Liu 1

Huazhang Liu (Arthur)

INQ NOTE 7
March 19th, 2015
You shall tie yourself to forms and the forms shall set you free (Fish 33).
I believe that this quote exhibits the central idea of this chapter of Stanley Fishs novel,
How to Write a Sentence. In this quote, the word, form is the key idea. In this chapter,
Stanley Fish illustrates his method to practice writing sentences, which is to concentrating on
thinking about the forms of the sentences. The forms he mentions are not the writing parts
or some sentences in the paragraphs or essays. In his point of views, these forms represents
the logic and the rhetoric ways when people write their own sentences. The numbers of the
forms are limited. As long as people are familiar wit these logic and rhetoric forms,
people are able to write some good sentences, which are long, suitable and also accurate to
express their ideas or thoughts in their mind.
I totally agree with the idea or the way that Stanley Fish recommended in his novel.
When I read the part of this chapter, in which Stanley Fish provides an example to show the
form that he says in this chapter. Fish uses four time zones, which are past perfect, past,
present and future, to make one sentence. He shows the way he thinks about this sentence,
thinks about how to write and how to begin. He begins with the past tense and then thinks
about what happened before that and then think about the present and the future. In one
sentence, he illustrates the whole information about the actions of the characters in this
sentence. It makes me feel satisfied since I do not find out anything else that I wan to know.
This sentence sounds confortable since it provides enough information and it is much easier
for readers to understand.
This example reminds me some English writing practice that I did when I was in middle
school in China. In order to practice tenses, we write sentences in a group one by one and
make one sentence long but filled in enough information about our ideas. This activity was
helpful because as long as we understand how to write a long sentence, we understand how to
analyze some long but important sentences in our reading, and we also understand how to
express our ideas in English more logic. In this case, when I read the next example that he
gives, which is Had I, It also reminds me that we practice many phrase and forms so that
we can use them to illustrate our own ideas and make our own sentences in this phrases and
forms since we are really familiar with them.
At the beginning of this chapter, Stanley Fish mentions that when people write something
and express their ideas, they need to find out the basic issue, not concentrate on the previous
goal that they want to talk about. In this way, they are able to reach the eventually goal that
they made before. In this case, he introduces the method about forms, which is the basic
issue to think about a sentence. In order to write a good sentence, people need to think about
the forms first and then illustrate their ideas. Therefore, I believe I begin to practice the
method that Stanley Fish says in this chapter.
Hence, I come up with a discussing question: what writing methods do we have when we
learn English in the past? Or what writing methods that our teachers taught us?
Another question is that what is the method to write a GOOD sentence?