43 thoughts on “The abyssmal Unfortunate current state Of, Writing”

1. I spend my work-days fixing disasters documents. I feel your pain. I doubt that any of the scientists I work with had any idea that their jobs would involve so much writing. Luckily, it gives me a lot of job security :-).

   By the way, if you take that degree and enter the world of technical writing, you can get paid much more than teaching.

2. Not to mention the inappropriate use of the apostrophe with simple plural nouns (or any word that just happens to end in s, for that matter).

   Allow me to introduce everyone to Bob’s Quick Guide to the Apostrophe, You Idiots.

3. I teach writing as well, and bang my head on the desk (not literally) over this type of issue.

   Actually, I have found that using Richard Lanham’s book “Revising Prose” in composition classrooms clears up a majority of style related issues.

4. Thanks for that link, Mike. I’ve forwarded it on to my fellow tech writers. I expect to see it printed and taped to doors around here very soon 😀

5. Naomi,

   As a writer who’s always struggled with a lot of the basic rules of writing I encourage you to err on the side of mercy when it comes to your students. I have yet to figure out the comma and I know a lot of strong writers who can’t spell or even capitalize. I’ve taken many writing classes and read many books on the subject and I’ve concluded that writing is something that can not be taught in the way so many other subjects are.

   This is not to say that I don’t think your chosen profession is a noble one. The writing teachers I had in college were huge influences on me, but what I think what they taught me most was how to practice writing, or the process of writing, and not specifically how to write.

   I believe that like every skill worth having writing is learned through practice. I feel like the best writing instructors teach their students how to practice perfectly. People will always argue about what is good writing, but I think everyone agrees that good writing will always be a function of the amount of time actually spent doing it. Every great writing teacher I ever had made us write and rewrite a lot, typically two to three times more than other instructors in the same course. Only in practicing writing did I ever learn to apply the time-tested principles I was hearing in class and realized they really did work.

   It’s also worth noting that constantly reading a wide variety of great writing is essential to developing skills as a writer as well.

   So those are my thoughts for what they’re worth. And by the way, in spite of your insecurity, I am certain that you are a wonderful writing instructor as it is abundantly clear to everyone that you are a great writer yourself. In fact, I’d love it if you gave me a few pointers.

6. This is always a refreshing read on the subject.

7. I’d say the biggest grammatical problem is the comma-splice in the middle, no?

   When I taught writing to college freshmen, I never once marked a paper down for grammatical errors (although I would occasionally indicate the errors). In fact, since the courses I taught were not evaluated with letter grades, I never marked a paper down for any particular reason, except to fail it outright. But I also never once found a paper that had really good content but really sucky grammar. It just didn’t happen. The students who could write fluently also had the best ideas, and articulated them most skillfully. The students who couldn’t write fluently also couldn’t think coherently about writing. I can thing of only one single exception to this from all my terms of teaching. I also never encountered a student who entered my course a bad writer and left my course a good writer. And I think I was a reasonably good teacher—or at least I got good evals. I don’t think the course was useless: I think it taught the fluent writers some new techniques and introduced them to the language of academic discourse. But I think it did very little to help non-fluent writers, and I came to the conclusion that writing is not a skill that can be taught, especially at the advanced age of 18 or 19.

   So that’s why I’m not a writing teacher! But I’m admiring and awestruck that gifted and dedicated teachers like you, Naomi, continue to enjoy it and choose it.

8. I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot from the other end: as a homeschooling mother about to launch a 7-year-old on the path to becoming a good writer. Some thoughts:

   (1) The current school of thought for most schools seems to be that if assign a lot of writing, the students will learn how to write. Personal journals seem to be a big favorite. According to every freshman composition teacher I know, this apparently doesn’t produce great writers.

   (2) Writing is an immensely complex task. You have to have an idea, shape the idea into words, and then get the words properly onto the paper (spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc.). We use a homeschooling methodology called classical education. It divides writing into many separate tasks and doesn’t really combine them until junior high. For example, we do handwriting, grammar from a textbook, narration (where I write down the child’s summary of something we have read), and dictation (I read a sentence that the child cannot see and he copies it). I’ll let you know in a decade whether this has worked.

