David Macrorie uses an interesting term in his book TELLING WRITING:
ENGFISH. You can find the corresponding chapter from his book at http://www.kristisiegel.com/engfish2.htm
This is a special kind of English used by many people, including students, professors, and
textbook publishers...
For homework, post a comment on this blog about your personal experience with ENGFISH.
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As an English major, I am constantly being asked to write about subjects that are not interesting to me. I do find at times a lack of precision in my writing or using words to fill space. I have also proofread fellow students' work and found similar problems. To blame the poor writing style specifically on students is unfair in my opinion. I feel teachers are at fault as well. Some teacher are at fault because of generic writing assignments. Others are to blame because of promoting the Engfish writing style.
ReplyDeleteEngfish is the product of every teacher that did not have the drive or desire to teach their students "outside" the text book with material that perked the students' interest. Creative writing becomes obsolete or dimmed as a student progresses through their education because the assignments are monotonous. Instead of teaching descriptive words and sentence structure, teachers assign NUMEROUS papers with BORING topics that are graded and thrown to the side, never discussed or elaborated further. EngFish isn't the students' fault... completely, and yet it isn't the teachers' fault either. I feel that a greater emphasis of creative writing needs stressed at younger grade levels and more focus on such writing consistantly throughout a student's education.
ReplyDeleteComing from a journalism background, I can relate to the manner in which classroom English draws the lifeblood from most forms of literary expression. Most English teachers consider journalism to be the ginger-headed step-bastard of literature, but it just involves a different skill set. I knew a publisher in Wayne County who put out the most gossipy publication in southern Illinois. It appealed to the lowest common denominator and had circulation figures that were the envy of Little Egypt. He asked me once how I viewed his news product. I responded that his journalistic knowledge was so acute, he knew instinctively how to successfully break all its rules.
ReplyDeleteHe liked that.
Macrorie uses a grammatically-butchered piece as an example of writing that is superior to Engfish, but I doubt I would have read more than 5 sentences of that story if it wasn't assigned.
Engfish may be dull, but writers still need to know the rules before they can successfully break them. Engfish is part of the drill.
These are zit-faced teens writing this stuff. Don't expect them to come up with "A Clockwork Orange." Most of them would be ecstatic if they came out of English class with enough literary prowess to write a cover letter that lands them a job interview.
If they want to write for public consumption, they need to hone their skills and, sadly, Engfish happens.
I agree with the article that Engfish is difficult for the student because we're writing in a style that doesn't interest us. Writing in Engfish does make our papers seem bland and boring but we're blamed for it even though that is the style that we are taught to write in. I agree with the article in a sense that if we could be able to write in our own style, that the assignment would be more enjoyable for the student writing the assignment and the professor reading it.
ReplyDeleteOh Engfish. We all know it, we all do it, and we all have a love/hate relationship with it. It is almost impossible for me now to detect when I am writing Engfish when I get a topic that's uninteresting to me. It's just so incredibly hard to not beat around the bush and use dictionaries and the handy shift f7 cheat to sound "more intelligent." We've come to associate big words with intelligence, which is NOT the case. Most of the time people use big words like that they don't even know what they're saying.
ReplyDeleteI say we branch out. Teachers need to work with our interests, instead of imposing stale curriculum requirements on us!
I also agree that Engfish is difficult for the students, because we are often writing about boring topics that have nothing to do with what we care about. Being a political science major, I am often asked to write about court cases from over a hundred years ago. They cases are boring and really do not matter to me. I am constantly trying to find ways to rewrite sentences and make them longer. I also refer to the dictionary for a little extra help. I believe that if the teachers chose more interesting topics for us to write about, we would not write in Engfish. Also, I agree that some teachers are lazy and could do a better job of teaching.
ReplyDeleteI think just being a student in general,and throughout my educational career I have in countered Engfish. I remember my freshman year in college I was taking English 101 and one of the assignments was to write a essay analyzing a specific picture Ad out of a magazine. The teacher stressed in class how he wanted to see a great deal of specific description in our writing about the ad, from the colors, letter fonts, and the size of the letters.We also had to discuss why we thought the specific ad company used these things in the ad and the meaning behind it. Doing this was very hard for me, and very unnatural, because I felt I had to use big words, and make sure everything was spelled right, made sense, and all of my sentences had a natural flow. After completing my essay I felt it was dull, but was confident that was what the teacher wanted. I think teachers are in a way are doing a good thing by having us write in a certain way, because they are trying to prepare us for the professional world, and we can't write like third graders forever.
