Why should you pre-write/ brainstorm when writing a paper?

In my experience with first year college writing, doing more data gathering assignments has helped with the prewriting and brainstorming. I'm getting my ideas and facts all together at once to make the writing process easier on myself the writer. That way you don’t as hard to put the paper together in the end. Without doing any brainstorming or pre-writing for my english class, I wouldn’t know where to start in writing my paper. In my english class, I was given a few different ways to gather research or support my claim on why pre-writing/ brainstorming is the most important thing to do when it comes to writing. The first data gathering assignment was to observe an interview between a student and a writing consultant, and then do an interview with the writing consultant that you observed. Doing a survey, emailing a professor from my college or from another college. This helped me build the paper in the beginning. 

In college they should teach more students how to brainstorm and pre-write for a paper. In schools today they don’t really go through all of the steps thoroughly and explain how to do each thing correctly.In this reading Fish is trying to explain how college professors have to take time out to help students make up for time lost with writing skills in high school.  But what should be done to help students understand the first steps of the writing process. Students shouldn't be taught the things that previous teachers had spent months on. 

Once we had the start of the paper everything was easier with the research, we didn’t have to spend time doing unnecessary things like going over sentences. In Fish’s article is states that he spent a week or so going over simple things like generating sentences and replacing the words with different ones and then review one's work. In my opinion going over little things like that wastes time and doesn’t really give the student what they need in a writing class. Yes it’s good to look over your work and see what you can fix later on but I feel in classrooms today go over things that aren’t needed as much as some others.  While we do need to know some of that stuff, we shouldn’t spend as much time on it as we do. I think we need to put more real world scenarios like writing emails, typing up resumes, and more of the basic college essays. That saying, they should teach us more real life things that we can take with us after college. Making the classes interesting and more important with real life.Overall the most important data gathering assignment that I did  was the tutorial observation because that’s when I seen why pre-writing/ brainstorming is the most important thing. Another reason why I don’t think having mini lessons on writing sentences and changing the words isn’t important. During the interview the student had trouble knowing about any of the background and didn’t have any ideas on her subject, she was more worried about how it was written rather than knowing the information. This had led me towards my topic. You can’t start a paper without pre-writing/brainstorming.

Brainstorming is the Key

Brainstorming is the Key to Writing

Most people don’t know where to start when it comes to a paper and sometimes it can be a tad discouraging for them. There is so many aspects to writing a paper and nothing is more overwhelming than having too many things to do and having no idea where to start. In college, students don’t come prepared and it’s hard to know what is the most important thing to college when the students don’t know how to write a good essay. In order for students to do well in college and in their writing, they first need to understand what is the most important thing in college writing.  And in order to do that, college professors should teach students how to brainstorm efficiently. Stanley Fish wrote an article called What should College Teach? and in that article, he talks about how sentence structure is the most important thing when it comes to teaching in college. He continues his point by using his experience and what he notices as evidence of this point. Students come in class and they don’t know how to write a sentence or they don’t understand sentence structures. However, I disagree with the statement he made about how sentence structure is the most important thing that a college professor should be teaching to students. Instead, it would be better to teach their students how to brainstorm as that will help them in the long run.

Now, Fish may have had a point about the fact that students come in not knowing how to write a sentence but that’s a problem for high school and perhaps even middle and elementary school teachers .That is not a responsibility for college teachers to teach students basic things such as that. Students that already come to college should already have the fundamentals of writing down. High school is intended to teach students how to be prepared for college and if they can’t cover basic writing, then there is a problem with the school and the education taught at that school but it’s not the students fault. Therefore, Fish cannot blame the students for not knowing sentence structures when they haven’t been taught it in the first place. I think that if students come into college and they already understand the basics of writing, then the most important thing they can learn is how to brainstorm.

Brainstorming is so useful for college writers and it doesn’t take up much time to teach. All college professors need to is spend a few minutes in class just teaching their students how to brainstorm. It’s not something that can derail a lesson plan and if it was taught effectively, then the students can use it outside of class. There is different ways of brainstorming which is beneficial for students because they have options and don’t just have to rely on one thing. They can do whatever works best for them and their paper. Brainstorming helps with organization as writers can gain clear sense of what they are writing about and they have all the points of their paper written down so that they could look over it. They don’t have to rely on their memory and instead can just pull up bullet points of their ideas and use that as a reference.

Doesn’t take much

If college professors teach students how brainstorming can help write their paper, it can reduce the student’s stress about writing. By taking a few minutes to brainstorm, they can reduce their stress and worry about their paper because they are prepared to write about their paper. Brainstorming is so important to college writing and it should be encouraged more. It takes a few minutes and there is already a world of difference. It’s so crucial to a paper and it’s so easy to do. It also doesn’t much for college teachers to teach it. It’s not only helpful in comes to writing essays but it’s also helpful in the real world. Brainstorming is used in everything and all college professors have to do is spend a couple of minutes teaching it to students and those students are ready to take on the world.