   (3) I make very few spelling and grammatical errors (for important things–I tend to blog sloppily, distracted by children and time constraints). I believe correct mechanics can be taught. But my writing is generally wooden and dull. I read things that Rosalynde has written and I am filled with envy and heartache. I think the crafting of beautiful prose is a gift.

9. Naomi,

   According to my research it’s 98.4%, not 90%, who will use business writing rather than academic writing during their careers. Talk about a misplaced educational emphasis on academia’s part! More importantly, as I plod ahead with my thesis, my growing emphasis is on the idea that cultural contexts–genre specific discourse communities–determine what constitutes good writing. I’ll forgo the citation, but one author I’ve read sums it up nicely: “writing is integrally bound up with the contexts within which it occurs—integrally bound up in the sense that context is more than just the container or surround, the place or situation or conditions within which writing occurs; context enters into the act of writing in ways that define the goals and direction of writing, the very character, process, and constitution of writing.” What I’m finding is that academic and workplace cultures value so many diametrically opposed attributes in what they consider “good” writing that they are simply culturally incompatible. As such, better options for teaching “good” professional writing exist outside university English departments.

   I guess the fact that you’re posting again means you’re close to finishing. Congrats! You’re going to make a great teacher even if the system is fatally flawed.

10. I have to chime in with the lament on the abyssmal writing skills of our college grads. As a life-long bibliophile, I think the main reason why people aren’t good writers is that most people just don’t read books for fun anymore. That, and email and word processors with instant spell check and grammar check reduce writing to a formulaic exercise.

    I’m getting used to the “is it going to be on the test” question. I’m not even offended by it anymore. In fact, I usually preface most things by saying “this is an important concept that I will be looking for in grading your papers.” That usually keeps them interested (although the effectiveness seems to wear out by the end of the semester).

    Naomi – I’ve enjoyed your posts – hope you come back to visit soon!

11. danithew,

    Your link provided my laugh for the day.

    It sometimes feels like grad school is one long exercise in dying metaphors (if I read “Archimedean point” one more time I’ll scream), pretentious diction, meaningless words and so forth. Rather than a vain display of erudition, good writing should effectively communicate.

    Like Rosalynde, I have never marked a paper down for grammatical mistakes. While I do note egregious errors, I don’t think that it is my job as an instructor of Religion (not writing) to dwell on split infinitives and the like. I am more interested in the creativity of the ideas, the grasp a student has on the material, the strength of her arguments, etc.

    Unlike Rosalynde, however, I do think that writing can be taught. Besides my responsibilities as a TA, I’ve also been a fellow at Brown’s writing center. In the last two years I’ve seen dramatic improvements in some of the students I’ve tutored. Of course, whether their work improves depends a lot on why they come to the center. Some come because they want help getting an A on a particular paper. Others come wanting to learn how to become better writers. Those with the patience and desire really do improve over time. A semester (or quarter!) is too short a period to determine one’s influence as a teacher, but a year or more with the same students can make a big difference. I recently finished reading the dissertation of a friend I’ve been working with at the center for more than two years. Her consistent effort has resulted in nothing less than a new writing style.

    Naomi, I applaud your decision to withdraw from the bloggernacle and focus on your work. Best of luck finishing your thesis.

12. Good luck Naomi!!

13. My personal opinion is that good writing requires a *lot* of rewrites. Most students (myself included) do only a few superficial rewrites. Often that’s simply because of the demands of time as well as procrastinating the actual *writing* of papers until a few days before they are due. Unless a teacher forces rewrites, the students typically won’t do it. That means you don’t learn the skills to be a better writer.

14. Naomi,

    I deplore your decision to withdraw from the bloggernace and focus on your work.

    Davis

15. Clark –

    I tend to force a lot of rewrites, even forcing students to do in-class rewrites. This gets a lot of complaints, but the papers are always better written.

    One problem I find is that too many writing classes focus on content and ignore style. To counteract this, one could go the Stanley Fish route and ban content from the writing classroom (his basic writing classes have the students creating artificial languages). I don’t go quite that far, but I do think writing education in recent times focuses too heavily on content and not enough on stylistic matters (and I’m NOT talking about grammar and punctuation when I say “style”).

16. I love the story of how Benjamin Franklin learned to write by trying to mimick other people’s writing. Probably a good model to teach good writing. Although perhaps a tad too time intensive to work at the college level.

