Blogg and fish

I like the essay and argument Mr. Fish is making. The question he posed was wonderful and very important. The major question he asked should writing be taught long before students get to high school or even earlier than when they are in middle school? Mr. Fish also pose another very important question which he asked should reading be the key to learning how to write?. Without leaving much for readers, he asked what methods schools should take to teach importance of writing and reading.

this is Mr.Fish and i gree his
points he posed wonderfull quetions.

 I agree with the Mr. Fish arguments and points he is making. He asked right questions and made good points. He said that schools particularly middle and high schools are not teaching writing skills in most effective ways. This is true.

Mr. Fish said that middle and high school teachers are giving big responsibility to college professors, they are leaving their responsibility to them. Because students from middle schools get to high schools when they are not able to read and write well. And whey are done high school and they go to college, their writing is not up to level that they were expected to reach. Then they get to college, and college professors has to teach them basic writing skills. College teachers becomes their middle andhigh school teacher for them. This is bad thing.

Mr. Fish said that its hard to understand and explain the relationship between the reading and writing skill have for the success of the students. But he argued that that relationship is very important and something many of middle and high school teachers are not getting it. Student from kindergartens they should be taught how to read and write. This is important because once student learn how toread, writing becomes easier.


high school and middle school is not
the some Mr,Fish was talking about
and i a garee with him.

In Kindergarten, once students learn how to read, and they will be able to write what they read from books. They get familiar with words and able to correct spell what they are writing because they do know how those words sounds- in middle and high school they will be very successful. And in college life will be easy for them. College writing becomes easy for them.

I like the article and I learn something from it. I always believe that reading is most important things and its key to education. Students should be taught how to read and writing becomes easy for them. Schools become fun for them. Mr. Fish made that believe stronger for me with strong argument.

Bloggin & Fishin

Teacher is trying to help the student understand the work

Reading Mr. Fish's thoughts about what college students should learn in class, and what they actually learn in class. Makes me completely agree with him and all that he says, When he talks about students aren't prepared for college writing. In high school the teachers don't really prepare the students.

When I was readying that in Stanley Fishes article, I completely agree with him.
I believe myself that in high school the teachers don't really prepare the students for college writing. I believe they help us but they don't really get us ready for the college writing, they just want us to have the writings done the way that they want it.

In the article that was written by Mr. Fish I noticed that he said with all the writings you do. And everything that is writing related, has to have good sentence structure, there needs to be meaning and understanding in it and there has to be purpose for the writing. Reading that I agree completely and so does the observations that I have observed. During one of my observations, I've noticed the tutor telling the student that they need to make sure that their paper flows together and that everything makes since. So just as Dr. Fish said having good sentence structure in a paper is very important. You need to understand what you are writing and that is what seems to be the most students are having a hard time doing. They haven't been taught the right way to write these things down so they don't really know.

During my sessions in the writers studio, I've noticed that I have came across some of the same things that was mentioned in Fish's Article. In my Essay that I wrote I talked about how having creditable work and a work cited page was important to have in a college paper and it's what makes a paper a college paper.

This is symbolizes the work cited page that I talked about in my essay, about the tutoring sessions I observed.

It shows the audience of your work that others have had the same ideas as you. And it shows that you have given whoever work you have borrowed, mentioned or used credit so people know you didn't steal. Things like that are things that I feel that Stanley Fish was talking about, when he talked in his article about students not being prepared or knowing what to do when they have to write a college paper or when a teacher asked them to do something.

Student not being able to understand what the teacher is asking of them

Also another thing that I have noticed during my readings of Mr. Fish's thoughts. I have noticed that he says that students basically have trouble understanding and being able to produce, what is being asked of them. I agree with this especially since as a college student now. I have seen students mess up on assignments because they weren't sure what the teacher was asking them. Or because they fail something because maybe the teacher isn't teaching them and explaining things to them in a manner that they can understand. I for one believe that all of this can changed and improved by the student and teachers, there just to be an effort that needs to be present for this problem to be fixed.