ReplyDeleteEngfish has become a common type of language for both high school and college students. Oftentimes, I believe that a student will use Engfish in order to sound more intelligent. Many students think that this is what their teacher wants to see on paper. I know from personal experience when writing a paper that I have looked through a thesauraus in order to find words that differed from the ones used in the originial piece, along with words that would make me appear smarter. I also believe that students will try to use Engfish within their papers in order to receieve a higher letter grade. This type of language is commonly used in research papers that have no significance to the writer. When most students have to write a paper about something that does not interest them, they use this type of language in order to avoid plagarism and meet page requirements. More teachers should avoid teaching Engfish and stressing the importance of it. Engfish tends to take away the creativity that many students would like to include in their work. I recently took English 119, Intro to Creative Writing, last semester. It was extremely hard for me to learn to write poems and short stories because I was guilty of being taught and using Engfish all throughout high school.
ReplyDeleteMy most memorable experience with Engfish came when I was preparing to take the ACT. Our English teacher would go over the persuasive essay portion of the test once a week, and all the tips she would give us were examples of Engfish. The one I remember the most is when she told us to use "conversely" when talking about the other side of our argument. She told us to use conversely because it made us sound smarter to the people grading that portion of the ACT. Growing up, teachers were always teaching students to write in Engfish. We were taught not to use our own voice, but to use the voice that sounded the most intelligent.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first started reading this, I had no idea what Macrorie was talking about. I think I get it though after finishing and mulling it over more though. It's something I never really thought about much before. I guess maybe I've become used to a sort of "professional" language and style of writing being in school as long as I have now. Engfish feels like a very common, but often invisible issue.
ReplyDeleteI recall through some teaching observations I did at schools where I'd grade students writing I'd see alot of this sort of thing: writing that was dead or seemed off, but lacked either few or no strong grammatical offenses. It kinda would baffle me, because I wanted to figure out what to do to improve and help that kind of writing and that student, but my mind made it seem mostly normal or correct, because I'm so used to it. I think a large issue is that we liek to focus on teaching things in a manner that is all about "correctness" and "being efficient", while shunning more creative stylings and manners of language.
Ha! I love it. I'm an english major I can't even hardly write this reply without having to fight off the 'engfish' urge. The 400 level poetry class I had last semester was the worst too. I had to write a couple 8 page papers on poems that were only a couple pages long...how else do you get through that besides 'engfish'? This article cracked me up thought because, as an english major, I guess I wear a name tag that says "Sure, I would love to proofread your paper and I am totally stoked that would ask me at the most inconvenient time", and it is usually in these peoples papers that you see 'engfish' at its worst.
ReplyDeleteI think this article should be read by every English teacher in the world. It expresses how I have been feeling for so long now. I feel that most teachers only want to read "Engfish" instead of the truth. They seem to think that the truth might not exist the way it is written on paper so they change the words and experiences to fit what they think in their minds are true. I hate when my teachers turn my papers into "Engfish" instead of what I have written to begin with. It takes my voice out of the paper and if thats the case there was no need in me writing the paper to begin with. This article is true on some many levels not just for students writing "Engfish" but teachers changing students writing into "Engfish" because it makes the class and papers boring and useless. Like the article says it only makes the paper stink!
ReplyDeleteI agree with the article completely. As a journalism major, I feel that I use Engfish way too often in my writing and it makes it difficult to enjoy writing. I find myself using words I have never heard before to make myself sound smarter in papers or to make a paper longer. I feel that this article is the voice of all college students today.
ReplyDeleteEngfish is something I feel both the student and instructor believes that the other is looking for. Last semester, I had a paper worth 25% of my grade and if there was one grammar error you were docked one letter grade. I have never been so nervous about a paper before. I had over 5 friends make sure that the paper was grammatically perfect. While writing the paper I actually had trouble with the actual topic because I was so concerned with the grammar. Grammar is not something that gets mentioned so much after middle school in my opinion. I always use the thesaurus button.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the Engfish article. I understand that grammar is a very important part of the writing process but I feel that not enough emphasize is put on the actually content of the papers that are written. I have seen more of an effort to understand the content of my papers since entering college level courses. In the beginning of my academic career papers can be written grammatically correct and not be interesting. I feel this hurts us when we are first learning to write because we feel that the only way that we can achieve a grammatically correct paper is by being boring.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the article. So many students dislike English and writing and find the subject to be very boring. When it comes to writing papers or "themes" they are uninterested and therefore write something, Engfish, just to say it's done. I've done this many times when I've been uninterested in an assignment. My writing becomes very boring, but I'd just be glad to have it done. I'm certainly at fault when I do this, but not completely. I've never had a teacher make any comments about my paper being too bland or generic; they just proofread it and slap a grade on it. I think Engfish starts very early on in a child's life because teachers are more concerned with only grammar and spelling. To make students better writers teachers still need to concentrate on grammar and spelling, but also creativity.
ReplyDelete