Sentence Structure & Thesis statement

In Stanley Fischer's blog “What Should College Teach?”(part 3), he talks about schools not using effective methods for teaching writing. It puts a burden on college teachers to make up for those missed skills. He wonders what ways teachers can improve a student writing. According to Fish, he believes the most important skill a college student needs to know is sentence structure. I agree with him, but we need to focus on the most important sentence in a paper, a thesis statement.

Fish choice of teaching his class the way he does is really interesting. Like Fish, I would focus my class on sentence structure and thesis which is the most important sentence in a paper. A thesis is defined in The Cambridge Dictionary as “a thesis is also the main idea, opinion, or theory of a speaker or writer, who then attempts to prove it.” Furthermore, Fish course was entirely sentence-structured except for one part. He gave students part of a sentence and told them to add on while looking back to the narrative that has been already developed. In addition, he mentioned using the book called “They say/ I say” which introduces students to the forms of argument. These forms of argument lead to developing your thesis statement. 

A thesis is a necessary skill needed for writing certain papers in college. When structuring your thesis as a beginner, you should do it in a, A, B, and C fashion. A, B, and C represent the three strongest points for your argument. For each paragraph following the thesis statement will have a point that is stated previously. This helps to keep your arguments focused without “fully understanding why” while convincing your readers. Without a good thesis, you’re setting a maze for your readers. 

During the first semester, I had an opportunity to do an observation/interview at the Ohio State University Newark Writer’s Studio. I’ve observed a tutor and a student discussing a paper which gave me an idea what college writing is. In the interview with the tutor, I personally asked him what was the most important aspect of college-level writing and he said thesis. This lead me to discover thesis is a very important factor in writing. 

For my analytical research essay, my topic was a thesis statement. I had an email interview with Professor McCormick discussing the importance of a thesis. He said “thesis is the most important single sentence of a paper. The best theses start late in the process--even and especially if you had a different thesis earlier in the process.” A thesis must have the following attributes; it should be specific, should be arguable, and it should help organize the rest of the paper. 

Fish brings up thesis in a specific way when he says, “you have to start with a simple but deep understanding of the game, which for my purposes is the game of sentence structure.” So you first begin with understanding what a thesis is. A thesis is important in the sense of understanding how to structure a sentence properly, but there are so many aspects of a thesis. The thesis has an impact on writing in many ways, giving you a clear, concise statement of the position you will be defending to an outline of what your paper will be about. 

All in all, I believe Fish method on teaching college classes is great. He should start with the basic steps of forming sentence structures and learning how to write a good thesis. Without the basics, some students from different background attend college and might not have those skills mastered. As said previously, we should focus on forming sentence structures and taking time to develop a thesis statement. I believe this will have a great impact on writing if they go further into higher courses.