Brainstorming can help

The Importance of Knowing How To Pick A Topic For College Writing

In the article What Should Colleges Teach? Part 3 by Stanley Fish, Stanley Fish talked about the important questions which should be asked among English professors. Stanley Fish talked about how first year students come into college without knowing basic writing skills. He explained the reason due to this.This is because past experience in high school and middle school. Stanley Fish also said that what the writing class should really focus on is how to constitute excellently structured sentences. It is important for us to care about Stanley Fish's point of view when it comes to writing because of his past experience with teaching in different universities and he got also got the article posted on New York Times. He is also the author of over a dozen books.

I don't fully agree with Stanley Fish's claim that sentence structure is the most important in college. Actually, I believe sentence structure is important but I happen to believe that teaching students how to pick a good topic for their college writing is more important. I believe that it is more important because knowing how to pick a good topic for college writing makes your writing easier to write about and it also makes it easier for you to research about what you want to write about. Knowing how to pick a topic is the most important because once you know how to pick a topic and you are able to pick a topic for your essay, you get a direct focus in what you want to write about.

Although I don't agree with his statement about sentence structure, I strongly agree that high school teachers didn't teach enough to prepare seniors in high school for college. Even though college writing is more challenging than high school writing, There is different expectations than what seniors are used to. From my personal experience and the information that I've been able to gather doing research, I've came to an understanding that most student don't have a good essay because they are unable to find a good topic. This is an  issue that I believe that if high school teachers teaches their students how to pick a topic, the students will know what teachers expect of them when they come to college and they are assigned an essay.

During my time in high school, we didn't really talk about the importance of knowing how to pick a good topic for college writing. In my High School English classes, knowing how to pick a topic wasn't seemed as the most important , it didn't seem relevant enough for the teachers to teach us in class. The end result in teachers not making high schools students understanding the importance of knowing how to pick a topic  is the poor writing of first year college students. Knowing this method now, I wish I could get the chance to redo most of my writing assignments because my grades would have been a lot different if I knew this earlier.

This semester in college, I had the chance to observe a student who was in English 1110.03 and a tutor who worked at the Writers Studio at The Ohio State University at Newark. The week after I observed the a tutoring sessions, I interviewed the writing consultant (Chance Nawman) about the session and he had with the student and he had some interesting things to say about the session. From there, I went on to get more understanding by doing a survey for college students to participate in. I also did an email interview and exchanged questions with an English professor called Erin Hellweg who has been teaching for 10 years. The last step I took is to read some article which talked about the importance in knowing how to pick a topic for college writing.

The moment which stands out throughout my research is the interview I had with Chance Nawman after observing his session with a student. His responses to the questions I asked him made me realize the importance of knowing how to pick a topic for college writing. Something he told me during the interview was that it is important to know how to pick a topic because the more interested you are in picking the topic, the more passionate you'll be in your writing. After I did the interview with him, I started researching the importance in knowing how to pick a topic for college writing.

Anytime you have an assignment to work on and you are not sure about the topic, you should first start brainstorming and researching what you want to write about .This is a very good and successful method because once you find a topic you want to write about after you have researched , you get to understand and see the topic from  a different perspective. This website "How to Select A Research Topic" shows you the main steps in finding a topic for your college writing.The only answer to the question of what should be taught in college writing is knowing how to pick a topic because the first step before you start working on your essay is having a  topic which is why it is very essential. I also believe that knowing this step is very important because it will lead you to have good grades in any essay you are assigned to do.

Research, A high-school students real cry for help

What is the most important part of writing? Is it the thesis statement, researching, brainstorming, or revising. In Fish’s writing What Should Colleges Teach he explains that our emerging college student don’t know how to write good sentences. Fish says “our students come to us unable to write clean english sentences.” He believes that the way high school students are taught improper sentence structures. Then he goes on to explain how we can fix this problem. But is this the real problem with today’s new college students?

This is a middle school classroom. Where student are taught to
write sentences, not college or highschool.

