BS: Graduate students who can't write

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 14 Dec 07 - 01:59 AM

I was diagnosed at age 40 as having 'classic symptoms of' Micro Motor Disorder - acquired during the birth process - and had suffered with poor handwriting.

Now, the nice lady was able to demonstrate that it was 'classic', because in a totally silent room I could copy the most intriciate squiggles exactly. When she even just whispered my name in an ear, this accuracy would instantly dissapear. She said it was not unlike the ability of 'foot & mouth painters' who could summon other parts of the body to do tasks that they could not perform due to bodily damage - but with MMD, as soon as the cannabilised brain circuits needed to revert to their original tasks, the ability to perform the 'secondary tasks' vansihed.

This nicely explained WHY I was the despair of my primary school teachers, able to be 'looking like I was improving' while being 'kept in' after school, but reverting to unitelligible scribble the very next day. How the bloody hell was a child supposed to know what was wrong with him?

I can well remember being dragged out in front of the class and ridiculed for my 'chicken scratches' (well, we DID write with nibs and liquid ink in those days BEFORE 'Biros') - nowadays they would rightfully call that 'child abuse'...

Now the rest of my brain seems to have 'overcompensated' as I was Wasir tested (a couple of weeks before this - whic is WHY I was referred for this test as my only area of poor performance was in the 'clerical abilites' area) with a IQ at SD+5... :-)

I was however well schooled in Primary in pedantics of spelling, grammar, sentence construction, Latin & Greek roots, etc...

Yes, I know, a smart arsed untidy bastard...

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Fibula Mattock
Date: 14 Dec 07 - 03:58 AM

I teach graduate and undergraduate students. Postgraduate students are a big source of income for Universities here in the UK. For an overseas pgrad student their fees run to about £10,000 per student. Often we get people who have English as a second language. They are supposed to have passed a certificate in English. They do produce this at interview, but we have no way of telling if they sat the exam themselves or got someone else to do it for them (quite common, it seems).

I despair of many of my students' inability to express themselves through writing. Many of them email me using 'txt speak' and without signing their name. They add smilies to their emails. It's only 10 years since I was an undergraduate, buut I would never have been so informal when writing to an academic. I hope I'm not just being old-fashioned - I was at a training day yesterday with other young academics and we're all worried about it.

The system is not ideally set up for us to correct it though. Contrary to popular belief we do not have an easy life of 10 hours giving lectures a week and nothing else. The rest of my working week - which is frequently 50 or 60 hours long - is spent with final year dissertation students, pastoral care with our tutees, departmental administration roles, course management, and then the biggy - independently atteempting to generate thousands of pounds worth of grant money so we can do one of the main parts of our job: research.

I would love to be able to spend the time teaching grammar, spelling and basic literacy to students. As it is, I correct it on a basis of feedback. It's not enough, they ignore it, I get the same mistakes over and over again. Plagiarism is an even bigger problem - I spot plagiarised material about once a fortnight. That's despite dire warnings and a lot of education about how NOT to plagiarise.

The whole Higher Education system is flawed. Many students are on the conveyor belt degree system where they turn up and do the minimum so they can graduate and get a degree. Is it political? Are they all, as someone I spoke to yesterday described them, mini-Thatcherites who feel entitled to a degree a money making job straight after? Is that all they seek? I have a couple of students who actually want to learn and who enjoy their course and make a contribution. They're a joy.

The Labour government wants 50% of the population to have been through Higher Education. That is possibly the most stupid and devaluing thing I've heard from them.

Crap, I have to go to work now.
Oh well, it's the last day of term: I can finally start my research for this year.

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 14 Dec 07 - 05:41 AM

The standard of many school leavers is abysmal. When I was an employer, some of the job applications I received would make you weep.
Still, as there were so many applicants, it made the primary sorting of applicants easy, and it usually resulted in about 50% of them receiving a 'Thanks but no thanks' letter by return of post.
They should not be allowed to leave school until such times as they achieve basic literacy at the least.
G

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Slag
Date: 14 Dec 07 - 05:45 AM

There seems to be a strong consensus here which is heartening. My experience on the 'cat (whether pro or con on whatever the topic may be) is that the large majority of 'catters are intelligent and write well. Kudos!

