Let's jump in at the deep end right away: here's your first prompt, which will be homework for Wednesday, January 14th: 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 writings (AND textbook writings!!) that you will encounter during your future career as teachers.
Your task: write a short blog comment 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? Better suggestions? Or do you perhaps have a funny example of ENGFISH you want to share? How can its use be avoided?
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19 comments:
As students, we are asked all the time to write responses to the things we read and evaluate our teachers. It's so easy to do these in ENGFISH because you assume that that is what your professor wants. A lot of times it ends up being a bunch of generic sounding terms that are almost empty. We have been trained to do this forever! Shouldn't we be looking for more meaning and personal thought? We need to break this cycle!
-Julia Longueville and Sara Childers
Engfish huh....To tell you the truth I never really thought about it before. I'm not going to lie because I have tried to make myself look smarter by using big words and phrases. That never seemed to been penalized before so I never saw anything wrong with it. That makes me think as if the entire educational system was a fraud, just kidding. This new knowledge is good to know and now that I do I will be aware of it in my writing. I do like the name though Engfish, quite clever.
I never actually thought about "engfish" before. As a student in high school I would always try to toss words into my papers that I thought my teacher would want to see. I guess I still do it now. Most papers I have read or writen are pretty generic and lack personality and personal thought...but as students we are taught that what the teachers want is what will get us that good grade. If the papers I read and wrote weren't getting good grades I wouldn't continue to write in "engfish".
After reading this blog I have learned that I could be one of many students caught using "Engfish". Before reading this blog I had never heard of this term. Unknowingly when writing papers I would always look for "bigger" words that sounded more professional, this is what I thought the teacher wanted to hear! I will try not to do this anymore! :) This was a very interesting blog!
After attending public schools my entire life, I think I'm already fluent in Engfish. Too many of my classes have revolved around writing what I think the teacher wants to see. Research papers were some of the top offenders, applying the formula to reach five pages. I especially remember the teachers that encouraged students to write in their own individual 'voices.'
I have never once heard of this term "Engfish". Most of the people who have commented so far seem to be as unfamilar with this term as I am. As a result, I'm having a hard time getting on board the anti-Engfish train. Personally, I don't feel that writing is supposed to be simple. I like using words in my writing that are not common in our everday speech. I feel it adds something. However, if this is a real issue I would like to be more informed about how I would go about changing my writing. I have become accustomed to the way that I think that teachers want our writing to be and it will definitely be a challenge to change.
This blog struck me as interesting in more ways than one. Firstly, it is very true that as we age, we tend to lose track of what real writing is and tend to sramble drone, incoherent sentences mixed with many words simply taken from a Thesaurus. I am not sure, however, that the blame can always necessarily be placed on the writer, which segways into my next point. Many teachers simply do not read, but correct the work that the students provide. At a certain point, it almost seems vital to spoon feed teachers what they want to hear as opposed to actually putting themself into their writing. The mind of a 3rd grader is not tainted by years of schooling. Stress such as exams or perfect papers are foreign to a child at that age. 3rd graders are a simple specimen, and it is reflected in their writing.
The term “Engfish” is one in which I’ve never heard of before. I can remember back to high school and when it came time for me to turn in my papers I always would grab a thesaurus. I would always try to use the largest words I could find so that my papers would seem larger than what they really were. When I would get back those papers I had turned in I also would see the “bloody correction marks” all over my paper and I would begin to freak out or loose my cool. I laugh now thinking about that after reading this article on Engfish, I wish I could go back to some of my old teachers and see if they know about Engfish. It was a good article and definitely something I will think about in the future when it comes time to writing my papers.
I had never heard of "ENGFISH" before this article. However my senior english teacher makes me think of this. When we had to write a research paper everytime we handed it in, he would mark all over it and then hand the papers back for us to fix. By the time my research paper was done it had so many words that I did not understand and had no emotion into the paper that it was boring and complicated.
To be quite honest, I have never heard of the word "engfish". I'm sure looking back that I have used this in research papers, and probably everyday speech (only to impress). I can somewhat relate to the third graders language, because I have children of my own that speak that way. I can only laugh, because there are so many days that I feel like I'm on a child's level. Maybe the time spent at home with my kids has paid off. Perhaps, I should listen to them more closely to get some tips on writing. ;)
Honestly, Engfish was a term that I had never heard of until I read this article. I was suprised to a certian degree, only because I thought teachers would be happy that students would try to use "fancy" or "Big" words in a paper. Isn't that what the school system is going for?
I have always tried to make my phrases sound more intelligent by using better phrasing, and "fancy" words. Up until now I hadn't known that to some teachers it was a bad thing. Considering my writing isn't up to the level it should be (in my opinion) I understand why some writing to the public has to be skimmed down to a lower reading level.
Honestly, when I saw the word Engfish, I thought it was a spelling error. I've never seen the word or concept. However, now knowing what it is, I can say I'm guilty of using Engfish. In most situations, it's been in papers. Everyone wants to use bigger words to impress the teacher. In high school, my research teacher wanted me to use college level writing to prepare myself for future classes. It seems almost like a catch-22. If one uses bigger words to sound smarter, then one risks being accused of using Engfish. On the other hand, if one doesn't use the proper writing level (college), then one risks the chance of getting penalized. Because of that, I'm not entirely sure how to avoid it. Maybe if children are taught at a younger age to avoid Engfish, rather than now, it would be more beneficial.
I have never heard of the word Engfish, but I have mix feelings about the concept. I believe that Engfish does disturb the flow of the paper, and writer use Engfish to try to enhance the quality of their paper by using words they would normally not use. The teachers will mark up the paper full of correction when the paper doesn't flow or has grammatical errors. The Teacher had the intent of reading the paper and responding to it, but when it is full of errors it makes it hard to read . If I was an English teacher I would wanna focus on my students grammatical errors over the content of their book review or research paper, because when they do get to college teacher will expect you to write properly. I also feel that as we grow up and expand our knowledge we should also be expanding our vocabulary. This is what sets the writing of a high school student and college students apart from a 3rd graders. I do agree with Engfish when it applies to the fluff people use while writing. The example with the student describing downtown, and the journal entry are examples of writers trying to either elongate or make their paper sound more creative.I feel that Engfish has its positive and negatives, and is something I will start to look out for more often in my writing and in others writings.
Interesting!! This is the first time I've heard of the term "Engfish" and I confess... I am guilty of using it. I must say that throughout my education, I've been encouraged to use engfish. There have been more than enough instances in which I've used it, especially when writing essays, to try to sound like I'm really expressing myself. As a matter of fact, while writing this blog I've been making a conscious effort to not use engfish and believe me, it was different. Engfish makes it somewhat confusing as to what is the correct way of writing.
Engfish is a generic term and that is befitting for the subject it represents. It is true that often people clutter up their language and writing with big words that do not mean anything. The only purpose is to make the student/person sound smarter and in many cases teachers and professors eat it up and encourage this behavior. I know that I am personally guilty of doing this myself but in some cases poor grades are handed out without the use of engfish. It is a vicious cycle that hopefully can be broken by those who are aware of the problem.
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