As an emerging college student I find this not to be true, though my sentences may not be delivered in writings at the level a person with a PhD might do it. It is not the most important part of college writing, or where college student stuggle. I believe a high priority for young college writers is researching, and so does Kennesaw State University. They say “The main purpose of research is to inform action, to prove a theory, and contribute to developing knowledge in a field or study (kennesaw.edu).” Being able to write a correct sentence is a thing that the majority of college student can do, but without being able to research correctly you are only pulling information from what you already know, You don’t know what is true and what is false, and none of the things that you write will carry any weight. So how can we teach these you college student how to research? To begin the must learn the importance of it, and it doesn’t just have to be things that you agree with. Research can sometimes change your thoughts on the situation. For instance, I was recently researching what is the most important part of college writing. I thought that it was the writer situation, the writers situation is what is going on around the writer, like the audience, time, context, and style of writing. After research I found this topic to be to complex to be the most critical part of college writing. After more research I found that research is the most is the most important part.

Explain how different sources and different perspectives
results in different analysis 

Research I should be taught more than one time a year in high school. In high school we required to write one research paper where they gave us 2 class a year that were 45 minutes long that were strictly focused on research. Our teachers would send us class by class to the library, and then the librarian would walk us through how to research. She would show us how to look for books and navigate databases, but these were very summarized lesson on these subject, then the just let us work. Research is way more complicated than these two classes could explain. It should be taught early and not only be focused on book and internet research. It wasn’t until college that I was asked to do primary source research for english class. Being able to tie in first hand accounts to an english paper is a challenge that I was not prepared for until I came to college. Another skill that should be taught in high school english class using more than just your perspective. Perspectives research should be a mandatory in high school research. Being able to bring up someone that us support or disagree with in your paper is crucial. It bring ethos to your paper, it makes it seem that you already done your homework on the subject and know what your talking about. 

Although writing sentences is the main part of writing of writing. I believe that it is what you find to put in those sentences is what makes what you writing credible. Fish does make a point that todays students aren’t learning to write sentences as well as baby boomers, but the English language is changing. English has been changing for a long time. The Bible is a great example on how writing sentences can change. “Early Modern English of the King James Bible with today's English shows differences in word order.” This leads me to believe that being able to correctly write a sentence will always be important, but it will also always be changing. Research is the most important aspect of college writing. Without research your paper will never meet all of the requirements in writing, and will never be a successful college writer.

Research is the future of the world.

Before you do anything, Just remember brainstorming is a must

What should be taught in college writing? In the Article  “What should colleges teach?” Stanley Fish mentions that new college students lack certain writing skills and that  the most important writing skill that they should be learning is sentence structure.Upon starting college, the responsibilities of getting those students to the level they need to be fall on college professor.He states that “ You’re not going to be able to change the world if you are not equipped with the tools that speak to its present condition.” Going back to the need of curriculum that deals with the needs of what should be taught and that responsibility falls on professor.I may agree or disagree with him down below, however his opinion should not be taken lightly because he has taught at Duke and. Berkeley and the author of 15 books.

When Fish talks about high school student and how they lack certain writing skills.

                      

I agree with Fish that students coming from high school still have to make improvements and adapt because they might not have been taught all the important writing skills that is needed.I found my self in a similar predicament when i started college.Some skills like revising and brainstorming I’ve had to pick up along the way.The papers I’ve written in high school and college are very different.I realized that my college papers are detailed and very analytical and that’s due to college professors demanded more out me when it comes get my point across.Although they demanded more out of me they made sure to give me examples and tools that i need to complete these writing tasks.There is also a lot of research that’s done and you have to be put all together.For my English class i was task with analytical research essay and it felt finding individuals pieces than in the end putting it together.I did interviews, research’s on the database, observing tutors, and 2 drafts before writing my finals paper and it felt like i was picking up these writing skills along the way.Thats why what he mentioned  resonated with me because i feel like in high school  students aren’t really challenged which results in students who miss the opportunity of learning theses writing skills that Fish is referring too.

Fish’s claims about high school students.

                                                                             

While Fish had some good points on sentence structure, there are many others aspects to college that he didn’t mention.For example brainstorming is one the greatest tools students can use when writing paper. Sentence structure is important but in someways it does matter if your lacking in content or you don’t fully understand what the prompt demands of you.A study was conducted in China between two sophomores english writing class that received instruction in brainstorming and they were compared to a third group that did not learn brainstorming strategies.The study showed that that brainstorming had a “measurable influence” on their writing performance.Even the survey they did indicated that students felt positive about brainstorming strategy, agreeing with my survey I did where students rated brainstorming as important.Brainstorming strategy help the students move to process-focused approach where they are prompted to think out loud and call out what they have read or hear in English.This made them more confident and productive in their writing practice. Brainstorming sessions are also known to make you familiar with the given prompt and that familiarIty can help you further understand the guideline of a prompts.

He didn’t mention brainstorming.

