The gist of Fish's argument, unless I'm hearing only what I want to hear, is
that structure creates meaning.  I am in full agreement.

For example, I give my students a little bit more than Fish gives his.
Instead of just the sujbect or the predicate, I provide both, such as "the
baby cried."  The results, however, are similar.  Simply by using standard
grammatical constructions - primarily simple adverbs, prepositional phrases,
and dependent clauses - students can actually construct an entire story.

The opposite of this approach - waiting for the muse to strike before
creating meaning - rarely seems to work.  Next time, I think I'll try just
the subject or the predicate and see what happens.  However, my students are
a long way away from creating their own language.

Geoff Layton

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