If You Can Find Me A Topic: Let Minnow

Stanley Fish wrote an article, "What Should Colleges Teach?" In this article, Stanley makes a statement saying, "high schools and middle schools are not teaching writing skills in an effective way, if they are teaching them at all." Harsh right?

Unexpected comment made about teachers

Stanley then continues on to say that students come to college without the knowledge of knowing how to write clean Engllish sentences. Which may be true, but I dont think that's the problem most of the time. Any student who attends a university all have different writing styles. The way they write, the amount they write, and how they want to portray their message in their papers. With that being said, I think that is why Stanley believes that students are not being taught how to write clean sentences. Personally, I strongly believe that students should be taught in a more proper way on how to find the right topic for their paper rather than sentence structuring

Finding the right topic can make or break a student's stress level when in the process of completeing a paper. Nobody wants to write a paper over something they don't have an idea of what it is or how boring the topic may be. That is why you must follow the steps of requirements, relevance, research, and then interest when finding the right topic.



hmmm..

When searching for requirements, make sure you follow a rubric (if one is present). This'll guide you in the right steps toward a topic. If you dont, you'll only create more work for yourself later on with the assignment!

Relevance does matter! You don't want anything that doesn't make sense, because not making sense and not being able to prove a point with your topic will ruin your assignment. So yes, be logical and don't try to pull a topic into consideration that doesnt fit into a set of requirements.

 

Research is always important for your papers. You will need credibility for your paper in order for it to be a successful paper! Not having enough or any research at all will be a problem that a student does not want to come across in the process of constructing a paper. When a student fails to find research over a topic, they soon find themselves writing with no meaning. No meaning as in no credibility.

Interest is always important. Personally I think it should come last out of the 4 steps in finding the right topic. Yes, having interest will make anyone do whatever it may be, better than before. Just that choosing interest before those above will lead you to more predicaments than expected.

College writing courses are all different. With the subject being written about, what kind of writing takes place in the course, and difficulty of course. That is why when it comes to college writing, I will stand by finding the right topic is one of the most important aspects for students to understand, because of it's ability to help them find what to write about in their future classes and how it's the first step in the right direction. As Martin Luther King once said, "You don't have to see the full staircase, just take the first step."



well said MLK