Welcome to our ENGL 300-001 grammar for teachers class!! This is going to be a fun course.
Let's jump in at the deep end right away: here's your first prompt - go to the following link
http://www.kristisiegel.com/engfish2.htm
Read the excerpt "The Poison Fish" from Ken Marcrorie's book Telling Writing.
It talks about ENGFISH, a common form of student writing that you will encounter during your future career as teachers.
Your task: write a short blog entry about your personal experience with ENGFISH - are you maybe student teaching already, and have seen it in your kids' writing? Did they serve you ENGFISH in their final exams when they wrote: "When I came into this class I knew nothing, but this semester I've learned so much; I owe it all to you, and you are a great teacher"?! Or did you produce ENGFISH texts yourself in certain situations? What do you think about the term? Does it work for you, or do you think it is inadequate? Or do you perhaps have a funny example of ENGFISH you want to share?
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- response to ENG fish
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16 comments:
How true! There have been plenty of times I have written what I think the professor wants. I have used my thesaurus to change my language just to make me sound smarter. I’m guilty as charged. What a hard habit this will be to break! Do teachers realize they force us into such Engfish. Fishing for words and a language not our own! Or do we create it for our own esteem to feel gratified?
It had never occurred to me that I may be speaking or writing in a different language than English. I thought I had trouble learning a foreign language. This article makes me wonder when my writing changed from English to Engfish. I wonder if I learned the same way the author said most other kids learn, teach themselves in order to impress teachers or professors. Or if there was just a time in my life when I began to think the more words I used in a sentence the better. As a journalist it is my goal to write as much as possible in as few words as possible. My editors and writing coach always tell me I am “wordy.” It’s something I’ve been working on for almost a year. I wonder if now, since I’ve read this article, I will be more aware of using unnecessary words.
Engfish is a way of writing that I am all too familiar with. It seems as though there was a long period of time in school where I was rewarded for this type of writing. Unfortunately, it has been a hard habit for me to break. It often slips into my papers and sentences. I can recognize it when reviewing other’s writing, but distinguishing it in my own is much more difficult. Many times I write in Engfish because it is what I believe my teachers want to see or read. This reading is going to help me to remember to analyze my writing and check for the common mistake of Engfish.
At first, I had no idea what the word “Engfish” meant, but after getting into the article, I realized that I had been reading and/or using the method for many years. I know what it is like to use big words and empty sentences to make a teacher happy and get the length of paper the assignment required. Even though I know this is not a good thing to do, at times I feel as if that is what has to be done. There are many teachers and professors who are more worried about the form in which the paper is written than the information, beliefs, or opinions. I know that being able to write in a formal format is extremely important, but when a student is being asked to write their own opinions and/or conclusions about research I believe that more attention should be paid to what the student is able to deduce.
I believe that that issue of “Engfish” reaches beyond grammar. Like you stated in your blog, many students simply write what they believe the teacher will want to hear; instead of writing down their own thoughts. “Oh, you are the best teacher in the world! Because of you I have a profound love for Charles Dickens!” In some instances, perhaps this may be true of a high school student. However, how many high school students actually tell the teacher that they didn’t learn everything, or that there was something that they didn’t understand? I remember one of my high school English classes in which the students were afraid to write their own ideas in their papers. Our teacher was a very tough grader, and it seemed that the only way to receive a good grade in her class was to basically, “tell the teacher what she wanted.” I admit, I fell into this pattern. In persuasive papers, I would take the side in which I believed my teacher would agree with, even though I didn’t agree with it. Looking back on that experience, I realized that even though I received an A in that class, I really didn’t learn anything. I never put any of my own ideas into the class. I never knew whether the teacher would have liked my ideas, because I was afraid to share them with her. I believe that students should be encouraged to express their own ideas in class and not be afraid of the teacher “tearing them down.” Similarly to the “Engfish” article in which students would grammatically write the way they thought their teachers wanted them to, I believe that some of the ideas students write on paper follow the same pattern. I think I would have learned more about myself in that English class if I had put my own thoughts onto paper. How will students ever learn to express themselves in the real world, if they are not able to do so in the classroom?
