What Should Colleges Teach - Alned Qemalli

In the article What Should Colleges Teach Part 3, Stanley Fish takes on one of the toughest questions against any college professor. “What should the ideal composition course look like and what should it  teach? Stanley Fish says that most students in high school are not being taught any writing skills in a effective way. His solution is that to creat multiple methods starting from which he says is the most important method, sentence structure. To teach students who are in college instead of having teachers teach the course all over again.

When Stanley Fish described what he thinks in the most important thing to college writing is, I agreed with him. But after doing my own research I think that introduction is a good and better way to get better writing skills for students who are in college. Since the beginning of the semester I was assigned and completed many different things on introctuons. I attended a observation with a tutor and a English writing student, I researched articles online, and I even emailed a college proffesor at The Ohio State University Newark for some help. All of my sources are reliable and trusted. If a student can start off with a good introduction to his paper than his paper will be 100 times better along with his writing skills.

The one thing that I’ll always remember from my research and English 1109 class is the tutorial observation that I observed. I say this because when I observed the observation the student tutor who is Eli told the English 1110.03 student that his introduction was too weak and need to be longer and better. He explained why he needed to do this because when introductions are too weak they will not inform the reader about anything or interest the reader and grab his attention at all. That made me realize how powerful and useful a introduction is.


Although I think that introductions are more important, Stanley Fish is right about sentences too. Never worry about your paper all at once. Just make sure you have a good/strong introduction that will inform the reader about your topic and grab his attention and you will already be off to a start start in your paper.

Why evidence is important ?

Why evidence is important?

When you're trying to get someone onboard with you, you always give evidence, facts, reasons why your side is more logical than an opposing side. It’s the same thing for an essay even when you are not in averbal discussion it is still important to prove why you hold your stance. A claim alone is just that it does not have any foundation for it to be built on, evidence is the foundation for your claim and makes it stronger than just an opinion. The University of Guelph defines evidence as “facts, examples, or sources used to support a claim” and says that in scientific terms “this might be data retrieved from an experiment or a scientific journal articlehttps://www.lib.uoguelph.ca/get-assistance/writing/writing-disciplines/using-evidence-effectively Using evidence is important but the type of evidence you use is just as important, using chat room opinions or Wikipedia posts does not make you a trustworthy and reliable source of information.

There are different kinds of sources Primary sources and Secondary Sources. Primary sources as defined by the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Communication “Primary sources are first-hand experiences, accounts, observations, reports, or narratives. Primary sources could include diaries, letters, contemporary newspapers, or eyewitness accounts of events. Official documents (e.g. the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms), data collected from surveys, and lab results are also primary sources” In continuation Primary sources can also be first hand witness accounts, if you were covering a news story, you would want to speak to people who were either involved in the story your covering or were there watching what happened. This would make you a reliable source of information because your story is backed by the witness and individuals involved.Secondary sources are written by academics and scholars, defined by the University of North Carolina at chapel hill secondary sources “are considered secondary because they examine primary sources to present an argument or support a point of view; as such, they may be selective with their evidence or insert themselves in a debate happening among a number of scholars. In the sciences, reviews, which are surveys of articles that demonstrate an understanding of a field, are considered secondary.” continue to say that “It is a good idea to be aware of the bias in secondary sources when employing them as evidence.” https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-

                                                                                                   

Now this can be confusing and cause you to think, well if secondary sources bias can cause an issue in my paper, why do some professors require both primary and secondary sources in written assignments? That is a good question and just like the student who is asking this question, critiques of college education and what should be taught in colleges, have also had some concerns on how writing is taught in college. Stanley Fish is one of the critiques in the NY times article What should colleges teach?Fish says that “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” he then continues to say that “the exception seems to be catholic schools” Fish uses individuals who have attended catholic school and “remembered with a mixture of fondness and pain the instruction they received at the hands of severe nuns”. Although I agree with Fish on the argument that there are things high schools and middle schools don’t put focus on that colleges should put focus on. I don’t agree with what he is insinuating,

