Friday, September 17, 2010
Macrorie and Crowley
After reading Macrorie and Crowley this week, I was most intrigued by the concept of "Engfish." It made we wonder if I have ever written "Engfish" before and if I still do. Because of the mixed message we get as students, I think it is very likely I wrote "Engfish" in high school. From a student's perspective, it often seems that "Engfish" is what teachers want and as students we try to mold our writing to every teacher's preference or whim. We do not notice that our voices have been completely lost in a piece of writing, that we do not know the meaning of half of the words we used, or that our writing sounds nothing like the way we speak. We simply hear the teacher say "write formally" and we translate that to mean "write Engfish." Also, as Macrorie points out, many textbooks use "Engfish" and students copy what they see. Luckily, somewhere along the way I found my "voice" in writing and am able to write formally and simply at the same time, while still sounding like myself. Overall, I found this article very interesting and plan to use some of Macrorie's tactics in the classroom to help my students avoid writing "Engfish."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Yeah, I found myself thinking about my own writing while reading Macrorie as well. Personally, I wrote "Engfish" well into my college career and I wish I had realized it far earlier than I did. I think some of Macrorie's tactics would be effective in the classroom to help students find their voice. The hard part is getting students to maintain their voice when doing formal assignments. I'd be interested in seeing how academic writing improves as students experiment with honest writing as opposed to "Engfish".
ReplyDeleteNot only did it make me think about writing Engfish, but reminded me of the times I definitely did and skated by. I agree with Alyssa in that I was probably a Sophomore/Junior in college and still doing it. It was a hard habit to break, because I feel that I was taught to do it that way as I was growing up to best please the standardized testing bs. It is easy to see the stark difference in my own writing when I went back and looked at some old, old papers compared to what I consider acceptable now.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure all of us have written Engfish at one time or another. Like you say, it's writing too formally for a more informal situational context, or loosing voice and conviction and belief in what one is saying due to worrying more about grades. So, the question is how do we help avoid this?
ReplyDeleteYes it is true that although students are given certain instructions at school level to write composition, every child builds on that given structure. Students do not exactly follow the rules the teachers give them anyway. Also, each student in the same class does not produce the same quality work even under the same rules. So there should be some basic structure or structures, but only to guide the students through their writing.
ReplyDelete