All in All, Fish has some great points on what to teach in college writing.However, he left out certain skills like brainstorming which is important.Even Writing consultant At the writer studio Echo at the writers agrees and she is some on who deals with and help college students with college writing assignment. A while back her response to the most important aspect of college writing was “Brainstorming! I cannot stress enough how much brainstorming and prewriting helped me organize my thoughts and ideas for my papers in college.” Fish claim about the importance of sentence structure was not totally false, i just thinks that he failed to realized that there are other aspects of college writing that is as or even more important then sentence structure.Gathering information and forming the structure of your paper before even starting should be weighted highly because it can even prevent writers block later and deeper into your paper.Thats Brainstorming for you, a skills that’s very slept on and should be involved in any curriculum comprised for college writers.

If you didn’t know, now you know: Research!

The discussion regarding What College Should Teach is an elongated and controversial debate. At least Stanley Fish takes an apparent position on this debate. Notably, I agree to a section of Fish’s argument that secondary and middle school teachers have failed to teach learners appropriate aspects of academic progression in the lower grades. I also support Fish’s argument that the danger of such failures is that it places more responsibilities on college teachers since tutors and professors have to cover areas that the learners ought to have learnt in their earlier academic experiences. Fish is accurate on this element, since college teachers have to expand their responsibilities to capture topics that undergraduates should have conceptualized in their high school education.

According to Fish, the primary element that colleges should teach first-year students is how to constitute excellently structured sentences. Considering the failures of high school teachers, Fish's argument is essential. For instance, most college students struggle in the writing classroom due to the inability to construct elaborate sentences. Consequently, the inability to construct acceptable language structures undermines learning at this level. Therefore, Fish is accurate with his assessment of the situation.
                             
Throughout the ARE paper that I have been doing in class and the different activities I completed I now realize how much emphasizes is put on being a successful college writer. While in the Writers Studio at the OSU-Newark, I have noted the emphasis tutors put on doing research and how to conduct meaningful research to students. This has guided me in the right directions when I was doing my own research for my paper. Things that were emphasized to be helpful to a success college writer included finding credible sources, focusing on a topic and knowing how to correctly cite in a MLA format.

Fish states, “ writing class should primarily focus on teaching learners sentence structures, I consider such a practice to be extraordinarily easy to spend much time teaching at the college level." Although most of the first-year students were not adequately taught sentence structures in high school and middle-level learning institutions, it would be a mistake to prioritize aspects that learners ought to have learnt in their earlier levels in colleges. Moreover, writing functional sentence structures is a straightforward learning activity that can only be captured in a limited portion of the first-year experiences. Learners at this level must be able to improve in their sentence construction through individual efforts instead of spending elongated hours on a subject that should have been learnt in the earlier learning stages. For this reason, college writing can prioritize teaching students how to properly do research and finding credible sources to be successful. On the other hand, students in high school were to taught to research topics, but were not required to use databases and libraries to find credible sources. Most of their research will come from an internet source, but with college, the majority of the primary research will be from databases, involving peer reviewed academic articles.

 College instructors when the student use Wikipedia.

I believe that the primary focus of the writing classroom should be on helping learners understand how to get reliable writing sources instead of focusing on teaching sentence structure. With students understanding the functions of research and gathering data from reliable sources, they are set up for success. The search for research sources is a unique experience to most first-year students; hence, it should be a priority in the writing classroom. Secondary education does not emphasize the use of scholarly sources in the same way as college. For example, most papers in college, including my ARE, require sources from the database such as scholarly articles.

me when i was reading fish article.

Furthermore, most learners struggle in the search for credible sources due to their lack of knowledge in this area. The elongated time students spend searching for credible sources could impact their academic lives in other ways if they were taught how to locate reliable scholarly writing resources. Most of college writing practices require the use of credible sources hence making this aspect a crucial topic of study for college learners.

Fish provides an in-depth understanding of the embedded problem in the education system. I agree with most elements of Fish’s article since the failure of secondary and middle school teachers is the primary cause of the pressure college teachers incur to teach elements that learners should have learnt in earlier levels. However, I consider the need to teach learners how to locate reliable sources as the primary challenge that writing classrooms should prioritize at the first-year level. Teaching source finding prospects would enhance the learners' abilities than focusing on sentence structures. In this way student are receiving a proper education in terms of research and academic understanding rather than wasting time on remedial coursework they may not even need.

Ya Gotta Know What Ya Gotta Know - Research!

Finding a common curriculum for what is “supposed to” or “should be” taught is very difficult. From the beginning you start with a level of subjectivity, but some things are undeniably objective and must be taught for they are essential to ones writing in college. One of these things is the ability to do research, the how and why we conduct it, and the impact is has on our writing.  In an article “What should colleges teach? Part 3” by Stanley Fish, he addresses a few topics and proceeds to lay out a few opinions and beliefs that he believes could help to form a common branch of must-teach topics. 