Creative writing was my minor in college and a professor friend of mine invited me into his office one day and during the course of our conversation he handed to me about a ream of theme papers from a freshman composition class. I was stunned. Almost none of the papers had coherent sentences, proper paragraphing or logical structure. It seems to be a universal problem.

And yes, I would lay most of the blame on sub par teachers and the idea that it is better to pass the student along with his peers than to make sure that he has actually learned something. Appalling!

Words are the stuff of thought and tools of logic are necessary for sane thinking. Today, when a kid gets a diploma, it may just be furthering the delusion that he is educated. The ramifications of this problem are indeed far reaching and not just a little frightening. We (and I don't mean just any one nation) may be very technologically advanced and could still witness another "Dark Ages".

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: A Wandering Minstrel
Date: 14 Dec 07 - 08:23 AM

About half-a-lifetime ago I left teaching. One of my reasons for doing so was being roundly told off by a HM Inspector of schools for teaching a class on poetic metre. He also expressed to me quite clearly that the necessity of teaching grammatical parsing and the art of letter writing were less important than ensuring that "the children were able to express themselves in any form they saw fit without fear of censure".

Please don't blame the teachers. We tried and were shut down by the same politicians who were then pushing child-centred learning and now want to bring back phonics and cursive writing practice because they have re-discovered what we already knew. That it works!

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 14 Dec 07 - 08:29 AM

I suppose the kids that killed Jamie Bolger were just 'expressing themselves'
A lot more education and a lot less self expression I say.
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: alanabit
Date: 14 Dec 07 - 08:50 AM

John, while I agree with you that we expect school leavers to leave school with basic literacy, I am not persuaded that your remedy would work. Just try keeping bored sixteen year olds under control in a classroom, so that the others can do their work. Many teenagers would be better off getting (some sort of) work experience rather than wasting theirs and the shcool's time in the classroom. We can not force people to become literate, but we can make them aware of the consequences of being illiterate. A year or two of cleaning toilets, digging trenches or mopping up vomit and excrement might help somw young people to understand what some of the possible alternatives to having an education are.

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: GUEST,Seiri Omaar
Date: 14 Dec 07 - 08:52 AM

I remember seeing a paper posted to an undergrad English class discussion board by one of my classmates. My friend and I (both Communications students happening to be taking an English class) read through it together, and were always somewhere between hysterical laughter and actual physical pain at looking at such horrible writing.
Terrible sentence structure, terrible spelling, using the wrong words (STRAIGHT, not STRAIT!), and a terrible structure for the whole essay were featured in this case. Ick, ick, ick.
Cheers,
Seiri.

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: GUEST,HuwG at office
Date: 14 Dec 07 - 08:53 AM

I once read an appraisal of a work colleague's performance. The manager (ex-forces) had written, "I hope X never goes to prison. He simply cannot complete a sentence."

I have myself passed memoranda around an IT department, asking people not to use text-speak or bloglish in e-mails or other communications. "pls" might mean "please", or the author may have meant a multimedia playlist format, or a Programmable Logic Sequencer. I shouldn't have to submit a simple e-mail to detailed analysis to find out what the author is thinking even in general terms.

Information Technology is regrettably a poor place for clarity of verbal or written communications. I have a text book on the C++ computer language by Bjarne Stroustrup; after trying to read it, I filed it on my shelves alongside James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake", as being equally obscure.

Bert, a misplaced period ? I once submitted a shoebox full of punch cards as a COBOL program. The first one said "Idetification Division". Spot the deliberate error. The compiler certainly did; the error printout was two inches thick, and of course quite useless, since every single word was described as "Unrecognisable input; program structure not defined".

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 14 Dec 07 - 10:25 AM

Pedant alert:

The period or comma should go inside the quote, HuwG. :)

"Finnegans Wake",

. . . Wake,"

. . . defined."

etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 14 Dec 07 - 11:38 AM

SRS, that is apparently the convention, but it is open to misinterpretation, since teh full stop is not (I think) part of the quote. Further, if it is, then there is no full stop that is part of the text of the sentence to terminate the sentence.

