In this case, I don't mean "eduspeak," that quagmire of buzzwords and stolen terminology from other disciplines and professions. No, this is a story about English. It's not much of a secret that college graduates are abysmal writers. I don't mean that they have trouble with the nuances with MLA, APA, or Chicago standards or have a difficult time writing papers in a clear and fluid manner.
I'm going all the way back to the basics: parts of a sentence. I don't understand how students have been allowed to advance into college, and more specifically, into the education courses, when they can't easily identify the function of words within simple sentences. Should a person who wants to become a third or fourth grade teacher be able to quickly identify conjunctions and know the difference between pronouns and prepositions? From what I saw in my class, the answer is apparently, "Who cares?" Read the rest of this entry »
