature is to have students analyze their own work hiring their expectations.    Fish says that high school and middle school students have not being taught to write effective way'‘.  Meaning many students comes into college writing barley knowing anything, which is a reason for his exercises.  Fish feels as though if students are taught more effectively about composition of college writing, starting from, and the most important (to Fish), sentence structure. 

Sorry Fish I disagree

  The reason why i disagree with Fish is , Because during my 1109 English class I had to do some research on College Writing and i want you to take notes on what i found. I believe that staying on topic is the most important to College Writing . To support my theory I have  I conducted a survey called College Writing this was meant for college students so I could  gather their experiences with what they struggle with as a writer . In this survey I learned that hardly any students have trouble " forming a sentence" they have trouble with staying on topic when writing. I also sat and observed a student getting help with this problem. So, after I gathered all my information from multiple different sources , this is the  list I came up with to make sure you kept focus on your paper with one topic. 

1. To make sure you pick the right topic       
2. Make sure you refer to sources
3. Make a reverses outline
   

   

To make sure you have picked the right topic for your paper you should pick the one with the most "show, not tell" details. Meaning the one topic that you will have a lot to write about. This will ensure you that your paper will be full of details about your topic and nothing else.

   Also, you want to make sure you refer to the sources you have used for your paper. If you can site your source with your topic that's how you know they go together and are on the same topic. There are many useful resources out there, you just must make sure you use the correct ones.

  Finally, you want to make s a reverse outline to make sure that your paper only focuses on that one topic. A reverse outline is a process where you take away all of the supporting writing and is left with your paper's main points or main ideas. This will help you see if all your supporting details actually stays on topic with you actually topic. 

  To back up my " I Say" I interviewed a Kelly Whitney she help me prove my reasoning's were correct . When asked "What is some tips or advice you would give to new college students about college writing......" Whitney stated " Having a connection to or interest in the topic will allow the student to get the most out of the writing as possible...." After interviewing Whitney it made me feel good that someone else realized how important staying on topic is. 

 When writing a paper, I say "keeping your focus on one topic" is very important and should be taught a lot more. Students would have an easier journey when writing papers if they knew what they were going to write about before hand and how to stay on that one topic. Fish says that sentences are the most important thing that should be taught in College Level Writing , but if a student does not have anything to write about there will be no sentences. Now ask yourself what is really important ..