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 …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