            The first issue he brings to light in his article is that he believes that high schools are not doing a proper job teaching what they should be. He does although highlight that he believes that Catholic schools are doing an adequate job though. I found this to be a strange inclusion, not because I am a skeptic of catholic schools, but because I perceive this to be a very blanket statement. I do not see how you could make that claim when not every Catholic school is ran by the same curriculum or set of standards, but I digress. 

            More importantly, he makes his claim that sentence structure and the ability to form sentences has been neglected by the secondary education system. He believes this detail alone is enough to cause monumental struggles in college writing. Although I believe that possessing a proclivity for creating thoughtful and expressive sentences is a vital aspect of being a scholar, I do not think it is the end all-be all. 

            I have gone through a few data gathering assignments to gather the answers to what I considered to be the most important. I first began by conducting an observation where Malik, a student at The Ohio State University of Newark, worked with his peer writing consultant, Austin, on a paper he was writing. Secondarily, I went on to interview Austin about his experience in that session he had with Malik. After which I did a survey of college students and went on to create an extended definition for the aspect of college writing I deemed most important. I wrote an annotated bibliography and interview a teacher, Dr. Keller, who is a professor at OSU. After all of this, I came to a conclusion. I firmly believed that establishing a solid foundation for research was a very key part to being seriously awesome at college writing. 

            Now, why I came to this is kind of hard for me to explain. In my high school experience, I did not receive a huge breakdown on how to do proper research. The lack of a guide in this area can lead to some huge impasses when writing. Simply put, you can have all the technical ability to write, all the grammatical rules down pat, every bit of knowledge on how to form sentences that challenge those of Shakespeare, but without the details of what you are writing about, without the research, how do you write? You must have the topic solidified in your head, with all the details in your mind, before pen can even begin to hit paper, or your hands can touch the keyboard. 

            Now, a thesis is but an empty shell without support to back it up, so here is mine! Malik, the student I observed, seemed like a very bright young lad, but seemed to struggle with even beginning to answer the questions he wanted to answer in his paper. I contribute this to a lack of research, and bingo, Austin immediately researched with him and they had it. In my survey, it became apparent that many students said that they struggled with doing research, and before you ask, yes, some of them attended Catholic school. Research is not something to be taken lightly. Dr. Keller said himself, “Research is difficult. There are so many sources to choose from. Library databases are not user-friendly. A lot of academic writing is not meant to be read by undergrad students, so finding something readable is hard. And a lot of students come in with a view of research as “finding the answer” or “giving info” when it is much harder than that.” I believe this quote is a testament to researching’s difficulty based on the fact that it came from someone who teaches this subject for an occupation. More so, Austin gave testaments to the importance of research. Without research, where truly would our writing start, and how could we even begin. 

Writing a strong thesis

I understand what fish is saying but I think he takes it too far. I don’t think sentence structure is really that important, it is important, but I don’t think its as critical as he’s making it out to be. file:///C:/Users/17402/Downloads/What%20Should%20Colleges%20Teach%203%20(2).pdf 

Yes, it is important because sentences form a paragraph and that’s what makes your paper an actual paper but in my opinion it is not the most important thing when it comes to college writing and I don’t think that’s the main thing teachers should be focusing on. 

Personally, I think they should be focusing on teaching how to write a strong thesis because I think many people that are in college struggle with just that including  myself https://finishyourthesis.com/how-to-write-thesis-tips/.  In my personal experience I think that’s because they don’t really teach about that a lot in high school and when they do cover writing a thesis its very brief and not very informational. So I think it’s really important that teachers take time in first year English classes to teach and show how to write a successful thesis and I think they can do this by possibly showing them different methods in writing a thesis and then they can experiment with the different methods and I see what they find works for them in their writing. I think having a strong thesis can really make or break your paper because without it your reader isn't going to know what your main points are in the paper. https://www.aims.edu/student/online-writing-lab/process/thesis.php

Like I've said I understand why fish thinks sentence structure is important but I don't think its the most important aspect in college writing because there are many sources that talk about how important it is to  have a strong thesis for your paper to be successful.

Outline; Initial Way To Form Sentences!

Would you be able to develop a sentence structure without knowing what to write? Would be able to develop a sentence without making an argument first? In order to do that you need to first think about what are you going to write. What's your arguments that you are trying to make!

When Dr. Fish said we, as college students,
don't know how to form sentences.

According to Stanley Fish in a blog he wrote called, "What Should colleges Teach? Pt 3". He argued that middle school and high school english teachers do not teach effective writing skills good enough to prepare them for college. I personally agree with him on that specific point, but he also argued that sentence structure is the most important thing in essays which I understand his point. In my opinion, I would not say that sentence structure is the most important thing and that all students should learn and ace that skill. I mostly agree with Stanley Fish, but I believe the outline comes first then the sentence structure comes after.

