Something Smells Fishy: Analytical Breakdown of “What Should College Teach”

Please don't let this be you!!

All right, so after reading Fish article “What Should College Teach? Part 3”; I noticed he makes many valid arguments about why high school students are not prepared for college level writing. In his article Stanley Fish the dean emeritus of the college of liberal arts and sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago states that “you have to start with a simple but beep understanding of the game, which for my purposes is the game of writing sentences.” In Fish’s article, he argues the fact that high school students have a hard time structuring sentences. I do agree with fish’s argument that high school students are not prepared for college-level writing, but they’re definitely more behind why freshmen struggle in their writing courses.

Now you might be wondering why are freshmen are having such a hard time with writing? Could it be the teachers? Or is writing something that colleges students are not good at? Personally I thought that I was one of those students that sucked at writing when I came to college. Thought my four years of high school I my teacher though me that I could answer every question with a simple 5 paragraph paper. So when I tried doing this in college I did not get the same grades or feedback that I was expecting. As the weeks rolled by and I began to write more and more, I realize that my writing had to evolve and become more detailed oriented. With a lot of practice I began to see improvements. You know that old saying that your high school football couch told you when you kept missing that tackle? Practice make perfect!

All the things that I saw at the writing studio.

Not all students are like me and they can’t just improve their writing with a bit of practice. So what are all of these other students going to do? To answer this question I conducted an experiment at the Ohio state university. For 8 week I went to the writing studio at the Newark branch of OSU (The Ohio state University) to observe a student form English 1010.03 and a Peer writing consultant. My objective for this experiment was to determine an important aspect of college-level writing.

After my experiment, I analyzed all the data and come up with some surprising conclusions. I realized that for a student who struggles to write may prefer to incorporate a process in to there writing. This process includes doing a pre-write, body paragraph (also know as drafting) and post writing.

What is prewriting? Prewriting allows you to do a bunch of research and organize you thought before you write your paper. The prewriting phase is one of the most important parts of the process. According to my experiment the more research you do the better the better your paper will be. There was one example during my observation that truly stood out: on a warm sunny Thursday morning I entered the writing studio to start my observation. When I walked into the studio all I saw was a bunch of paper scattered all over the table. Nichole the PWC and I, where confused on why Eday, the student that I was observing, had all his paper on the table. Eday later explains to Nichole that he need help getting organize his material because the last time he had organized his research he got a great grade on his paper. This moment helped me realize that Eday and many other people could benefit whit just organize there research before they write there paper.

Once the pre-writing portion of the process is over the post-writing portion began. With more information that you have in you pre-write the better your body paragraphs will turn out. During this this portion of the process you want to make sure that you paper flows. The body paragraph is where you present your information and inform your reader about the topic. In my opinion this should be the easiest part of the process only if you do a really good job on the prewriting part.

the better you edit your paper, the better your paper well sound!

IM DONE! No, your not done with your paper at all!! You are forgetting about the most important part of this process, the post writing. Also know as editing. This is where you began to edit your paper checking for grammatical mistakes as well as structural mistakes. No matter how good your paper sounds or looks, some where with in your paper you made a mistake. It is always a good policy to re-read your paper and let other read your paper before you turn it in. Remember letting other people criticize your papers, is only way you will find out what you need to improve on for future papers.

Stanley Fish is a brilliant educator and make a very valid argument about sentence structure in his article but I have to respectably disagree whit him and state that most college’s students and teacher should emphasis a writing process. When looking back at my experiment I can tell that a lot of people could improve there writing with just a few simple steps. Doing prewrite, body paragraphs and post writer would defiantly change you entire writing experience. It will not only reduce writing anxiety as well has make your papers more detail oriented to be successful in college-level writing courses.