    Tied into this thread is my own worry about blogging. I write *a lot* all things considered. However as everyone knows the kind of writing one does on the internet bears more in common with speech than stylized writing. I often wonder just what these bad habits are doing to my writing skills. Anyone else worry about that?

    On the one hand, the mere fact I write so much gives me the advantage over the typical American. Well the typical American outside of academia. But on the other hand it’s not necessarily the best writing and encourages bad habits.

17. I never passed an English class in High School, and I never took an English class in college. Instead, I learned how to write doing three things:

    1. Write a lot. You’ve got to do it poorly before you can do it well. Most colleges require too little writing. At BYU, I never had more than 7 assignments to write papers in one semester. I got so bored that I wrote most of my friends papers just for fun. After BYU kicked me out, I went to a real college, and the slowest semester I saw had 13 (long) papers. Even “BIO 101: Intro to Biology for Non-majors” assigned two papers. Some of my classes assigned 7 to 10 papers–more than the combined total at BYU. Writing this much and this often made me a both a better writer and a better thinker.

    2. Read good writers. Take writers that you like, and figure out what you like about them. Analyze the characteristics of their writing–and I was a liberal arts major (viz., philosophy). You’ll pick up small things, and over time they’ll add up. I learned from Bertrand Russell that it is often effective to make long lists separated only by conjunctions (no commas) and sometimes effective to make lists that contain no conjunctions whatever. I learned from Rudolph Carnap to find a few brief ways to restate complex formulations instead of seeking a single, monolithic statement. I learned from A. J. Ayer that it is best to save overstatement until after one has made the strongest, most dispassionate argument that he can muster. I learned from George Will to front load my paragraphs so that it will still make sense when readers skip large sections. I actually learned a lot more from each of these writers and many others, but you get the idea.

    3. Master the writing formulae. At BYU, I TA’d a 400 level psychology class where I graded an essay question that began, “Compare and contrast…” Only 2 out of the 90 papers I graded actually wrote compare and contrast essays, although it’s one of the most basic writing formulae out there. That’s pretty sad. Formulae are your friends, because they provide the basic framework for creative variation.

18. It really depends upon the classes you pick at BYU. I know I had one class where I had about 14 papers to write.

19. Good writing is a skill that can and should be mastered long before college. It’s mostly the result of extensive reading out of the best books. Most people will absorb a little style, a little logic, and even a littles sense of formal structure, if they are exposed to writings exhibiting those properties. One can even discipline one’s thoughts to such an extent that rewrites become largely unnecessary, unless one is polishing some sort of literary jewel.

20. Well, in the olden days when Rhetoric and Classical Languages ruled the systems of higher (and lower) education, writing was taught by modeling other writers.

    During the Renaissance, there was a huge debate about Cicero – most learned men (it was mostly men) argued that since Cicero wrote the best of all classical authors, everyone should imitate his style. In the 18th century, if you read Adam Smith’s and Hugh Blair’s Lecutures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres you can see that their advice on writing boils down to: Read lots of good writers and when you write, imitate what you read.

    But, as Clark said, its a bit time intesive and hard to do in a single semester, especially when the college requires 4 papers and X number of other assignments.

21. I completely agree with DKL.

    /scurries off to build fallout shelter/

22. Random thoughts:

    I bailed out of a PhD program in English in part because I discovered that the heady experience of helping a student find his or her voice occured so infrequently that the drudgery of working with a group of largely indifferent undergraduate population with marginal writing skills (at a top-flight institution, no less) ultimately outweighed the joys.

    I’m not a terrific writer, but I can put together a reasonably cogent argument when necessary, and I can recognize quality when I read it. One of the great attractions of the bloggernacle to me is the relatively high quality of writing throughout, compared to other internet communities I participate in.

    Generally I refrain from correcting other people’s grammar and spelling, especially online, but I often forward the Bob the Angry Flower link to friends when appropriate. I also enjoy Strong Bad’s takes on writing an English paper and common grammar mistakes (click on the beefy arm at the end of the cartoon.)