Trying to come up with what to write for an
essay without an outline!

Everybody writes their papers differently. Especially in college where all students come from all around the world and its much diverse than other secondary schools. With that being said, we all come from different cultures, backgrounds and education levels. There are students who have had opportunities to the highest education. On the other hand, there are students who did not have similar opportunity and so they received an average education. We can't just come and argue that everybody doesn't know how to write a sentence because I personally believe that there is no specific style of writing sentences. In addition, if all our sentences look like each other then where is the interesting and unique part that every story should have? Everyone would just expect the same outcome every time. I personally would rather read a story that somebody wrote which is unique to them than read a story that's predictable and without anything interesting to look forward to.

Essays are never the most fun to do, but once you
finish your outline then the rest is going to be easy!

I do agree with Fish that teaching sentence structure is important, however it is not the most important factor in the process of writing a college essay. Breaking down my thoughts into steps, I had to figure out how I wanted to start this blog. I was not concerned with how I wanted to form sentences right away and instead focused on what I wanted to talk about. Relating to that, I conducted an observation at the Writer’s Studio at The Ohio State University at Newark tutoring sessions and observed students receiving help on how to write a paper. In the process, the tutor advised the students to come up with outlines to best help in approaching their topic. With this experience, it helped me realize pre-writing is a very important element and could be considered to have more importance than sentence structure formation. If one does not have their ideas properly laid out in front of them with a plan to approach them, the sentence will no longer matter with unorganized ideas. Along with observing, I also put together a survey, interviewed an English professor and I continued with a library research. In the interview I conducted with English professor Lydia Saravia, she defended the significance of outlining by stating: “ I would argue that outlining isn't just important for college-level writing. I think having a system to order ideas for any written piece is important. It's just important to think of what ideas we have and what order we want them to appear in our writing.” As an English teacher who provides me with other pieces of useful writing advice, it makes it easier to trust her and continue to defend my thoughts. Each of those proved my reasoning correctly allowing me to have a better enforced argument to my opinion.

When you go into an English class and
realize you know the steps of making an essay!

Fish did have a good point that students should learn how to create a sentence, but Instead of giving importance to the actual writing part, it is necessary to give time to pre-writing. There are many types of pre-writing that should be taught in classrooms that play an essential role in writing. Such as brainstorming, clustering, and mapping outlines and many more. To answer the question previously asked: no, developing sentence structures without knowing what to write is very complicated and counter productive. Although sentence structure is needed to deliver the argument, it is not the main importance or focus in college level writing. I think that college professors shouldn't worry about teaching their students how to write sentences, but instead I think they should focus more on the outlining and pre writing activities because that is what will help their students in the future.

The Pre, In Pre-Writing

Does a student that has transferred from a good and well-known high school and transferred from a not so good and well-known high school have the some exposure? What about someone who has come from no high school attendance would they be able to compare to those who have? Students come from many different schools and have a whole different appearance on writing essay or even grammar for that fact, as well as attained different skills in different forms of writing or research. So the questions to answer is what’s important to teach in a classroom? Stanley fish answered this questions with his paper “What should colleges teach?” Which was published by the New York Times. Stanley states in his article that high-schools and middle school’s don’t teach students the basic writing skills, and how there being introduced to college this way. According to Stanley fish, the most important aspect that should be taught in classroom’s is sentence structure. He states “What good is it to be told, Do not join independent clauses with a comma, if you don’t have the slightest idea of what a clause is”, and might be asking who is this fish guy? And why care about his opinion?. Well he’s a experienced college teacher which got his foundation of this knowledge from a professor of humanities and law at Florida International University, which is located in Miami, and is a author of 15 books.

The Passion That Goes Into Pre-Writing

As Stanley Fish is bringing up very valued points, and I do agree with him that teaching sentence structure and the proper way to form sentences is a very useful and important skill to have. I feel that pre-writing is another very useful and important skill to have/ or to teach in the classroom. I was fortunate enough to to be able to observe and conduct research with the help of many great people at the Ohio State University At Newark Writer’s studio and fellow staff at the Newark campus. Throughout this semester, I spent a lot of time doing research on the topic of pre-writing, and how this research gave me great ideas and opened my eyes to what college writing really is. With the information from the research surveys, interviews with student’s in the writers studio and observation, I had was used it to write my own papers which showed me how important and useful these techniques are to college writing.

In Fish’s article he does bring up some good evidence on a specific task that was brought to the students, “asking students to make a sentence out of a random list of words, and then explain what they did”. This shows how he’s trying to teach the student to make something out of nothing and to try ands get them to better there sentence formation and better understand what they are writing. Pre-writing is important to the aspect of how to structure a sentence properly, because it teaches you to reason and pick your words carefully and to be able to form proper sentences from nothing. With this is helps convert to the reader what the reasoning and specific information of items are.

