Devoid of Content

The article Devoid of Content, written by Stanley Fish, was published on 2005. In this article, the author Stanley Fish persisted the idea that the form is much more important than content. By demonstrating how students performs better skills after learning forms, Stanley argued that students should refrain from spending too much effort on forms, in stead, they should focus more on the forms.
In first paragraph, leading in his idea by putting a common scene on the screen, Stanley Fish used high school graduates as the reference group to display the importance of forms. He then brought up an idea that the majority of those students failed to write a well-structured sentence in English because of the lack of knowledge in writing forms.
Following by using his freshman writing class as a persuasive example, Stanley then argues that his students, who he taught to create their own languages, have mainly mastered the relationship in writing forms at the end of the class. He then proposed his idea that the weakness of form will eventually result in the failure of expressing content. The misplacing of effort is the cause of poor quality writing. Stanley Fish believes the process of learning forms is replaced by going over ideas, arguments, namely content. He insists that students learning those content, which they perhaps already seen or known before, are a waste of time. He asserts that learning forms instead of contents can save students from the horn of this dilemma.
Same as what is described in the previous page, Stanley claimed that learning of forms makes students know better of the structure, and how the structure came from. As described in the previous page, “Content is a lure and a delusion, and it should be banished from the classroom. Form is the way.” (Page 1, Stanley Fish) Stanley mainly focuses on touring students and arose their understanding in the forms. By displaying examples of his students, their changes from not knowing forms to create their own