Yo boy this is where its at. check it... Now please read the following.

Engfish.

          Something about that term just gets me, and it is not because it is a misspelled word. Ken Macrorie's article pushed my buttons a little because the idea of not supporting the writing of the academy and the unavoidable formalism that accompanies it, is almost attempting to undermine the whole system of what we do. Writing about a subject that someone is passionate about and is really interested in is done from the heart, but there is a protocol for how to get that heartfelt subject across to other people. Being a journaler myself, I completely get the idea of writing be cathartic, but I would never attempt to publish a page of my journal (with its obvious great academic value) just because it is full of my truth.
            Macrorie's whole push back against formalism and the discipline of 'drill and kill' night have been good for his moment in time (I was not there so it it just a guess) but to apply "free writing" to today's classrooms would be very dangerous. I think that if we were to employ writing that is written freely and expressively from the heart, the "English" that our students would deem acceptable would be text language, nonsensical abbreviations, slang, curse words, and the like that we teachers would cringe over while we read their papers. I don't know about you, but I do not want to have to go to urbandictionary.com or google for every other word in a paper and have to reward that paper regardless of errors with a good grade because of where it hit on the truth-o-meter. Now while this might be taking Macrorie's ideas too far, the more we do not enforce the standards of academic writing, the more and more we will stay frustrated at what students are producing and thus what they are capable of creating. There is a growing process in learning the craft of writing; while it may be painful at times when we are stretched beyond what is comfortable and secure, the benefit to the writing after being challenge to write in a new way, the way of published writers, is worth the momentary suffering. From what I read and what we talked about him in class, it seems like Macrorie would be a great place to begin with to originate good ideas as a jumping off point, but then leaving him behind when the real, analytical writing begins.