Pre-writing carries a major role in a writer’s paper as it helps push forward or give meaning to what the writers is trying to convey with their writing. An example is if I tried to tell you about something that I only knew about without telling the reader what it was about. It would leave the reader confused and they would feel that without this information it doesn’t make sense. So with some form of pre-writing it would make more sense and better direct the paper to help the reader understand what the writer is trying to convey. In addition it helps the writer overcome writers block and gets ideas out better.

There are many different parts to pre-writing that should be taught in classrooms that practice and constantly are writing about, life experiences or even trying to answer a specific prompt. This skill bring better work out of the writers hands because it betters the writer and helps them connect there ideas with others. An example is my observation in the Writers Studio, the peer writing consultant and the student both practiced this by watching a short film that has to do with the students paper and then formulating a plan that could help convey their point. I feel that they would not be able to bounce ideas and come up with great stuff it they hadn’t done some pre-writing.

Trying to Come up with Ideas 

Even thought Stanley has evidence and was right about how sentence structure is important to college writing and how it is is key skill to know. But what about the thought of pre-writing and the help it gives student before actually diving into there paper , MR. Stanley Fish?. How to properly conduct research, how to organized those ideas and thought, and trying to connect your evidence with the paper are also very important aspects of college writing that should be taught in classrooms. All these aspects are important in the skill of writing, but the most important part is the work before the actual work is started. Can you fathom a world where people don’t think or consult with others before doing or making an important move? Without pre-writing/ thinking, society itself wouldn’t be able to function in a proper state. 

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Focusing on the Big Picture; Outlining!!!

What if you walked into your first college class and your professor looked to all of you and said that this class is totally based on how to make good sentences? First off, that’s boring and second off, taking a class like that would probably make me want to drop out. Creating a sentence is different for everyone. Based on your background or where you grew up and the type of language you have been exposed to all your life directly affects the way you talk and how you create sentences.  Stanley Fish addressed in his article “What Should Colleges Teach?” that the most important thing that professors should be teaching their students is how to correctly format and create sentences. This can be hard to reteach not just one student, but a whole universities way of communication. Not to mention a university is created entirely of students from different places throughout the world, so that is a lot of variance in ethnicities and cultures and a lot different types of communication.  

https://gfycat.com/hoarseflateyra 
Please do not write like Shakespeare, he obviously
has a a lot going on with himself and his writing. 

       I agree that there is some importance that Fish states in why students need to learn how to create good sentences. But, I also believe that stressing the importance of creating a sentence can actually worsen someone's writing. I think that students who focus on writing sentences too much will make their sentences too complex so then what they have wrote, then becomes unclear to the reader. Fish says that, “It is because our students come to us unable to write clean English sentences that we are obligated to supply what they did not receive from their previous teachers.” This statement does make sense, not everyone has had the same provided education therefore some of their writing skills may be lacking. Although many students still make good pieces of writing through being themselves and talking through their own type of language. Personally, reading a piece that has some personality to it, is ten times more entertaining than someone who writes like William Shakespear.  

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-fm
cc-standupspeakout-2/chapter/why-outline/
Format of how to outline

      Instead of professors giving their attention mainly to creating sentences, they should focus on the bigger picture of a piece of writing. Outlining is an a very important aspect of college writing. Whether you outline or not, that is your choice, but it will affect the overall piece of writing that you turn in. Outlining gives the writer the opportunity to organize their thoughts and ideas. Based on the prompt that a teacher gives you, and the length of the paper, you need to format in some way and get yourself organized before beginning the paper. Outlining also helps your collected data to be placed in the right places throughout an essay in the best way so that it makes sense to the reader. It also makes sure that your data supports the specific claims that you are making. While doing this, you're saving a significant amount of time spent while writing the paper and you can spend more time revising the paper when it is completed.  

      There were many steps I took in order to further my knowledge over the importance of outlining in college. I sat in on a tutoring session at the OSU Writers Studio and had a follow up interview with the tutor. I created a survey based on the importance of outlining primarily which college students took this survey. I continued to look up extra sources and documents that helped support as to why outlining is so beneficial to college students and their writing. 

https://giphy.com/explore/bad-dream
You waking up in the middle night after having
a bad dream about failing a paper
because you didn't
outline before your paper. 