Reading everything that Mr. Fish has talked about has put a new understanding in my mind, I see where he is coming from and understand is logic completely. Also I agree how this whole situation is still an on going process. It's something that is not fixed yet and it may still take some time to fix this, there just has to be work put into this and time. Basically in the end, I agree with the things that Dr. Fish talked about in his article.

Fishing for all the Focus

Stanley Fish

Everyone says Fish is one of the biggest people on college writing. Fish mostly talks about sentence structure, meaning and understanding and purpose. Fish says that in elementary schools and middle schools they are not teaching writing skills in an effective way. Who is Fish? Fish is a professor of humanities and law at Florida International University. In 2012 he became Floersheimer Distinguished. Fish is the author of 15 books. A lot of teachers and students know more and more about Fish and follow and agree on what he says about college writing to either help them or other students become better writers.

A pencil for writing so much
in the Writers' studio

Doing college writing this whole semester has taught me so much and showed me what I need to focus on in my writing. My college writing paper was about focusing. It’s ironic that I ended up picking focusing because focusing is something I have always had a little bit of trouble when it comes to writing. After weeks passed and going to the writers studio I came up with three main points of focusing that can also help out other students that have trouble with focusing.

The three focus points I talked about in my paper were focusing on the brainstorming before the paper to narrow down to what’s most important that you should be focused on. I talked about focusing on a result of writing meaning focus on your main argument in the paper. The last focus point I wrote about was focusing on your progress step meaning narrow down what your paper is supposed to be about and focusing on how to narrow it down to that spot.

When focusing on all three main points when putting it into a paper make sure your whole paper follows your thesis. Sometimes writers have an awesome thesis, but none on the rest of the paper follows what it should be about. Learning about focusing on main points tutors and anyone else that has worked with me came up with a theory that sometimes it is better to leave your thesis to do at the end of finishing your paper so when you put your thesis in it matches the whole paper.

An inverted  pyramid to help guide you while
writing your paper! 

College writing is very important. Most students do not realize how important it is until they have to write a college paper and do research on it. I have learned so much from all the research I have done and all the time I have learned on what college writing really is. I feel like I have become such a better writer over the past weeks by going through will my whole paper and soaking in much information as I can. After all the research and finally doing a college level writing paper I finally feel like I can do it. I say focusing is a huge thing in college writing because in order for me to get through my papers I have had to put a lot of focusing into it. Fish says sentence structure is a big college writing thing which I honestly never paid much attention to. Fish says meaning and understanding is very important and last but not least purpose. I have to agree on purpose 100% because I truly do believe every college writing paper needs to have a purpose for people to want to read it. I am glad I got introduced to everything Fish had to say about college writing because after I thought I could not learn anymore I did.

Not Your Average Fish Fry

WINNER WINNER CHI...... FISH DINNER?

After reading Fish’s essay of “What should be taught in the college writing classroom,” I realized that I do agree the teaching of building sentences is important in the English classroom. But, if you’re only focused on the creation of sentences, you miss out on the most important factor of writing. In which I believe through my observation tutorials at the Writer’s studio, along with my research; that analytical research should be taught in English composition. During an eight week period I had the privilege to sit in on a one weekly 48 minute tutoring tutorial session at the Writer’s Studio. For all but one of my sessions I observed a student named Dalton, and workshop tutor Rachel. In the absence of Dalton in the fourth session. I had to observe Jonathan the workshop tutor, and Chris the student.

Analytical research is important in the classroom in order so that the students do not misinterpret the text. If material in the text is misinterpreted students could write papers that would be inaccurate, stating faulty

"I just don't get it?!"

information. It is also very difficult to tell if you misinterpreted a reading selection, because the only way of knowing that the interpretation is correct is if the thought is somewhat relevant as another person’s thought. One of my observations Rachel noticed Dalton was having difficulty with a certain section. He told Rachel, “I can’t determine if this section deals with Thoreau in confusion, or simplicity as an overall meaning.” Rachel tells him,” If you are not sure what the author wants you to get out of the text you have to use the context clues to help form a hypothesis.”