The article discusses the pretentious and phony language we often use when writing. It describes how we are trained from a young age to use fancy, overly descriptive words when the point could easily be made without them. The author uses the example of a third grader, untrained in “scholarly” English, who just writes about his experiences and how he feels about them.
The point Macrorie is trying to make is that true writing should come from the soul, not a textbook. When a writer separates himself from the rigid structure of formal language he can truly convey his thoughts and ideas. Even as I write this response I can see that breaking away from the old habits of structured English is easier said than done.
The value in understanding Macrorie’s analysis of “Engfish” is not necessarily in changing one’s own writing habits. Rather, it is a way to understand the writing of others. Reading is far more enjoyable when the author’s true emotions are conveyed than when it is nothing but a long stream of adverbs, adjectives, and five-syllable words.
We experience this phenomenon in our daily lives. Often, public speakers use fancy language to prove their credentials or legitimize their opinions. It works the other way as well. Politicians often use this understanding of English to speak to an audience which is often less educated than they. Being aware of this phenomenon allows us to break down communication barriers created by education level.
This is especially relevant for teachers, to whom this communication barrier is an everyday occurrence. They, as college-educated people, must ignore the tendency to look for the “Engfish” they have learned throughout their careers, because they are working with people who have a far lower education level than they do.
Until today, I had never heard about Engfish. It took me a little while to realize what it actually was. It is over fancy writing. After that realization it was easy to see that I have encountered Engfish quite often. I have seen it in my writing as well as that of others. I really think that I have done an effective job of curbing my own Enfish but it will take more analysis to be sure. It seems to me that that the answer to Engfish is writing the way that you speak. A qualification is needed though. As long as you speak proper English you should write as you speak. Engfish is the the excess of what the writer thinks is proper. I need to go back and analyze my writing.
I would have to say that I have indeed used Engfish on more than one occasion. However, it seems that as far as the written word is concerned, we are taught to write differently than we speak on a day to day basis. A lot of people think that they need to write as “better educated” individuals, so they add higher syllable words and break out the thesaurus to sound “educated” when writing. Of course we speak differently when conversing with friends than we write in educational assignments. In my opinion, we should strive to speak with more correct grammar and with larger vocabularies though. If you are writing a formal essay or research paper than you should not be using slang terms, but if you are asked to write a journal entry or asked to write a paragraph about how you feel about a certain topic then I would encourage “true speak”.
I’ll admit that a lot of the time I am a victim of Engfish. However, I will agree with the writer in that a lot of times the teacher doesn’t see that schools are telling students to write that way. Maybe the problem then is not that the students write that way, but that the teachers were taught to teach that way. Is it possible, in this same way, that teachers might not be being taught how to communicate properly? I once had a teacher my freshman year of high school who gave us an assignment to write an essay on study skills. How boring. I decided to do something fun with the assignment. I wrote an essay about study skills narrated by a fictional character interviewing different types of students on their study habits. I was very pleased with my work, confident as I handed it in. However, when I got it back, right in the margin it said, “-5 Too creative.” I was furious. However, I think I can now attribute this to the idea that teachers are not always certain how to convey their expectations to their students.
-bonnie bilyeu
Lindsay Buettner
I thought that the article on “Engfish” was interesting. In some ways it does not quite make sense to me but I can also understand what the article was relating to. I think that as students, we are taught to use English correctly and that it does begin to sound robotic and lifeless. Younger children have not been taught that poor grammar is a label associated with being uneducated so they are free to make mistakes when writing and use their imagination more. I thought the section about teachers reading the papers but not really reading them; just looking for grammatical errors was interesting and very true. In high school we had to write an intensive term paper that I worked on for four months and I ended with a “C” as my final grade because I had three grammatical errors. Each error was a 100 point deduction. It hadn’t mattered that I spent all my time researching and cramming the paper with as much information as possible. The only aspect my teacher cared about was proper grammar. I think a teacher’s job is to grade students on their writing content and not so much on their grammar.
