What should colleges teach fish

My answer has two parts: 1 A sentence is an organization of items in the world. Basically, there is only one thing to be learned, that a sentence is a structure of logical relationships; everything else follows.

Post a Comment. This discussion between NY Times blogger, Stanley Fish, and his readers is crucial reading for those of you who care about education in America!

Much of the discussion, to which I am going to point you, has to do with high school and middle school education as well. Stanley Fish, who blogs regularly in the NY Times , is one of the most important bloggers in America. I have recommended him to you many times in the past. Fish has some seriously impressive credentials and he does some serious and impressive writing on his blog, Think Again. He currently teaches law at Florida International University in Miami.

He is the author of eleven books, most of which deal with the subject of higher education. I got so expansive because of the hundreds of response comments Fish received to the first blog. Most of the comments were polite and offered in the spirit of discussion and honest debate. That led Fish to expand on his first blog in an attempt to answer questions that the commenters had raised. Without providing background information, there is a lot of room for students to become confused about the topic being discussed.

Du, , p. Teachers need to be aware of their attitude and how they are portrayed when they are teaching students new things. If a teacher does not seem to be interested in whether the students learn, they are not helping motivate the students. They decide whether the students pass or fail which gives the idea that students should impress the teachers to achieve good grade. Better Essays. Open Document. Essay Sample Check Writing Quality. Many times, high school students are assigned to write essays based on inspirational figures or literature read in class, often requiring the same rhetoric following fastidious rules of English and sprinkling decorative wording across pages.

Obeying the formats demanded by teachers is easy enough, but it is not creatively challenging. Author of "What Should Colleges Teach? Can it be so that the curriculum being taught in high schools fail to allow students to realize the potential creativity that can be involved when writing?

Instead students are possibly turned …show more content… They must form lessons that should aid students in understanding composition, definitions, transition words, and symbolism. You are absolutely right in your conclusion. The ability to analyze sentences and arguments is crucial in being able to write well. Good writing is mainly about structure and organization and secondly about verbal fluency and vocabulary.

I would disagree with anyone who would claim that an abundance of reading makes a good writer. Amen to all that. Oddly enough, I find that most of my students in law school are not capable of analyzing what they have written.

And therefore, they have trouble writing clearly. Though it should have happened before they reached that plateau of education, I spend a good bit of time discussing sentence structures and the logic of composition.

They generally catch on after a while. It would have made them better lawyers. But it requires the teacher to learn the rhetoric and logic that lie behind that approach. Adjuncts who teach most of the composition classes in the U. So who will teach the teachers?

You also need small writing seminars no more than 12 students; 9 is perfect plus an instructor prepared to do heavy, heavy editing on every piece of student prose during the first half of the term. You walk them through close readings. You coach them into detailed, considerate in-class critique. And you have them read aloud, a lot—the ear often tells them more than the eye. You encourage, chide, challenge, reassure. And then, cunningly, you shift the burden.

But oh, the labor, if the instructor is both literate and conscientious. And oh, the pathetic paycheck. Your points are well made. But you leave out one thing, which is that teaching writing requires students to write, and professors or at least a teaching assistant to provide prompt, clear, and accurate feedback. In a time of declining university budgets, it is easy to simply lift the caps on the writing intensive courses in English, as well as other subjects.

Ultimately this leads to a flood of papers, to which faculty respond with multiple choice tests. Caps of 20 students per faculty member are appropriate in writing intensive courses. Alas, at least here in California, these are quickly becoming a thing of the distant past. The sentence exercises are most interesting, and I think they would be fun to try. For myself, I found the best way to understand sentences, their structure, the function of the words within them, and how to punctuate them, is to learn to diagram them or map them.

Start with simple sentences and work up to the more complicted structures. The process is partly visual, and rather like solving a puzzle. The processs of diagraming easily explains parts of speech and how to use words without a lot of random memorization.

Types of sentences and their structure are easily identified. The rationale of sentence structure becomes clear in an instant.. For example, the differnce between. Of course, the content of what you write in essays and papers would depend on your assignments, experience, study, interests, research, and passion. Getting them to debate is even less feasible.

Just as you say. It would be even better if students were exposed to such a method at a much younger age, so a college teacher could deal with even more matters related to good writing—paragraphs, say. I found that in high school I learned far more grammar in Spanish class than in English class. This led to a strange situation in which we were learning indirect objects and the subjunctive tense in Spanish, while many students in the class could not pick out either of these in English.

I was one of those parochial school students who learned to write by the time I was in eighth grade. I did not learn writing by any such exercises as you propose.

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.

The best theses start late in the process--even and especially if you had a different thesis earlier in the process. 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. Preparing the Fish.

Painting; this is something that is very simular to writing. Both require thouroughness, patience, preparation, planning, among other things. One of these little details is writing sentences. Stanley Fish makes a case that good sentences are important for good writing, and should be taught in college writing courses.

While I agree that they are important, I have something that I think is equally as important if not more important. That is preparation. This should come as a no brainer but not procrastinating is a good way to manage your time. I know many people who constantly wait until the last minute to do things.

I think the big problem with many students typically invision the best-case scenario when it comes to writing. A good way to put yourself into a situation where you can avoid procrastinating, is by creating a a ritual for yourself. Doing something along these lines can get you on the right track. Another thing you can do is remove all forms of distraction. Also, Break up work into small sections if given enough time can be benefitial because this can lead to a more clear, complete paper.

If In the case where you only have a couple days to write a paper or draft, the best thing you can do is not panic, and break down your work evenly over those two days to maximize your attention. Keep your stress down, never frown, and always avoid clowns.

Finding a way you can introduce these practices into a college class could be difficult, given most of these are about effort. But I have a couple ideas that can help. Fishin' Around. Fish emphasizes the importance of writing sentences. Not only how to write them but also how to analyze your own work as a student, allowing the writer to grasp a firm understanding of proper sentence structure. I agree sentence structure is a very important step towards great writing at the college level, but I do not agree that the entire course should be centered around this one writing skill.

In my opinion as a first-year college student I believe time management is an extremely important tool to teach young minds. Not only valuable in the college atmosphere, but also in everyday life.

I speak from a place of substance because I conducted my own research about writing in college for a research paper in my English class. Through my research I found that for a college student to be successful at writing, they must master the skill of time management. When you visit Purdue Owl website and look at their example of how the writing process works, you will see there are many steps. One can assume that writing for college takes much more time that. Think about it, do you wake up early enough to take a shower before school and allow yourself time to eat breakfast?

Do you allow drive time from home to your destination? As you progress through the day you are constantly managing your time without even realizing it. If you have a break between class whether, you choose to work on homework or just sit in the library and watch Netflix you are choosing how and where to manage your time. Although one may negatively affect your grade point average and one will positively affect it you are untimely the master of your own time thus the master of your own future.

It all comes to this: time management essentially is the act of analyzing the time and amount of work you have to do and coming up with a plan of how to effectively spend your time. I honestly believe teaching proper time management skills to college students will benefit the students because without allotting study time they will never learn the topic of discussion.