I therefore breach that convention.

(or, for Americans, I think, "I, therefore, breach that convention.".)

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Peace
Date: 14 Dec 07 - 11:42 AM

I do too, Richard. SRS is correct, but that convention is one I can do without, much like the period after Mr or Mrs.

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Rapparee
Date: 14 Dec 07 - 01:16 PM

Them grat studens i no kin rite gud, like me. Unnergrat studens gif grat stutens a bd nm.

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: ClaireBear
Date: 14 Dec 07 - 01:32 PM

That punctuation-before-the-end-quote rule is for U.S. English; the rule is different for British English.

I am fairly up on this subject, as I spend rather a lot of my time translating from one to the other in the course of my work.

Claire

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 14 Dec 07 - 02:14 PM

I follow convention with quotes (SRS) but occasionally I put the (") inside (HuwG) because I get an impression that the quote and my sentence as a whole seem unclear. Some book publishers follow a system with single stroke quotes; I am unsure of their rules.

Some commas are necessary for clarity, others are there because of convention. Style manuals and grammarians now tend to eliminate the unnecessary ones.

Mr and Mrs seem to be common UK usage now, but the Mr.-Mrs. hang on in the U. S. and to some extent in Canada. I agree with Peace that they are unnecessary.

Many publishing houses have strict rules, and some publish their own style manuals. I have one for Harcourt Brace Jov. ("Harbrace College Handbook," which now is almost 30 years old) and others. These crutches are handy but no substitute to a good foundation.
I was an editor for a time with one journal (international) and also had to proof some papers from my company that were being submitted to a couple of American journals. For these, I had to eliminate UK usage. 'Recognise,' 'whilst, 'army are,' 'aluminium,' etc., had to be changed. Both UK and American 'languages' were acceptable to the international journal.

Looking back, it was evident that the writing skills of professional employees of the Company, mostly English Canadian but also Dutch, UK, American, etc., were high. (Careful selection by staff and recruiters?)
Attached to the Library support group was a dragon who read and corrected papers submitted for in-company publication and was a great help when preparing papers for journals. Most of her work consisted of eliminating repetition and fine tuning. I don't recall many complaints about incomprehensibility. Spelling was generally good but some had trouble with words ending in -or and -er or similar small problems.

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: GUEST,Murray on Saltspring
Date: 14 Dec 07 - 09:47 PM

Part of the problem seems to be that folk are curiously reluctant to give a failing grade. Why should this be? If they don't graduate, then tough.

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: number 6
Date: 14 Dec 07 - 09:52 PM

"That punctuation-before-the-end-quote rule is for U.S. English; the rule is different for British English."

That's what I was taught in high school.

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: bobad
Date: 14 Dec 07 - 10:21 PM

I think it is those kind of conventions that lead to the pushing of child-centered learning.

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Slag
Date: 14 Dec 07 - 10:42 PM

Ah, the Americans and the English, two peoples separated by a common language. Who said that? Winnie? Can't remember. Wilde?

Freedom's foundation is based upon certain inalienable rights. If you don't know your rights, you have no rights. If you cannot read, how can you know your rights? If you want to destroy a people attack their education at the most fundamental and earliest level.

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Rowan
Date: 14 Dec 07 - 10:45 PM

The various versions of Micro$oft Word that I've used allow one to select which convention is accepted by default. As a user in Oz I've learned to root out all the US versions of dictionaries if I wish to type undistracted by attempts to change my usage. It's not much good substituting (what Micro$oft calls) "Australian English" either, as the programmers seem to believe we're all honorary Americans. I have to select "UK English" to achieve some accord with what I was taught at school, where I was also taught to honour conventions until and unless they led to confusion, when they were to be avoided.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 15 Dec 07 - 12:00 AM

Rowan- I just got a new computer, and it put me into something called Winword. All of my old stuff is in Word. I don't know what English is built in to it, but it doesn't like either my punctuation or grammar. Lots of underscores. I had tamed my old Word pretty well to my brand of the American language.
Comment by number 6- I think his high school may have "done him wrong." I buy a lot of books, some printed in UK, some in Canada and some in USA.
The quotations in tbe UK books are usually enclosed by a single (') rather than by (").
Example- 'It means you can have it in both ways.' Pike held Peel's formidable stare. 'Find out what I know and keep an eye on me at the same time.' Typeset at Lymington, Hants. The marks are outside the stop just as they are in books printed in USA and Canada, but marks are single.

