In this article Fish basically grabs a microphone and yells out "HELLO WORLD THERE'S AN ELEPHANT ON THE TABLE!!! ENGLISH CLASSES SHOULD TEACH STUDENTS HOW TO WRITE." Fish makes so much sense to me because so many students come into college, not only as ELLs but also as students who did not receive extensive grammar drills in grade school. These students get to their classes and they cannot put a basic sentence together. As a result, the professor says that he/she does not have enough time to teach grammar in the class because the "issues" have to be discussed. The next thing you know the tutors in the writing center are pulling their hairs out trying to show students the meanings of all of the corrections that the professor tattooed all over their papers.
**FRUITS**
"Instead, the students spent much of their time discussing novels, movies, TV shows and essays on a variety of hot-button issues-- racism, sexism, immigration, globalization. These artifacts and topics are surely worthy of serious study, but they should have received it in courses that bore their name, if only as a matter of truth in advertising.
**WEEDS**
None. I wish there was a way for new teachers in training to read these articles.
**BASKET**
Although my first goal is to teach abroad, I do see myself teaching ESL in the future and I must make sure that regardless of what the reading is about, I MUST make time to discuss grammatical subjects such as time, number, and the parts of speech.
Stanley Fish!! A man who wears many hats and has opinions about many subjects. (Just so you know, this year's reading for the CPE exam is Fish's).
ReplyDeleteIn response to the reading, many teachers today seem to opt out of actually teaching in their classrooms. Perhaps there are too many "experts" offering advice about what the role of a teacher should be or perhaps many teachers lack ethics. Teaching should be a holistic process; all parts of the student should be stimulated. Well at least that is my belief! But I am a realist. So I would suggest that there perhaps need to be a college class or classes that focus on specific problems that students have with grammar and students should be "forced" or advised to take these classes before taking college credit courses.