How Writing Should Be

Stanley Fish’s piece ‘What Colleges Should Teach’ and Vershawn Ashanti Young essay ‘Should Writers Use they Own Language’ are very different in their own way. Stanley Fish’s writing is very standard and to the point while Young’s writing is based on his culture and Young expects people to understand what he is saying, and wants to get through to Stanley Fish that people shouldn’t change the way they write or speak in order for those people to fit in with who they surround themselves with however; I agree their writing should be a standard and something to where people could understand it. In agreement with Young, people should talk the way they want to talk but also agree with Stanley Fish because writing does have to be standard.

In Stanley Fish’s piece ‘What Colleges Should Teach’ he talks about how college professors should teach us as college students to write in a standard way. I think there is a notion that people don’t talk about which is that no one really prepares you for college writing, ‘in high school you write essays and in college we right papers’ (Fish Part 3). I don’t agree with this because they do say the word essays in college they are referred to as ‘papers’ as essays. Fish claims that schools are not teaching students sentence structures, mainly the students in public schools, ‘by all evidence, high school, and middle schools are not teaching writing skills in an effective way if they are teaching them all.

The expectation seems to be Catholic schools, more than a few commentators remembered with a mixture of fondness and the pain the instruction they received it at the hands of the severe nuns. And I have found that those students in my class who do have a grasp of the craft are graduates of parochial schools’ (Fish Part 3 par 1). I agree to an extent however I believe that research is more important than a sentence structure. Going into college, I know that you do have a lot of research that students need to do as assignments and they do not teach is that in middle school or high school.

I think Vershawn Ashanti Young wrote this not only to talk about the vocabulary and language but I think he wrote it more to stick up for the African American Culture and the way they speak. They speak no different than us but, in Young’s article he does bring up that there needs to be some kind of attitude and ‘it’s the way folks with some power perceive other people’s language’ (Vershawn Ashanti Young 110). Which is what Young means by code-meshing to add flavor or style, some people do really well at expressing themselves in their own language and others have a harder time expressing who they are in other languages so this helps people to understand each other fully.

Based on facts from the story, Stanley Fish believes that teachers are failing to teach their students to write well enough. While he mentions not wanting to ‘take away’ students’ own language or dialect, he insists that they should still learn how to write in Standard English. He believes that people will have a difficult time in the workplace if they don’t write in a standard form of English. While Vershawn Ashanti Young’s essay is a direct response to Fish’s article. In his essay, Young disputes several of Fish’s points and shares his own opinion on these topics. He argues that these different English dialects or languages should be celebrated and taught, rather than put in ‘formal’ environments in favor of Standard English.

As the title of his argument suggests, Young creates his argument around the idea that blending or what is called ‘code-meshing’ which can dialect together in all contexts of communication and bridges the gaps between different ethnic groups and is an effective way to spread equality. However, Stanley Fish argues against this sentiment, claiming that the proper mechanisms of essay writing and composition, especially in a professional university setting which paramount to learning. His argument implies that structure is one of the most important aspects of teaching composition and that the way to achieve that is through standardized language instruction.

If I had to choose, I would probably say Fish’s article is the one that resonates with me more, although I can’t say I align with either authors’ views perfectly. I do agree with Young when he says that writing that comes off as more casual shouldn’t be considered offensive or unintelligent, even if it’s in an academic setting or workplace. But, I’d like to recognize that ‘standard’ English often changes in both grammar and vocabulary. I feel that grammar and the way we speak takes a big part in our lives, considering right now if I were to talk to someone in person, they would talk to me as if they are texting me and the way we text nowadays isn’t the most proper way to talk but, a fast way to communicate. This makes both sides of the argument seem very reasonable to me. So while I value English grammar the way it is, I also value that it can evolve with us as a society.