23. I think the best thing you can do to help someone become a better writer is to just get them to feel the difference between good and bad writing. I know I need to rewrite something when it’s painful to read it out loud, or when reading it after a day or two makes me say “what??” It took me about two seconds to say “the problem with that sentence is that I hate reading it,” but a lot longer to find all the problems (and you listed two I didn’t notice.) Usually I find myself comparing people to writers like C.S. Lewis (a better pick than most of my other favorite authors, since he’s fairly concise and nearly always says things exactly the way he means them, and you can almost always tell what his sentences are trying to tell you.)

    And… I’m not sure it’s possible to *teach* good writing, though I’m quite certain it’s possible to learn it. Good writing is like cooking or good driving, in the sense that the essence of what you’re doing is in the doing, not what you think about it. Yes, you need to pay attention, and yes, you need to follow the rules and put in the right ingredients (or shift at the right times) but it’s something you have to do a lot to get good at it. Writing a lot helps the most, and having a teacher to point things out to you can make your bad writing better and good writing great. I recommend choosing the worst and best excerpts from previous semesters and reading them out loud, asking the class what they think. Maybe add some stuff from other sources (you can find wretched writing in textbooks, I’m sure — and good writing may not come in large doses, but there’s a lot already out there) and see if they can tell the difference. Is this good, or bad — and was it written by someone who got a C- in English last Spring, or someone who gets paid $20,000 in advance just for turning something in to his publisher?

    In my experiences as an undergrad, 85-95% of my peers had next to no real practice with serious writing. It wasn’t that they didn’t know the meaning of the word precis, it was that they’d never been asked to compare and contrast any two things for 1500 or more words. In almost every situation I had to do group work in, my teammates would make me write the final presentation. More depressingly, I wrote a paper for one 500-level class at 3am (it was due at 9:30am,) never got a chance to edit it, and was told by the TA it was not just the best paper in the class, but the best paper she’d ever graded (she marked me down for going 5 pages over the maximum length, though.) And the paper wasn’t even that good.

24. Clark, I started out at BYU taking the classes from my major and minor (philosophy and humanities), and completed (or very nearly completed–I’d have to review my transcript [if BYU will ever release it] and the requirements to be sure) both my major and minor before I took more than 2 or 3 general education classes. So when I talk about total paper load, I’m talking about junior and senior level classes. The class for which I had to do the most writing was Faulconer’s Hegel class, for which I had to turn in more than 200 pages of organized, typed notes on Hippolyte’s book on Hegel (or was it Werner Marx’s? I can’t remember, and studying Hegel’s a waste of time anyway). Though writing and organizing these notes was a good and fruitful exercise, it was not the same as writing a paper. In general, the classes at BYU are pretty light weight. If my memory serves, here’s a pretty standard distribution of classes I took at Wabash:

    Carter’s class on Kant: 2 long papers
    Packard’s directed study on Davidson: 3 or 4 papers (I put together this curriculum)
    Rasmussen’s class on Hume: 1 long paper (maybe 2)
    Anderson’s class on Derrida: 1 long paper (maybe 2)
    Senior seminar in Humanities (romantic period): 1 long paper

    This is a joke, and you’ll not learn how to write terribly well this way unless you’re already quite talented. And (as you may well imagine) none of these classes had a heck of a lot of students. The humanities class had the most at 40 or so.

    After BYU kicked me out, the real college I went to required more papers than this in its introductory lab science courses for non-majors. Aside from the lab science courses which only required a few papers and my classes in ancient Greek which required none, I don’t remember a single course than required fewer than 6 ten page papers, a quantity that is quite high (based on my experience) for a BYU course even if you did once take one that required 14 papers. I’m not bragging that I’m such a great writer. And I think (from anecdotal evidence that I’ve heard) that the trend in colleges is to require less and less writing, so I’m not saying that BYU is uniquely bad in this respect. I am, however, saying that BYU is not good in this respect, no matter how many statistical outliers that you can point to with heavy paper loads.

    The bottom line: Colleges (like all educational institutions) generally do a much better job of making their students feel good about their education than actually educating them. Hence, the pandemic of bad writing.

25. In my preceding comment, the sentence introducing to the list of teachers, classes, and papers should read, “here’s a pretty standard distribution of classes I took at BYU:” (as evidenced by the fact that the list which follows names BYU professors)

26. DKL,

    Not only is that not pretty, I really doubt that it is a standard distribution. Are there any statisticians here?