When the idea of Engfish was presented to me I had no idea what it was, but after reading the article I can see that it is something that I do occasionally. I am not exactly sure what Engfish is still because the article didn’t give a good definition of the term. The examples in the article helped me to understand it a little more, but it will take further explaining and practice to fix my mistakes and those of my students. I believe that I have been guilty of using Engfish, however I am not sure when I have used it. Several of my teachers tell me that I need more detail or to explain something deeper which could be caused by my use of Engfish. I can definitely see where Engfish causes so many problems. It makes the work seem boring and uneventful. I do know that I have used Engfish and hopefully in the future I can fix my mistakes.
By: Stephanie Tillery
Amanda Yates
English
I now understand what Engfish is. I had never thought about how our schools were teaching us to write or even speak in such a way. In writing this way we are not expressing how we really feel about some topics. I thought it interesting that the author stated there is one difference between third graders writing and a college students writing, and that the third graders is simple. The words we use in writing are not simple, they are complex. They sometimes do not express the true meaning of what we feel or think. However, these complex words are used so that we can express what we think, without coming out and saying it bluntly.
Amy Mckenzie
“Engfish” is a writing style that comes across as being stuffy or pretentious. Because the writer sacrifices emotion for the sake of correct grammar, the reader does not relate to the text. “Engfish” is used by students because they model themselves after text books. Teachers also fail to make corrections or suggestions that enliven the students’ writing. Students believe that their teachers would not want them to include common, everyday language within their essays. By doing so, students miss a personal connection with their reader and their writing is often forgotten and unremarkable.
I have never heard of "Engfish" nor do I truly understand what it is really about. I guess I use "Engfish" in my writing, but I think I see it more when I proofread others papers. Often when I proofread I notice that people bog down their sentences with unnecessary words. The word I see most often used that is, in my belief the worst describing word ever is the word better. Using better to describe something does nothing but make me say to the writer, "Who says it is better?" So after reading the "Engfish" story I guess that I have been proof-reading "Engfish" and not knowing it.
This article about the term “ Engfish” is a good description of what causes many students to find English boring. Countless papers and writing assignments are done with little thought or contemplation by students; essentially their writing becomes like a formula or math problem. Along with the thoughtless monotony that becomes commonplace in writing without feeling, this article touches upon the notion of fancy and academic writing without any purpose. This is something that I feel is a problem within many honors programs in high school. It becomes easy to regurgitate fancy words to make sentences sound smart and witty, but it becomes harder to actually express your feelings, experiences, and purpose. This is understandable and often times, it feels like that is what will get you the good grade or review from your teacher. After all the years I have been in school, I still constantly struggle to avoid writing Engfish because of way that type of writing has been drilled into me by my teachers; changing the way we teach English students could help them avoid this nagging problem while also making English not the monotonous process that many people consider it as.
By Ti’erra Taylor
Engfish is a term that I have never heard before but while reading the article I got an better understanding of the word. I personally feel that time from time everyone by accident or intentionally talk engfish language or may even write in engfish.
While I was reading I often kept thinking about how I do this or that that was mention in the article such as writing papers, and summaries as if I were talking to another person verses writing for another person to understand. The article pointed out a good key point in how some textbooks even show the model of Engfish so how therefore, how can students get the correct understanding of grammar if it isn’t shown to them in a proper way?
Engfish is shown to us in two different ways by language and writing. I feel connected to the beginning of the reading because I have once before heard the words, “your writing is terrible so therefore you can’t become a teacher”. Hearing those kind of knocked me down but that’s what school is for, to learn and to master what you’re studying even if it takes a little discouragement.
The reading was good and also gave me a sense into how Engfish does need to change.
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