I hate repetition! I hate repetition! 

In the classroom analytical research should be used in order for the students to notice that the author is using repetition, or pattern in order to emphasize his points or an overall idea. If a student did not take note of the repetition he, or she would have a totally different idea of what the text was about. In one of my sessions, Dalton analyzed a source from Thoreau. And Rachel said to Dalton, “Is there anything that sticks out in this section.” Dalton hesitated for a couple of seconds and replied, “The only thing I notice is that everything at the end of the sentence ends in ‘-in’” Rachel interrupted by asking, “What does this pattern tell you?”    

When a college teacher makes his lessons one of his or her focuses should be on organized analytical notes. As we all know that we do not remember everything we read, so having something you can record An example in one of my sessions Rachel is concerned that Dalton has so many great ideas that he won’t remember them when it comes down to writing the research paper. As Dalton is in the middle of one of his ideas Rachel interrupts him, “keep a piece of paper by you to write down the ideas that you get, and try to categorize them as your list gets larger.”The information and thoughts that  are recorded can be very helpful when the students have to write their paper.

 I believe analytical research process is the most important factor in college writing due to my research and observations at the Writer’s Studio. On the other hand, Fish believes that the creation and building of sentences is what the composition English classroom should solely be focused on. If Fish were teaching a class he would miss out on analytical process along with many essential that students need to be a successful writer. Would you want to be taught to only build sentences?... Or, have a general understanding of an English Composition class? I'll let you decide...

Just Fishing Around His Statements

Stanley Fish is a professor at Florida International University, in Miami. He has also taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Duke University and the University of Illinois, Chicago. Stanley Fish has written fifteen books one of his most recent being How to Write a Sentence. He also wrote an article in The New York Times titled "What Should College Teach, Part 3?". This article states that students these days are going into college not knowing how to write. I agree with some of the statements that he has to say, but I feel that he missed a point. That point being that it is not the high schools fault, but the lack of guidance the students have at the beginning of college. Guidance needs to make its way into what Fish has to say about what college should teach.

Which one or ones do you need?

There are many different kinds of guidance that can take place and students can take on different levels to different degrees. Students require guidance to a certain level, whether it is physical guidance or a will power of some sort. It can be a very minimal, as in just telling them what to think about like a topic. Or it could be to the extent of needing the paper to be drafted up, needing specific information, and amount of quotes needed for the writing piece. Guidance could be given in various ways, but it seems as if we are not pushed some way to write something, it will not be written without a purpose to do so. That purpose moment could even be a guide, because it leads the writer to start something and to write about it. This was observed when I conducted observations at Ohio State University Newark Writing Studio.

One form of guidance is the non-physical type, and as guidance is defined as leadership, instruction or direction, direction can be looked at as views. Guidance is the will, the push towards something, it will be the main reason to write. Many people that go to college are surprised with the change of pace from what lower schooling was. With the use of guidance through time management, it can be maximized. Time management bases off of guidance. If time management can be guided and kept to a clear optimal, then the writing can be a college ready piece.

Another type of guidance is a physical guidance. All through high school, teachers have taught the students how to write. Whether it is teachers showing students formatting, how many paragraphs, or even what font to use, students that go into college have gotten used to some type of teacher as a guidance. Teachers are a physical type of guidance to writers. So for "guidance" to be an overall big picture to college writing, it would not be surprising. Going into college with the guidance that was received in high school, you expect it to be no different. At college, they have teaching guidance and also student guidance. Nick is a representation of student guidance as a peer tutor. Nick physically guided Rebecca through looking for sources, drafting up her paper, and proof reading.

So as a first year student in college, I can say that I was taught the basic sentence structure in high school and it was up to me to either accept what was taught to me or to ignore it. With the right guidance I received physically and mentally, I was able to contain the information from high school and utilize my knowledge for college writing. So not that I am saying what Fish is saying is wrong, but that he needs to have other considerations and not generalize all high schools in not teaching their students right. Students have to be able to accept the guidance given to them and that it is all on the students themselves and not the actual teaching.