Outlining is an important strategy that everyone should learn how to use so that it benefits not only their overall performance of their paper, but also saves the writer a lot of time. Karen Craigo who has been a teacher for many years and has graded few papers in her day, says that the advantage of outlining, “is that it gives students something to turn to when they're lost. They can just move on to the next part and come back to the troublesome section later. That's an empowering tool.” Craigo provides an additional perspective but takes it in a different direction. It can be hard to figure out what you want to write or don’t know where to start so outlining is kind of like a map to guide you through your paper. I mean, wouldn’t you like a map if you were stranded in the middle of nowhere, which usually only happens in bad dreams. But hey, writing papers is definitely like a bad dream.  

       Fish did have a good point that students should learn how to create a complex sentence because this will come in handy throughout their college carrier, but teachers should focus on the benefitting students writing overall. Outlining is an important strategy that all college writers should learn how to do so they are saving time and in the long run are benefitting their performance of the paper.   

The Focus of Writing

We often wonder about how to write about all the things we want to include into our writings. It can be just a little bit difficult but at the same time if you have the right resources, it will help your paper in so many ways. In my English 1110.03 class we got to read “What Should Colleges Teach?” By Stanley Fish. He mentioned how middle schools and high schools aren’t preparing students to write effectively. I do agree with this fact because as students prepare for writing in college they need the skills on how to focus with the evidence they have. When all your organized thoughts and ideas are set and ready to go it will help you not get sidetracked when you write, because that is what tends to happen when students are writing. Having a big focus on your research is key as well, because when you don’t have that it will be a waste of time and you’ll have unnecessary information to focus upon. This will then may lead to having you change your topic unintentionally of you aren’t focused.

    Besides all that you are still asking why? As mentioned before above, Stanley Fish went into depth on how high schools and middle schools don’t prepare you to write effectively and it all starts with on how to properly locate and use your resources. He explains how you won’t be able to change what you have if you don’t have the tools to correct. I do agree with him on this but I also think that most students out of high school are prepared for the writing in college. They may not be fully prepared, but in my opinion I feel that students still have potential to write what they can in college. Students are prepared for the basic needs when it comes to writing and come with enough to help them write to their best and full potential.

You may have that though where you're wondering on what to put down to make it even stronger. As we all know, having strong evidence and detail to back up your point and to make your writing better is well needed, but you also need something else and that is focus. Always focusing upon your topic and your main points and ideas along with your evidence will help to strengthen your writing, and then in the end you will come to the conclusion on why focusing on all these key thing is so important. I have had many experiences, (and still sometimes do) where I lose track of my topic throughout the paper and just don't know what I'm writing or what to write. I realized that it was because most of the time I did not have the important information or just enough to express what I am trying to get across so that my audience will understand rather than dragging the whole thing.

In my English 1110.03 class we had the opportunity to do data gathering assignments which included a survey, an observation between a PWC and a student, a teacher interview, and a PWC interview. I got to interview PWC Maddie from the Writers Studio at The Ohio State University at Newark https://newark.osu.edu/students/support-services/the-writers-studio/. When I got to observe her and the student that she was working with, they were working on a project proposal that was focused upon the analysis of a place and throughout it Maddie mentioned a lot about detail/being brief. While interviewing her I asked why she though that was so important and she went on to say how the detail the student had needed to be clear/concise so that the reader won't get confused with also the prompt they were referring to for evidence needing to be brief because the main focus was the analysis.

She explained to me how most first year writing courses have a focus on analysis of repetitions, binaries, and detail. This really stood out to me because these are things that have a big focus but is something we tend to leave out and not think about. I believe that when you do not have the right amount of detail to explain your argument is when it starts to go downhill. In order to have a proper formatted paper you need to follow step by step instructions to come to a conclusion. Start off by gathering the most relevant information and organize them for each paragraph and then explain what it all means. By having that strong evidence helps to boost the main idea of your whole paper.

When it comes to your analysis, that is also one of the key things to focus on as well. Many writers have a concern over this because sometimes they feel as if they don't have as much or have too little. The main thing when it comes to analysis is to think about your audience. You should focus on how much to explain, and think about what you'd do if you were the reader. According to the https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/audience/ this helps a lot with audience and will help to guide you on how to sum it all up. Narrowing down your focus helps your paper as well. You want to try and have not too much or not too little of information to come to your main idea. Having too much overwhelms the reader and having too little confuses them. It's kind've like a recipe, you want to add the right amount of an ingredient to get the right amount flavor.

When you just know it's too much and that you don't know what you just read.

    Even though Stanley Fish had great points on how students are not prepared for the writing in college, I believe that students are somewhat prepared for it. From the research that I did I came to the conclusion that there are so many steps to take when it comes to the focus of your writing. From my own experiences I've had so many situations where I didn't know how to focus upon my topic and would get sidetracked. By hearing about others' experiences and and understanding what needs to be put into a writing to make it strong has helped me to realize the importance of focus.