27. I must admit that my first thought was, “I hope none of your (future) students ever read this.” Finding out that your professor finds your writing has “inflated, saccharine content” and meeting with me is “interminable, exhausting” kinda destroys any desire I might have to make it better.

    Like Melissa (#11), my views are shaped by working in the campus writing center. One particular memory is of a 4C’s conference where a professor gave a presentation stating essentially the same themes–he described reading freshman papers as “soul sucking.” When he realized that there were undergrads–even freshman, including one that called him on it–in the audience, he tried to backpedal.

    While I’m not arguing that it can be tough at times, I’m just pointing out that you never know who your audience is.

28. I do not even understand what Naomi is saying in her critique of the sentences. I went to a high school that was renown for its English program. However, they were so intimidating with their thick books and all of those pop quizes and ever eager red pens that I managed to avoid taking English and British Literature that I had some type of English every semester. I decided to try to make up for this deficiency in College and ended up getting a professor who belittled poetry and short stories, which were the crux of the course.

    majored in Communication, but looking at what DKL has said, I guess I did not even meet the minimal requirements for writing in my education. I am paranoid about my ability to use Grammar after taking Editing.

    Well, my younger sister was just promoted to a very responsible position in PR at a University. This job requires a lot of writing on a daily basis. I think her Grammar is even worse than mine. However, she does a very good at her work and thrives in such an environment. One of my favorite books is by Bill Bryson about the history of the English language. He points out that even in reputable books teaching the rules of standardized Grammar that there are errors. So I sez, give the rest of us a break if them folks make mistakes.

    I have a theory that to improve writing that we need to practice more at the sentence level rather than the paragraph or easy level and then work from there. I recall in about sixth-grade doing a lot of practice with sentences and sadly in some ways do not think I have evolved much beyond that point.

    I do not think that when I write that I consciously seek to copy anybody’s style. I just write according to the mood I am in at the time. I have a lot of trouble holding a lot of things in my working memory at one time. Yet, I am quick to call up anecdotes and episodic memories that may relate to what I hear. So I generally do not know what I am going to say until I finish. I guess that is why I ramble on so. 🙂

29. I really should proof read more! instead of that I took English ever semester–it should read though I took English every semester. Actually, I even took Business Communication one semester and had to write a lot of business letters. I did take short story and composition, and novel. I just worked it so that I did not take English or British literature. That was a huge mistake on my part!

30. DKL, my epistemology class required one paper each week, three major (10+ pages) papers with several rewrites approved by the professor plus a short quasi-paper on five questions, 1 – 3 paragraphs each. My freshman English had 7 – 10 papers varying between 2 – 5 pages each. (Shorter papers are, in my mind, actually harder to write and require a lot more rewriting) I was primarily a science and math major, so understandably we didn’t have as many papers. But one of my math classes required a paper. My other philosophy classes tended to require 3 – 5 major papers each. Also with rewrites. However my philosophy of language class required one short paper each week and then two major papers of about 10 pages.

    It all depends upon the classes. I’m not sure for non-writing classes having numerous papers is a good thing. But I do think having writing classes is a good thing.

    I wonder though if it isn’t like picking up computer programming, a lot of machine shop expertise and the like in physics. It’s something you’re expected to know and you’re expected to either take the classes on your own or learn it on your own. There was a technical writing class required for physics majors. Supposedly on how to write for a journal but since it was typically taught by English professors with no background in physics it was a joke and didn’t really teach very good writing. (Lots of papers for that class though, although Philosophy 311 actually fulfilled the requirement and I took that instead)

31. Just to add, the problem with too many papers is grading them. The professor simply doesn’t have the time to do so and make meaningful commentary/corrections. If you have a TA grading them then you have the same problem plus questions over the quality of grading.

32. Clark, the college I attended after BYU-expulsion didn’t even have TA’s. There were only 800 students, and the professors graded everything. BYU was where TA’s graded my papers (or I graded others’ papers as a TA), and there were many fewer for them to grade.

    At any rate, you’re comparing apples to oranges here, by choosing writting classes and your one 14 paper class as examples and thereby presenting a biased sample.