Students accepting what is taught to them

Students Ignoring what is taught to them

A Fishy Twist to Writing

MY POINT, analyzing is my point

Analyzing is like making a pie. You have many directions to make it what it is. Analyzing should be taught into three simple steps reading comprehension, synthesizing, and revising. Stanley Fish although disagrees as he wrote in his article for New York Times, which is indeed an excellent point, but I would rather look at the main idea rather than just structure sentences. I have had the opportunity of spending time observing the Writer’s Studio at The Ohio State University in Newark. If you ask me I believe an English composition classroom should focus on teaching structure to analyzing. When analyzing you study something, look for patterns, and break down the main idea. Why analyzing rather than sentence structure? Well simple because, when you analyze you are doing sentence structure and many more things as well. When analyzing, you are observing every little structure, detail, etc. to your paper. Sentence structure would be under revising, for when you revise you are looking at you a certain piece and trying to fix the errors.

The main reason I believe analyzing is what teachers should be teaching is because it shows students the ability to look at something and understand its true meaning. In one of my observations in the Writer’s Studio we came across reading comprehension. If you do not know what the quote is trying to say, how could you use it in your paper with it making sense? It's like nodding your head and saying okay, but still thinking I don't get it. Understanding the authors meaning you have to interpret the quote. Interpreting a quote can be quite difficult and confusing. You have to visually pretend to be the author, and try and study the smaller things in the quote to comprehend the big meaning of the quote.

Punctuations help revise yo paypaa

Revising is also a part of analyzing that should be taught. Revising is done multiple times throughout just one essay and can be one of the longest processes. Each rough draft you create should be revised to get rid of dramatic errors we do not need. If you don’t revise your paper it will look unstructured. Like Fish says "A sentence is an organization of items in the world." Although when you're revising theirs much more to be done. Like proofreading which is one of the main ways we revise our essays. Proofreading can be fairly difficult considering the fact that you have to reread your unfinished work numerous times along with your final essay. At the Writer’s Studio, I observed many times when the tutor and student proofread drafts, and every time there was always something to correct, whether it was small or big. Teachers should make revising a habit by the time you get to college, but like we all know it’s one of the things we all skip over from time to time. I know I have and it probably what drops my grade from an A to a F.

Analyzing is also synthesizing which is one of the most essential pieces of writing any well written piece. Synthesizing should always be a main focus for teaching. When you synthesize you join to pieces of work which would be yours and another author’s quote. If you do not synthesize you cannot have an author’s piece in you essay. I mean you could but it would be like talking about a leprechaun and randomly saying pot of gold. What about a leprechaun and the pot of gold will connect the two? Synthesizing is what I like to call the rainbow, it helps connect the two pieces of information and emerge them together. Although it sounds easy it’s not, blend the two can be challenging. This is why it should be taught earlier than your freshman your of college.

Although Fish had one thing right he did not hit the hammer on the nail. Sentence structures are very important I will give him that, without sentence structures you can’t have a well meshes essay. But, analyzing is a big fish we need to fry in English composition classes. Analyzing is all about looking at things in smaller detail and connecting those smaller things with the bigger picture. An excellent essay should always be revised, when you revise a paper to your best abilities it will make to whole essay come together. Analyzing a quote to understand it should also always be done because if you do not understand a quote how can you put it in your essay and explain it to your readers? Lastly you should synthesize, synthesizing will help put your words and someone else’s words into an "estuaries stage". If we focus on analyzing and these three important steps of analyzing, students will become better writers.

There is nothing fishy about college

Professor Stanley Fish, who is a retiree of the University of Illinois in Chicago, writes a blog for the New York Times. On September 7th, 2009 he wrote a blog titled “What Should Colleges Teach? Part 3.” In this work he states that the most important thing to know for college level writing is sentence structure. I somewhat agree with him and what it is that believes. However I believe that you cannot write a successful paper without collaboration. If you do not know how to teach collaboration you can read an article written by Robert J. Garmston.

