[Englecturers] Fwd: Devoid of Content

[englecturers at lists.ucr.edu]

John--

Well, yeah, I disagree with Fish's claim that "merely" 
discussing (talking about and writing about) ideas will not 
likely lead to language awareness.  Certainly any good 
discussion of an idea depends on the language used to 
describe it--the good texts that provide complex and 
intriguing ideas always require looking closely and 
critically at the language and the "relationship's" (Fish's 
emphasis) of the words to each other.

But I tend to disagree with most of what Fish has had to say 
on lots of things--not that he is "wrong," but that in 
arguing his own idea he so quickly and nastily dismisses 
other possibilities--as if there is only ONE RIGHT WAY to do 
anything--and only he knows what that is!  Wrong!

I'm thinking of this only superficially right here really 
fast, but it seems to me that with a good text that provides 
a varity of possibilities for thinking about things, any 
good  instructor can do lots of things having to do with 
language; I'm not sure the reverse is true--I think the idea 
of having students create their own language is really 
cool,but I guess I would hate to see that be the only thing 
they do when they spend so little time in these courses.

Julie