    As you know, your epistemology class was the exception (did you have Riddle? I looked at the text books for that one and decided that it wasn’t up my alley–Though I was a BYU “honors” student [which basically means nothing at all], I always paid the late registration penalty and added classes using add/drop cards. This freed me from worrying about room in classes or pre-requisites. Other people may have chosen their classes based on the teacher, but I seldom found my BYU classes to be worth attending at all–especially the morning ones. Thus, I often chose my classes when I was purchasing text books). And classes that teach writing always have more papers, but only 1 or 2 of them are required. I never even took a writing class (that requirement got lost somewhere when I transfered).

    Shorter papers can be more work, but it depends on how short and what type. A 10 page research paper is often harder, because you’ve got to do more research. But a 5 to 7 page argumentative paper can be harder, but only because if it’s not more focused, then it’s more obviously bad. If you’re writing really good 10, 15, or 25 page papers, then they are harder to write because you’re paring down 15, 25, or 35 pages into less space the same way a 5 page paper pares down a 10 pager. 3 page papers are barely even papers; they’re more like haiku.

    The more you write the easier it gets (other things being equal). With practice, you get to a point where you can shoot out an 10-12 page undergrad research paper in a day (3 hours of research + roughly 2-3 pages per hour) that is substantially higher quality than anything you used to be able to turn out in 3 days. (At my post-BYU expulsion college, you either did this or you failed out, because there wouldn’t be enough hours in a day to write the papers. But professors there actually acted like being a professor was a full-time job. Perhaps at BYU they’re too busy with church callings to actually put in 40+ hours like the rest of us working class stiffs).

33. I learned from Peggy Noonan this: the power of the colon in grabbing the reader’s attention and focusing it on the point you are trying to make.

34. I hope that my insecurities about my usage of English rules did not give the wrong impression. I believe in the study of Grammar and the practice of writing. I have never reached the level of knowledge of Naomi, but since I have a lot of time on my hands would like to increase my level of knowledge and may order books suggested here. With my background in Special Education of which I was at one time getting an emphasis in, I do feel that some people have difficulities in the area of syntax and semantics who may be very brilliant in other areas. Ironically, it was my background in Grammar that probably brought me into the LDS Church for I was tutoring an LDS class member after classes in the rudimentary rules that we had assignments in at the time. My Composition teacher was impressed when I received a 100 per cent on the test. Sadly, my competence there did not translate to stellar work in her class. Well, I was barely 18 and was not extremly synthesized in my thinking yet in some areas. I think that some people experience a lot of maturation after high school. I was a late bloomer. 🙂

35. I want DKL’s class load!

    I apparently took all the wrong classes at BYU. I had an experience more like Clark’s. One class (the Mormon Literature class) required short papers every week (I respect Gideon Burton because he was able to actually grad and respond to these papers on time) as well as several rewrites of the major paper at the end of the semester.

    Other classes had it spread out, but the average was 5 – 6 papers of varying length (generally longer by the end of the semsester) per semester.

    Until I got to Grad school, and then your entire grade depended upon one 20 – 30 page paper that you (in a perfect world) spent most of the entire semester working on (not counting the fivefold increase in reading load). But that’s standard, as it was the same at BYU and here at UT-Austin.

36. And I still can’t spell.

37. I honestly don’t believe any professor with 800 students and the writing load you mention is actually grading the papers. It’s almost a waste of time in a certain respect. Practice is great. But practice without meaningful feedback is merely habituating bad habits. I TAed and graded a lot at BYU and I know how long it took – both in essays and in math questions. My Dad amazingly graded every paper he handed out carefully and the week after an exam he did nothing but grade until late at night. You just can’t do the load you describe and grade it. I just don’t believe it.

    Also it wasn’t one class with 14 papers – it was two philosophy classes and an English class. I had one other English class with tons of reading (basically 2 – 3 novels a week) and then about 5 papers. Which I thought was a pretty big load. Not Chauncey Riddle big, but big.

    Anyway, I don’t think you can really have more than about 5 – 7 quality papers graded adequately. Perhaps short essays graded by a TA. But not the professor.

38. So, any (informed) comments on automated essay grading and its future impact on writing education in the US? I know just enough about the issue to get myself in a discussion on the subject — as someone who works in computational linguistics, I know basically how the technology works. I don’t know how it is being used. I do know it is becoming more widely used each year.