The reason why I believe that is that I watched eight videos of tutoring sessions at The Ohio State University at Newark campus. There were also videos from Columbus State Community College.  While I watched these video’s at the Writer’s Studio, the tutor who was working with me is Brewster. The majority of these videos mentioned something about another point of view, or reading out loud, or even having a friend read your writing to get feedback. But the most common thing they were doing was brainstorming. Now when you brainstorm you are thinking about something from the past that you have already learned. So you are using another source. You don’t just magically come up with ideas without having something else start the process.

In Fish’s article he sates “By all the evidence, high schools and middle schools are not teaching writing skills in an effective way, if they are teaching them at all.” I truly agree with him here. When I look back I don’t remember having to write papers or anything like that really. It was mainly grammar and punctuation. In college those things are important but there not that important when you first start. I believe that the most important thing in college level writing is not doing solo work.

Large group of tutees studying with a tutor. 

One of the sessions I watched was of the tutor Brittany and the tutee Shawn.  Brittany said “no one writes in a vacuum, it is important to share your writing ideas with others.” This is completely correct. By collaborating with a classmate it can help you get ideas. And those ideas can help build your confidence and with that you might build a friendship. With the friendship you might have a better chance in getting a higher grade. It can also help you have someone to go over the assignments and review each other’s work. The benefits can be great.

Schools need to have higher standards

Fishes statement “By all the evidence, high schools and middle schools are not teaching writing skills in an effective way, if they are teaching them at all.” This is true with what he believes and what I believe. In high school and middle school they focus too much on your grammar and not enough on teaching you how to be a successful writer. They do not prepare you enough for undergraduate school. I think the reason why they do that is because they have too strict of standards that that have to teach, that are not that oriented towards college. If the standards were better oriented towards college the students would be better more prepared for college.

How I feel right now!

My personal experience I went to Norwayne Local schools and I also attended Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (also known as E.C.O.T.) In both cases the standards were not towards college at all. They were just trying to teach the basics and that’s all. I believe that I personally would have been better suited for college if they cared more. So based on my experience middle schools and high schools need to step up their standards. So I agree but disagree with Stanley Fish’s view. 

Fishing Out The Right Words: Thesis Statement

English Professor Stanley Fish, a former professor at Florida International University, said sentence structure is the most important part of writing a college paper. In a blog written by Professor Fish, he says, “Basically, there is only one thing to be learned, that a sentence is a structure of logical relationships; everything else follows.” I do not agree with Professor Fish though. I feel a paper needs more than just the right sentence structure to be a successful paper. It has to have a basic argument or statement, which is stated in the thesis, and it needs to be obvious to the reader what that point is.

I spent eight weeks in The Writers Studio at The Ohio State University in Newark observing sessions between a student and a tutor to try to get a better understanding of what college writing is and what it consists of. While observing I realized one thing students should know about college writing and that is how to write a thesis statement and realizing it is a process.

Thesis statements can put your head up in the clouds!

A thesis statement is more than just a sentence. There are certain steps in order to create a thesis. One of the first stages of creating a thesis is organizing thoughts and ideas about the paper. While preparing to write a paper it is important to take notes and plan out everything before starting the actual writing. It is important to figure out what your main point or argument is. It helps to make an outline or do some kind of brainstorming activity before starting the writing portion. It is important for teachers to show students that writing a thesis would help organize the rest of the paper along with good prewriting techniques. It is a very important part of writing and a very important skill to be taught.

