Ken Macrorie The Poison Fish Analysis

Engfish *English

Professor Ken Macrorie is frustrated, and through his article “The Poison Fish” is willing to help college students become good writers instead of using phony and pretentious language to impress their teachers. He names this language, Engfish through his frustration of the use of the phony language he explains why it is bad, and then with an optimistic tone gives hsi college students a way to become great writers .

The first three pages of Macrories article are to give examples of this newly defined “language” Engfish, and explain why it is bad. Macrorie is a college professor that struggles with the way his students write, he gives their type of writing a name. “ Pure Engfish undefined, a tongue never spoken outside the walls.”(Macrorie298). Meaning that college students usually only want to please their teachers and think that using pretentious,confusing and phony language will help them get a good grade on an

Macrorie has hope that with the steps he provided college students will be more inclined to try and improve their writing. The steps go from “ Writing Freely without a focus” to “ Writing Freely with a focus”. These steps give the audience some assurance that it’s not too difficult to change their writing skills. Writing freely without a focus is the first step, it calls the audience to take sometime out of their busy college lives and free write of ten minutes nonstop. This will help provide voice, by forcing yourself to write nonstop you give yourself no time for Engfish and lies. Macrories reviews a student who attempted ten minutes of free writing this is an excerpt from her writing , “Just one impression was the result, no heat or light or sound- all of them rolled into one impact when the torch set off the fumes.”(Macrorie302). The student accomplished everything Macrorie wanted to, the writer perfectly communicated the effect of an explosion in a short space and it made complete