Hello students,
This is our blog for posting the summaries of our class readings, and our reactions to them, or to our peers' responses.
During the course of this semester, each of you will do one summary that contains a short personal statement in the end about what you think of the reading, and nine responses. They will be graded for content and depth of thought.
You are welcome to include cartoons as long as you indicate where you got them from (to avoid copyright issues and plagiarism) by linking them to their source.
We will practice blogging in the computer room 3208 on Thursday, August 30th.
Below is an example of a summary for our first class reading, the ENGFISH text. I've left out the personal statement, because we are going to discuss this text together in class.
Summary of Chapter 1, “the poison fish,” from Ken Macrorie, Telling Writing
The chapter begins with an explanation of the coinage of the word “Engfish” - a college student deemed unfit to teach English by her professor wrote a critique about him in James Joyce’s style using messed-up English: “Eets too badly that you someday fright preach Engfish.”
The term was then employed by the author to describe the “phony, pretentious language of the schools” (Macrorie 12), the kind of language students write because they think it’s what their teachers want to hear. In reality, however, teachers are “fed up” with reading such texts.
Macrorie gives several examples from students’ writings in Engfish; thus, one student wrote sentences like “my impression was quite impressive,” or “the hustle and bustle was going on.” We can easily see that “Engfish” means to write mere “blah,” and to employ nice sounding words or idioms without understanding them, or using them in the wrong connotation. Another textual example shows that “Engfish” can also consist of abundant repetitions which use text as page filler. Engfish texts, according to the author’s definition, don’t employ a “fancy, academic language, but simple everyday words that say nothing …” (Macrorie 13). Such texts are quickly forgotten.
The chapter begins with an explanation of the coinage of the word “Engfish” - a college student deemed unfit to teach English by her professor wrote a critique about him in James Joyce’s style using messed-up English: “Eets too badly that you someday fright preach Engfish.”
The term was then employed by the author to describe the “phony, pretentious language of the schools” (Macrorie 12), the kind of language students write because they think it’s what their teachers want to hear. In reality, however, teachers are “fed up” with reading such texts.
Macrorie gives several examples from students’ writings in Engfish; thus, one student wrote sentences like “my impression was quite impressive,” or “the hustle and bustle was going on.” We can easily see that “Engfish” means to write mere “blah,” and to employ nice sounding words or idioms without understanding them, or using them in the wrong connotation. Another textual example shows that “Engfish” can also consist of abundant repetitions which use text as page filler. Engfish texts, according to the author’s definition, don’t employ a “fancy, academic language, but simple everyday words that say nothing …” (Macrorie 13). Such texts are quickly forgotten.
However, it’s not only students who use “Engfish.” It can happen to everybody, and “Engfish” can even be found in textbooks; for example, when they begin with statements such as “If you are a student who desires assistance in order to write effectively and fluently, then this textbook is written for you.” (Macrorie 13) The author argues that students think textbooks are unfailing, and a model for good language, so they give the teacher precisely that language they are fed with through their textbooks.
Macrorie mentions a textual sample from a third-grader which – although clearly in faulty English – is written in a vivid voice, containing sharp and true pictures. He argues that college students have lost much of this original truth and sharpness, because they employ the extremely boring language they have learned all the years in school: Engfish. However, according to Macrorie, there is a way out of this dilemma.
3 comments:
(Beatrix, like the prostate cancer ad, is a left over from a summer course, but it services.) This article reminded me of my stint as a Job Corps volunteer in the early 80's. The refugees from Laos, Viet Nam and Cambodia were having culture shock all over again by learning English through SRAs written for grade schoolers in the 1960s. I didn't even recognize that America. So I started them writing their own journals after we read Updike's A & P. As soon as they realized that they could articulate their own stories in their own non-standard English and it would be valued, they were on fire to learn more. It was something that didn't have to live up to some Leave-It-To-Beaver overprocessed presentation of reality. They could succeed on their own terms. I was rewarded with some of the best stories I've ever been told.
Hi Lori,
Thanks for this very interesting contribution. I've also encountered the problem that in language arts, oftentimes, old-fashioned textbooks are used. For example, I've met Americans who spoke Goethe-German (that would be like a German conversing in Shakespearian English). It should make us ponder if our students still use maps on which there are the Berlin Wall, and the USSR... I think your teaching strategy of letting the students write in their own language was a very effective one. Alas, we cannot always accept non-standard English writings - we can VALUE them, but what about grading?
I was asked to work with several categories of "problem" students (not behavioral as much as "special cases"...like recent refugees, etc) Now, of course, there are various materials, both traditional and web-based, for these groups. So my anecdote is a bit dated. I was a supplemental teacher. My goal was to get them actively involved in their work...shake things up a bit...and after the kind of interaction that got the buzz of fluorescent lights out of their brains, we tackled their graded homework. I was mostly dealing with Asians and Pacific Islanders. Both cultures are formal in traditional classrooms. So the first thing I did was recreate "Wheel of Fortune" and have our resident Samoan football player be our Vanna White. Great fun! As to the stories...after we celebrated their content, some were eager to polish them up...keeping the non-standard English when it was a rhetorical asset. They could see the corrections as editing .
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