Good Academic Conversation Essay Example

The aim of this research is to introduce is to successfully introduce academic conversations to learners. From talking to individual participation the teachers encourage students to talk and learn from each other. From studies conducted by many researchers’ academic discussions help students’ to increase their understanding on the content and also improve their reasoning. When the students independently hold these conversations it becomes easy for them to understand the content. Students can engage in discussions through talk moves where students engage in academic conversations through talk moves. They practice this by agreeing with what others and asking questions.
The students can also participate in this conversation through participation protocol which encourages most students to actively participate in these discussions. The use of Socratic seminars inspires students’ complex texts to make it easier for them to understand the content. By using videos and notes students will be able to think how they held the discussions and they can now work to improve their participation.

Claim that addresses the problem of academic discussion and its solutions.

According to two authors, Stanley Fish and Vershawn Ashanti academic discussion has many limitations one of them is that the students have not improved their writing skills because they try to sound academic. This problem can be resolved by writing and not discussions only in order to improve their writing skills. According to fish even the college students are not capable of writing well-structured English sentences. The solution is writing words with correct grammar and vocabulary.
Another problem of academic conversation is that they are very rare in classrooms because talk is dominated by the teacher and a few active students. Sometimes the students may only respond to the teachers questions. Even the curriculum has failed to train students on how to use conversation a way of leaning in our schools. To solve these problems the words must be elaborated for learners to understand, clarification is needed for those parts that are not clear, ideas should be supported and also challenged. Another way of reducing this problem is by encouraging students to participate in academic discussions when studying various subjects in school.
Another problem facing academic discussion is that there is little time in school to do these discussions since the students have a huge workload in the syllabus. Their syllabus is too wide hence they have little or no time for academic discussions. To solve these problem teachers should sacrifice little time at their disposal for these activities. The can also use time set aside for games for academic discussions.
Schools also lack enough learning materials that may enable the students to understand the content of what they have learned. This discourages the students and teachers who may be willing to participate in these discussions and thus they end up concentrating on other activities. To solve this problem schools should be given this learning materials in order to participate in this process.
Academic discussions focus mainly on reading and not writing which has made many unable to write well including university students. To correct this problem emphasis should be on writing rather than discussions. Writing is better than academic discussion because even information is documented compared to discussion that is oral in nature. To solve this problem diversification to writing is necessary.
Fish claims that college students are incompetent and thus can’t write well-structured English Sentences. He argues that while writing writes the correct grammar and vocabulary. On the other hand Young’s view is different from that of fish on the writing problems of students. He attributes this failure to the laxity of students who are afraid to sound like themselves. He believes that there is only one way of speaking or writing and everyone should use their own way of communicating. According to fish opinion he just wants students to be original in their work and stop imitating others. This will enable the learners to have good communication skills because they will have confidence in themselves. Of the three articles fish faces a lot of criticism because people have accused him of being arrogant and egoistic. He talks more about his self-achievements instead of concentrating on the issue at hand. It is clear from him that because he is an expert in writing he also thinks that the students and teachers also should be experts like him which is a bad notion. He does not want to believe that people have different capabilities and therefore wants to dictate people to be like him.
Wiley explains how many students rely on format thus hindering them from thinking out of the box. This makes them unable to express themselves freely and properly as they are used to formats. He seeks to diversify in the way of writing but the young people not only seek to diversify writing but also language writing. He discusses several topics without being biased and that is why he goes ahead and again explains how young people should be creative in their thinking so that they can be able to express themselves well.
In conclusion all the three articles have advantages and also shortcomings but they have opened the eyes of the learner more about our language diversity. It has also shown that the three scholars have greatly contributed to the development and improvement of English language. I also agree with Young and Wiley that there is no one correct way of writing and schools should teach students how to write Standard English.

Works Cited

Fish, Stanley. "What Should Colleges Teach?" Opinion - Stanley Fish Blog - NYTimes.com. The New York Times, 25 Aug. 2009. Web. 3 Feb. 2015.
Fish, Stanley. "What Should Colleges Teach? Part 2" Opinion - Stanley Fish Blog - NYTimes.com. The New York Times, 25 Aug. 2009. Web. 3 Feb. 2015.
Fish, Stanley. "What Should Colleges Teach? Part 3" Opinion - Stanley Fish Blog - NYTimes.com. The New York Times, 25 Aug. 2009. Web. 3 Feb. 2015.
Wiley, Mark. "The Popularity of Formulaic Writing (And Why We Need to Resist)." The English Journal 90.1, Teaching Writing in the Twenty-First Century (2000): 61-67. Web.
Young, Vershawn Ashanti. “Should Writers Use They Own English?” In Writing Centers and the New Racism: A Call for Sustainable Dialogue and Change. Eds. Laura Greenfield and Karen Rowan, 61-72.  Utah State Univ. Press (2011).