Interesting article from Inside Higher Ed. "Fooling the College Board" -- about how teaching students formulaic approaches to writing only helps to them into erudite-sounding, fallacy-spouting automatons -- er -- at least that's my editorialized, highly-biased take on it.

insidehighered.com/news/200...6/writing
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  • Yeah, I responded to this on higher ed yesterday (I'm the comment from "Melissa").

    I can't tell you how many times I've told students...great, you're trying to sound academic. Problem is, you've said exactly NOTHING.
    • Exactly!! I always tell my students: "Look, if Hemingway can move grown men to tears using short words and clear, simple sentences, what does that tell you? You don't *need* to use big words to write well. If you aren't sure about a word, don't use it: even if it sounds 'pretty.'"

      grumble grumble ... and ANOTHER thing ... I swear ... I want to wring whoever it was at Microsoft who thought it was a grand idea to make the Thesaurus such a tempting, easy tool in Word. Just because words are listed in the Thesaurus doesn't necessarily mean they are all equally interchangeable!
      • Oh, lord, thesaurus finger is the bane of my existence. I had one gal who used "intercession" as a synonym for "intervention" --- when talking about JS Mill --- and repeatedly wrote things like this: (note, this is taken verbatim from her paper) "When intercessing in another country, the people of the country intercessing should make sure they have a criteria for going intervening."

        What the hell does that say, and when did criteria become singular? I also had another student who argued that presidents declare war all by themselves. Okay, I don't do political science, and even I know that's wrong!

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