<p>Yep. I get pretty bored of posters who want to talk about the decline of this that or the other thing. Why is your post complaining about writing any less quarrelsome? Particularly when you are in a position to DO something about it?</p>
<p>I’m not sure that I’m the quarrelsome one just because I don’t want to join in on bashing the kids… but instead want to look at the people being paid to … wait for it… teach them.</p>
<p>To be honest, I never thought I would learn someone with the online name “poetgrl” but today, I did. The thought of the OP actually trying to do something about a problem never occurred to me. I guess I was too busy trying to locate spelling errors.</p>
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<p>You don’t have to teach it to demand it be good or to include writing in your grading criteria. My students tell me their writing is fine because “none of their other” profs have a problem with it.</p>
<p>“I get pretty bored of posters who want to talk about the decline of this that or the other thing.”</p>
<p>That’s rich, considering your opinions on the decline of the humanities on another thread.</p>
<p>My opinion is of the same variety here. However, Katliamom, you never DID respond to the Harvard study we supplied you with on the other thread? I mean, really? Seriously?</p>
<p>Do you want me to provide evidence that my profs used to teach us how to write and the profs today do not?</p>
<p>My history teachers didn’t grade us for our writing, but they gave us back our marked up papers and said, “Revise.”</p>
<p>My daughter’s philosophy professor didn’t grade her down for her first paper, but she gave it back marked up and said, “Revise.” She gave it back again. by the time the class was over, my daughter, with her first rate mind (which the prof saw) could write incredibly well.</p>
<p>Then, she went to the next class where they, again, gave page requirements :rolleyes: and she had to put in all the stupid filler again. It’s ridiculous.</p>
<p>Perhaps the reason kids graduate college unable to write is because their professors can’t teach writing.</p>
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<p>I don’t teach creative writing, but I can see that if a writer wants a mimetic effect, then beginning sentences with a coordinating conjunction would make sense in some cases.</p>
<p>Honestly, there has been a precipitous decline in high-level literacy in the last 50 years. Even well-educated people have impoverished vocabularies and limited ability to recognize literary, artistic, biblical, and philosophical allusions. I don’t really see a solution, because people just don’t read much anymore. I have students with college-prep backgrounds who cannot, simply cannot, read a novel like Middlemarch, or even a popular page-turner like Bleak House. I don’t think that students who can’t read anything except contemporary idiom can ever learn to write well.</p>
<p>Maybe the rising generation just isn’t as smart as you guys… :rolleyes:</p>
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<p>the other things about this teacher sound weird, but fyi, some of my work is read by very high ranking (read: busy) individuals and we also subscribe to the idea that you don’t need a more complex word if a simple one does the job.</p>
<p>btw if your college students write like 5th graders, then they shouldn’t be in college (and most likely, the college you teach at shouldn’t be operating).</p>
<p>No. Young people are not dumber. They are just not reading. They watch things and listen to things. Traditional literacy is on the decline.</p>
<p>The SATS had to be recentered so that someone who scored a 740 in the verbal section in 1985 would get an 800 CW score today.</p>
<p>My oldest has a degree in biology.
But her college requires readin’ & writin’ for everyone.
She works as an editor, and loves it because she is always getting jobs sent to her that noone else wants to fool with.( or knows where to start, most likely)</p>
<p>I dont know if she would have gotten the same position if she had been an English major because her skill set would have been different.</p>
<p>I agree that the quantity & quality of reading material helps.
As socio-economic differences were mentioned earlier I should also mention that my D is first gen college, however even when she was in high school & I was the chair of the parent group, she often would clean up my work as I never learned to diagram a sentence because my vocabulary fooled my teachers into placing me into higher level courses in high school.</p>
<p>This combined with a lack of college prep advising put me into a community college at best track, because even when I attempted to learn a foreign language, not knowing basic grammar or punctuation made that impossible. ( I’ve tried to teach myself, doesn’t stick)</p>
<p>As even public schools are now introducing foreign languages to 6 yr olds and I’ve heard people say they’ve never really understood English grammar until they learned a 2nd language, I would actually expect students to be better writers than advertised.</p>
<p>My oldest has always loved language but even my youngest who didn’t learn to read till she was 8, ( dyslexia and other things that affect learning), wrote for her college magazine & newspaper and is a strong writer who has gotten even better in college.
She has always been encouraged to write. I appreciated that her elementary school practiced writing separately from penmanship.
She was able to dictate her work and focus on the writing, instead of perfectly spaced letters.</p>
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<p>The short answer is to not accept such kids into college. If they need remedial education, to repeat middle school and high school English, they should head to a community ‘college’.</p>
<p>I agree blue bayou.
They aren’t earning any favors if their basic skills are not at college level- since it sounds like then every thing is being “dumbed” down.
Paying college tuition for a remedial course?
Pretty spendy way to go.</p>
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<p>Isn’t the emphasis of many English departments an emphasis on literature more than writing and communication (though teaching frosh composition “pays the bills” for the department)? For example, consider the course offerings in an English department:</p>
<p>[General</a> Catalog - English Courses](<a href=“http://general-catalog.berkeley.edu/catalog/gcc_list_crse_req?p_dept_name=English&p_dept_cd=ENGLISH]General”>http://general-catalog.berkeley.edu/catalog/gcc_list_crse_req?p_dept_name=English&p_dept_cd=ENGLISH)</p>
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<p>Hmmm, wasn’t there was a thread a while ago about a high school student who wrote in a very terse and concise style that his high school English teachers did not like?</p>
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There’s something wrong with this sentence as well, but this particular issue may be a lost cause.</p>
<p>I wonder if perhaps clear writing needs to be taught in different ways than it was in the past. For example, I’ve often thought that it would help many students to be given more examples of what good college papers look like. This wasn’t really done in my day–is it more common now?</p>
<p>It was done in my day – but in high school. By college, anyone past English 101 was expected to write a decent, if not ‘good’ paper. But things may have changed since then.</p>
<p>The “papers” we wrote in my high school were pathetic, and it was a big wake-up call for me when I got to college. My kids, on the other hand, had to write much more substantive papers in their high school program, and were much better prepared for college writing than I was. That’s just my personal experience, but it does make me wonder if things have really gotten worse overall.</p>
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<p>How can you avoid it?</p>
<p>Many years ago, I was a teaching assistant, and I had to grade essay exams. Often, I had to give students poor grades because their answers were incredibly garbled. In many instances, the students knew the material, and I knew that they knew it. But if their answers didn’t actually include the information that the question asked for, I couldn’t give them credit.</p>
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<p>Maybe in 1852. ;)</p>