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| Writing gives new height. |
In Dr. Fish’s article, “
What should colleges teach?
“ he discussed about how colleges should teach more on the posed question by Patrick Sullivan which is, “ what is college
writing”? He went more into detail on how students from high school are taught
less effectively by secondary educators with writing skills. They don’t go more
in depth and those students in high school come to colleges with the same basic
knowledge and repeat it in college which results in failure. That results to
failure because if those students are given a certain question presented to
them, they wouldn’t fully answer it in a way that the teacher is looking for it
to be answered. Dr. Fish also talked
about how those who read well, write well and he touched on sentence structure
too. With sentence structure, Dr. Fish stated that organization is important.
It plays a role for forming a sentence and with that sentence having a good
structure, then every word would flow and not sound confusing because of bad
formatting.
Dr. Fish brought a question
regarding high school students and those of earlier education and it was, “isn’t
the mastery of forms something that should be taught in high school or earlier”? His argument towards that question was college teachers are left to carry the
burden left by secondary educators who couldn't fully teach writing skills in
depth. I agree with Dr. Fish’s argument because first year students that come
into college don’t know what to expect for writing. There’s so much more than
just a five paragraph essay, for example. A cycle is repeated and it takes the
college teachers to stop the cycle and fix what has made the first year college
students completely lost and confused on what college-level writing is.
I
noticed that in a student writer whom I had to observe for eight weeks with his
peer writing consultant at the
The Writer's Studio for my English class. The student writer needed guidance in the process of
trying to write a paper, but in the start of writing his paper he still had prior learning of what was
taught to him of how writing should be like in a “college-level”. The problem
with that was because he wasn't taught more in depth; he only knew very little
of what college-level writing should be like. So with the help of his peer
writing consultant, he started to get new knowledge and was starting to understand
the posed question, “what is college-level writing"?
When I noticed both the student writer and
peer writing consultant working together, I saw a trend that was also occurring.
That trend was making connections relating to the student writer’s paper. In the eight week observations, the student
writer and the peer writing consultant were going back and forth with resources
that both collected for the paper. Those sources were secondary and primary
sources. Each time the student writer was finding more information for his
primary source, he found more information towards his secondary source. That was one connection that was presented.
I find this to be relatable to Dr. Fish’s sentence structure importance because
of how the sources were worded. Dr. Fish mentioned in his article that a
sentence is a structure of logical relationships. They connect with one
another. In the case of the student writer’s paper, this happened quite often
because both the primary source and secondary source had similar traits and had
a relationship with one another due to both having the same information
relating to the student writer’s topic.
Throughout
those observations, I started to realize that in college there are connections
that are made in a paper. It doesn't it even have to be logical it can be personal
too. Making connections is important in college writing because they bring the
lost pieces to the puzzle in writing. Connections help with the reading and
thinking for college also. They bring an
strategy
to help the student do better in their writing.
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| WHOoo would care to show a connection in writing? |
Noticing this has gave me the persecution that students aren't : 
Fish mentioned in his article."But if I have no problem with alternative ways of teaching literature or history, how can I maintain (with ACTA) that there is only one way to teach writing? Easy. I totally agree with Fish and his statement, yes there should be multiple ways of teaching that is best fit for each classroom body. Especially when it comes to English because there's so much personal work already involved. But at what point does it become detrimental to students ? Is it a lost cause ? Because High School teachers are able to edit and tick what they please with wide guide lanes ! 