Since the thesis is always changing it’s important to be taught in the classroom because it is a complicated subject. Students may not understand how to work with one unless a teacher shows them the process and shows them how to work with it. It might be helpful to have a working thesis (placeholder thesis), which is kind of like a rough draft for your thesis statement. You can always go back and add things to it or take things out. The thesis can even be the very last thing you do in your paper if you are not quite sure of how to word it until you get your paper finished. Kory, the tutor I observed, had said, “A placeholder is something that you put in place of something else temporarily. It could be a word or a sentence, anything really. It's simply there to have something on the page, but you can always come back to it and change it. Thus, in a sense, a working thesis is a placeholder thesis; while it is a thesis, it can still be revised in terms of word choice, structure, length, etc. In other words, there's still some work to be done with it”

A thesis takes work!

Once you get your working thesis the way you want it, then you begin to revise it and make sure it states exactly what your argument is and is clear to the reader so they do not question what the point of your paper is. But, there is no “right way” to make a thesis or a “right place” to put it. There is also never really a final thesis. The thesis can always be improved and it can always be moved to a different area if that is where it fits best. Planning a thesis in the beginning is just a first step to the rest of your paper. The thesis probably will not be fully developed until the end. This may be overwhelming and unsettling for students because their writing is always changing. So, it needs to be in the classroom so students learn ways to change the thesis the way it needs to be changed as the paper develops.

So, back to Professor Fish’s point, a paper is a whole lot more than just sentence structure. The thesis statement is one of the most important parts, because it pretty much makes the paper. The whole paper is based on one main argument or point and that is what the thesis statement is. Even though the thesis probably isn’t developed until the end, the whole paper is centered on that one point. In high school and middle school, English classes should really focus on how to learn the steps into forming a thesis statement and that will help with learning the basic ideas of how to write a nicely formed paper.

Fish on the Hook

Cameron Collins

Collins.1240

Boczkowsi

12/5/13

English 1109

Fish on the Hook

Stanley Fish is the Floerscheimer Distinguished Professor of law at Cardozo Law School in New York City. Fish has also taught at many other Universities including Duke University. Fish has created a post in the New York Times called “What should College teach?” .In this post Fish talks about the importance of sentence structure. While I will agree sentence structure is important it is not the only thing that matters. I have been attending the Writers Studio at the Ohio State University Newark campus and it has made me come to a conclusion that students need a little more push then sentence structure. Confidence it builds people up, makes them believe what they are doing is right. If you don’t believe in yourself what is there to believe in.

            Days in and Days out I have seen students coming and feeling that they have done everything wrong and kind of being hard on themselves about their writing. Now I am not saying that Confidence is the only key to writing but I believe it one that needs to be practiced over and over. Now you say how do you teach confidence? It becomes quite simple you can’t become confident in something until you feel good at it. And to become good at anything you have to practice. Unless you are one of those people like Lebron James and just have a god given talent! There’s one of those sayings that practice makes perfect, and with perfection you can gain confidence. Once you gain that confidence it is one of those things that can never be taking away from you. When you practice things you set up your own rhythm, the way you like to do things, it just get you comfortable. When comfortable you thrive you do the best you can and you do this because you have the confidence not only what you are writing but whatever you are writing.

            When students came in for help at the writer’s studio I got to see how many students didn't have a full understanding of what it was they actually wanted to do. To create a full understanding you need to read the text thoroughly. If it is not read thorough and you misinterpret what it is the Professor is looking for or even what the text is trying to say. If you don’t have that full understanding then you will have no clue or idea how to start your paper. You need to create outlines and take side note of what it is you are reading so you have a good starting spot. Fish is right about sentence structure, but how can you structure a sentence if you do not know what it is you are writing about. Another way to look at it is people need to prepare themselves. Take the time out to understand what it is you are doing and how you need to do it.

Fish proposed a rather bright idea on what colleges should teach. Sentence structure is important it is what makes the paper flow it allows the reader to read with joy. Not having to pause and try to fill in the blanks where students had made mistakes. Where I give credit to Fish’s I also believe that students need to have the confidence in their writing. Not only does the confidence help them personally but it shows in their writing to where you can tell that person knows what they are talking about. Exactly why I feel like you need to understand the text, and understand what things are being looked for.