Ken Macorie's Essay: The Poision Fish

The red pen marks over trivial grammatical errors, the demand for “purple words,” and the fancy language of textbooks are translating the writing of students into a language that hardly resembles English. This phony and pretentious “Engfish” language has become the primary language of schools, because teachers have unknowingly been training young writers to use it. Ken Macorie, a past editor and professor at multiple universities, witnessed this writing style firsthand and was able to define the problems that are characteristic of many students’ writing. Because he realized that this was a pressing issue across all colleges, Macorie covered the topic in an article titled The Poision Fish, in which he intended to inform teachers that they have impaired students’ abilities to let their natural voices be heard by turning writing into a pressured act to meet their expectations. He adopts a cautionary tone towards these educators in order to convince them that steps must be taken to teach writers to communicate their thoughts clearly. Macorie introduces his viewpoint by describing the way that faults in teaching have shaped this style of writing. He incorporates figurative language to identify the struggle that teachers have created for students when he says, “Students thoroughly trained in Engfish are hard put to find their natural voices in the classroom. They’ve left them out in the hall” (Para 8). Describing students as physically leaving their natural voices behind when they write emphasizes that they are only trying to give teachers what they are asking for by using Engfish. They are too afraid to let their voices shine through at risk of being graded harshly. Macorie illustrates this in the form of figurative language to signal to teachers that they are at the root of the problem. Macorie’s argument is developed throughout the article, as he provides the audience with proof that Engfish is a result of widespread teaching issues. …show more content…
He includes countless examples of the writing of college students, but what stands out is that he chose to use a 3rd grader’s writing as well: “I can play Huhwayun on my gettar. It is like when my grandma took a sick spell. Now she waz shut up tight as a jar with a lid on. She gave a scream. When she gave a scream that scream was high” (8). He follows up by saying that the difference between this and the writing of college students is that “one is dead and the other is alive. In the child's comments the words speak to the each other, [...but] in the Engfish paragraphs [...] the words almost never speak to each other, and when they do, they only say ‘Blah’” (9). The inclusion of these examples highlights the contrast between the writing style of children and college students, and provides teachers with undeniable evidence that a transition occurs at some point between elementary school and college. Following up this child’s writing with the vague and pretentious work of many college students makes it apparent to the reader that this is not just the shortcomings of a few students, or the laziness of a group of teachers. His examples prove that “Engfish” is a universal in schools, and teachers must be playing a part in its development. To wrap up his article, Macorie shifts from placing the blame on teachers to acknowledging the way that they might perceive his accusations. He proves to them that he