Although I don’t know how catholic schools give their instruction in full detail, I have read and heard horror stories about what individuals deal with in those schools. Fish himself talks about the “pain” these people felt “at the hands of severe nuns”. I would never want my child instructor to be abusing my child verbally nonetheless physically assaulting them, yes, the curriculum taught in schools should be reevaluated and students should be taught about not only things they will use in real life, but the instructors and parents should together make sure that students are understanding the full concept of writing. Fish is a professor of writing himself and believes that students should learn the full concept of reading and writing at an earlier school stage because these two come hand in hand, fish also believes that because students are not taught better writing and reading earlier, this should not relive college professors of the responsibility of teaching those elements. What fish is saying in a nutshell is that students should have the ability to read and write at a “mastery” level,  however if they do not when they reach higher education this should not mean they get thrown in with students who have already mastered the concept but rather professors should take it upon themselves to teach these skills to their fullest ability. I agree with fish in this argument for many reasons. One this should not just be about reading and writing but for all other courses as well, yes, the education system overall needs to be reevaluated and teachers should make sure a student understands everything that has been taught to them, but I also agree with him because students reaching a college level education does not mean they fully understand everything and a professor should put to use assessments that evaluate what level a student is at and make sure the student is placed in the correct course and has all the tools available for them to succeed onto a higher level of understanding .

 

Don't forget to quote!!!

In the article "What College Should Teach Pt.3" Stanley Fish argues how high school are not being taught in an effective way and how students are not prepared for college. He said
“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. The exception seems to be Catholic schools. More than a few commentators remembered with a mixture of fondness and pain the instruction they received at the hands of severe nuns.”

Fish said that he’s not there to take anyone’s language but just there to add more and one of his claims is writing sentences.

Dr. Fish..

“You have to start with a simple but deep understanding of the game, which for my purposes is the game of writing sentences. So it makes sense to begin with the question, What is a sentence anyway? My answer has two parts:  (1) A sentence is an organization of items in the world.  (2) A sentence is a structure of logical relationships”.

Said by Fish I agree with his point but he never mentioned how important a quotation is to the writing center and also strongly agreed with Fish point which is middle school and high school teachers don’t really prepare or help us as student on the right way to collage and they leave it all to the the collage professors. 

Which leaves the collage professors to build every student from the base on how to use quotation because student must know how to use and when to use a quotation in there paper and if the student was never thought in the previous school they won’t understand the importance of the quotes.




In an email to professor Herbruck Lauren, an English instructor at The Ohio State University in Newark. I sent her questions based on how and why quotation is important in collage writing.

And she replied “ In academic writing, secondary sources are very important to develop and contextualize your own ideas and analysis. They allow you to respond to others’ ideas and add your own to the ongoing conversation about an issue or topic”.

You don’t only just using someone’s words you showing your readers that, there is someone knows more than you that support your point and giving them their proper credential

are you using quotation mark properly? 

In university of Carolina writing center I read an article that supports on how are you using quote properly? Some students do lack on to how or when to use the quotation marks I did an online research to when would I quote? “Use quotations at strategically selected moments. You have probably been told by teachers to provide as much evidence as possible in support of your thesis. But packing your paper with quotations will not necessarily strengthen your argument. The majority of your paper should still be your original ideas in your own words (after all, it’s your paper). And quotations are only one type of evidence.”

This short paragraph shows more important to how to use quoting by using someone’s word and explaining or to support your claim. Quoting is like bring a guest speaker to the stage and let them talk/ tell instead of you that supports your point.

After reading an article from this book I came across how quotation could be organized as three categories which is the following steps 

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/short-guide-to-college-writing-sylvan-barnet/1100056753

of course Quotation Sandwich 

A) Introduce your quotations
B) Discuss your quotation
C) judge your quotation                          Quoting sandwiches encourages writers to introduce quotes and discuss them afterwards. Keep in mind quote should be the supporter, not the supplier of information in an essay. This helps the reader separate the writer’s ideas from someone else’s idea, connects someone else’s ideas to the writer’s ideas, also understand the quote and why it supports the writer’s thesis statement and last but not least explains the context of the quote. 