39. I didn’t learn about the process of writing–brainstorming, organizing ideas, writing, rewriting, rewriting, rewriting, etc.–until college, and that was a huge eye-opener for me. My kids have been taught all that stuff since grade school. But they’ve never really implemented it properly in their assignments, too lazy I guess. Or they just don’t really understand the use of it.

40. I agree with those who recommend omnivorous reading and persistent practice: in the long run, one’s writing will certainly improve. At the same time, deliberate, mechanical drills can help demystify the writing process. (One useful exercise that I was assigned in a BYU writing class was to come up with several sentences and then rewrite them in at least 10 different ways.) The notion that writing is a muse-inspired, you-can’t-put-in-what-God-left-out talent can be self-defeating. Students should learn that, more often than not, a mellifluous final product must be sculpted out in humdrum, workaday fashion.

    Having worked as an editor, I don’t think it’s too much to ask that university students master the basics of grammar and style. I haven’t taught writing per se, but I would certainly mark down for poor style in papers. Conventions of style may be arbitrary but–except for those brilliant enough not to need them–they are generally useful aids for articulating thoughts with care and precision. Good style and clear thinking don’t always travel together, but they are happiest in each other’s company.

41. I think automated essay grading is a crock myself.

    Such things can be useful as a tool, but only when done by someone competent who doesn’t use them as a crutch or worse.

42. Just a quick comment on a mostly dead post–Pris (#27), your comment made my heart stop. I thought for a second that you actually were the student whose paper I’d quoted from (her name was similar), and I felt absolutely TERRIBLE at having used you (her) as an anecdote rather than a person. The fact is, I love working with students. Yes, the conferences are long, and by the end of four hours of straight talking, I can’t put two words together without giggling or bursting into tears. I hope that my stamina increases as I get more experience teaching. And “saccharine content” didn’t refer to her paper but to those smooth looking ones that don’t actually say anything–the kind that I used to write at 3 a.m. to turn in at 9:30 a.m., for example. Anyway, thanks for pulling me up–ultimately we teach people, not a subject or even a skill, and the relationship with the person might be the most instructive part of the class. Thanks for your comments, all–I’m off to write a saccharine conclusion to my thesis (no really, I am–I have very low expectations for how this will turn out!)

43. Naomi – you’ll do well.

    I thought I’d throw in a non-academic post. And since I’m not in academia, only graduated with a BA – please don’t expect grammatical, spelling, contextual perfection in this post. I didn’t read a real book until the 4th grade (Thanks to my grandmother for throwing books at me until one stuck.) I was in remedial English classes until High School, and then simply kept up with the pack with barely passing grades. I took intro to Spanish twice, failed once, and got a D the second time.

    I struggled with the written word.

    When I was accepted to BYU (By the hair of my chinny-chin-chin, I have to admit.) I decided to major in business. My father was going to let me take over the family business if I came back with an MBA. I declared business my major and then found out from the MBA program that they wanted a ‘diversified student body’ and weren’t interested in admitting business majors. Hmmm… I knew I didn’t want to do anything with math, hated it. Also wasn’t very keen about science. So, due to elimination I declared my major as English. I then spent the next 5 years discovering the English language at BYU.

    Since college I’ve been in the financial industry (the family business went bust before I graduated), I’m an investment advisor. 10 years later, if I were to do it all over again – I wouldn’t change a thing. I’d graduate in English again in a heart beat. Language, the spoken and written word, communication in general is 100% of what I do. Painting a verbal image for my clients and helping them see what I want them to see. If I hadn’t studied English there’s no way I could be where I am today. Adam L is right.

    In our society today, one with skill over the spoken and written word has strength. This strength can lead them into almost any field and help them excel.

    I’m grateful for TA’s like Naomi that read and re-read my papers. Striking through the saccrine and highlighting the bright spots. I can’t say I’m a skilled writer, I’m sure that’s obvious by looking at this post. But I can say the study of the English language helped me catch the vision of ‘good writing’.

    Keep up the good work all of you. It’s worth it, you’re helping.

    Aside:
    As a parent I now see how important it is to read to your kids daily. I missed that as a youth. My parents, incredible people, simply didn’t know that simple truth. Thankfully we’ve got four little ones that truly love to read, and have since they could hold a book on my lap and ask me to read it to them.

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