Overall Fish has point that primary and secondary schools should focus on their students and teach them what they will expect from their future education because collage isn’t the place where the students opens their eyes and taught how to hold their pencil, how to read and ect.. But stead its where they should know what to expect and they been taught to how to build their paper on the previous schools. 

Quotation can provide important piece of evidence and lend fresh voices and perspectives to your narrative. Used ineffectively, however, quotations can clutter your text and interrupt the flow of your argument” this means don’t use a long sense when you only need quarter of it, also don’t make it bored that the reader only reads people’s words more than yours because you only need the quotation for the flavors. It’s like you cooked spaghetti and sources without any flavors like garlic so you missing the whole purpose of the yumminess of the food.

To the Reef and Behind

Be the Pig not Chicken 

We as people think with both are mines and bodies to make are everyday choices. So when I read, Stanley Fish “What should college Teach?” I was surprised to see him say that college should reteach college student how to write sentences and forget an important thing that should go before that or along side it:

You have to start with a simple but deep understanding of the game, which for my purposes is the game of writing sentences.

 I feel that colleges should teach students how to be critical thinkers when it comes to writing. Being a critical thinker allows you to better put forward the best of your work. I say critical thinking because in high school and other institute before college they taught us the 5 paragraph method as a form of writing but that only limited your mind.

Brainstorming Enough to fill the Ocean

when we think critically it allows us to freely express ourselves in ways that we didn’t know we could. When i say critical thinking it comes in different forms and in different points in the writing you may be doing. Like at the beginning of a paper you are told in the five paragraph method to have a topic, To only support it with 3 things that restricting your thinking. But in my way of critical thinking you must brainstorming first not just 3 support topic but all of them. Come up with all forms of arguments good or bad that relate to your topic. The thought of this came to me when studying work from The university of Texas A&M writing Studio on critical thinking, which defines as follows:

Critical thinking is, simply put, careful, skeptical, and conscious thinking; it is the sort of thinking, guided by logic and method, that academics value.

I say this because you have to be ready for anything mean to defend or backup your topic so then nothing is left out but that doesn’t mean lost focus of your topic but on strengthening it.

Fight the Good fight 

After having all this information writing doing you must then organize it to meet the standards of the paper. With this it leads to my next tool to be a better critical thinker, organization. The good and bad things about your topic can be all used if you find a way to balance it all to fight on your side. When looking at the information look for similarities that the good and bad have, so for example you may start of with the bad but flip it to a support the good argument. If you don't believe me take it from Megan Boeshart (A college student with a masters in English and working on her PhD in English) How she felt about organization she responded with this:

organization requires you yo carefully consider how to present information to an audience in the most effective way

When doing this it blocks the nah Sayers in their tracks because you beat them to the punch of their argument leaving them nothing to say.


Hold on a second you thought your done while guess what your not . After finishing put the final touches to your paper you must now revise it. When doing this you must reread your work not just for miss spelling but to make sure that your message/topic is present. What I mean by present is it is easily picked up on but hard to be argued against. I seen this played out in front of me when i sit in on a session at the writing studio at Newark (OSU), Zach (Peer Writing Consultant) lead deja (student) to when he made her go back over everything they talk about in there session at the end to make sure that she understood everything they talk about and learned. As I stated before i was only surprised what Stanley fish had to say about what should be taught again to college students. But I feel that we must first retrain are minds to become better students. We must learn to be are selves and to move pass are primitive way of think to allow as to be better writers. Then as fish said learn to better write sentences because HOW CAN WE WRITE SENTENCES IF WE DON’T HAVE CONTENT TO WRITE IT ON.

Can you tell me? Can You?