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Rowan
Date: 15 Dec 07 - 12:11 AM

G'day Q,
The convention I learned about quotation marks required double marks for exact quotes; one could use square brackets for inserted words of an explanatory nature and ellipses to indicate omissions. [On Mudcat many people seem to prefer italics for exact quotes and they do seem to be more easily discerned when lenghty.] Single quotation marks were used to indicate approximated quotations and/or allusions, 'so to speak'.

Best of luck with your retraining.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: katlaughing
Date: 15 Dec 07 - 12:50 AM

I've posted before about the grading I did for a high school English department. The experienced teachers welcomed my meticulous notations on the children's essays; it was the brand-new, first year teacher who had a cow and refused to even hand them back to her students saying they would be devastated by all of the red marks. She didn't even notice that I included some kind of positive remark or suggestion on each one, to encourage them to improve, progress, etc. This was at the beginning of the school year so they ahd plenty of time to do so. When I called the head of the English dept. at the college, he told me they routinely had freshmen students who couldn't write to save their lives.

Now that I am vetting manuscripts, mostly fiction, I am finding it runs the gamut of well-written to really poor attempts.

I know of some schools which are returning to what they call a "Classical" education which teaches much as they did when I was in school. Unfortunately for some of us, where we are, most of them are fundamentalist Christian-based schools. To each his own, just not my cup of tea.

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Emma B
Date: 15 Dec 07 - 05:58 AM

Language and grammar both 'evolve'

Current practice in UK English is to use single quoatation marks.

'The news is bad,' he said.

Although 'The news is bad' forms a complete sentance in itself, it is not ended with a full stop because it is here part of the larger sentence ending with 'said'.

- an example of modern English usuage from The Cassell 'Guide to Common Errors in English'

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Emma B
Date: 15 Dec 07 - 07:21 AM

ooops! I think my rather 'personal' spelling style must reveal my life long battle with dyslexia.

Nevertheless, I hope I have not found this a barrier to constructing well formed, intelligible reports although I confess to having access to audio typists during and after my professional training.

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Riginslinger
Date: 15 Dec 07 - 09:43 AM

When I was teaching English at a community college, I was encouraged to spend more time on oral presentations. "Industry wants people who can speak in public," I was told by the administration. "They are less concerned about writing abilities."

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Peace
Date: 15 Dec 07 - 03:47 PM

English is confusing enough without adding to the confusion by not learning various conventions of the written language. We talk in a time when "I don't want no potatoes, thank you" means the same as "I don't want any potatoes, thank you." Shakespeare used double negatives occasionally, and Mick Jagger brought it back into usage when he said, "I can't get no satisfaction." I don't know where I was intending to go with this line of thought,

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Peace
Date: 15 Dec 07 - 04:17 PM

but hark, the lark sounds appropriate.

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Riginslinger
Date: 15 Dec 07 - 04:51 PM

That must have been it!

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 15 Dec 07 - 08:31 PM

Cassell's recommended usage is British. It is not accepted in American publishing.
"The American Heritage Book of English Usage" is a current book of accepted practice.
English Usage

Recommended-
"The Chicago Manual of Style," 2003 ed., compiled by the staff of the University of Chicago. The American Library Association, in a review, says "Chicago" offers "sensible, clearly articulated and defensible advice to authors and editors who want to do their best to present an author's text to readers."
I would add that the book will help anyone who does a lot of writing.
Available from any book dealer, and at $36 from Amazon; the 14th ed., available for very little, 1993 date, would probably be sufficient for most purposes.

Note- UK writers have their choice of Fowler's or Cassell's.

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: EBarnacle
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 11:55 AM

A certain amoount of the responsibility goes to the teachers.

About 30 years ago, I was in charge of an out patient program for adolescent mentally ill clients. The teacher was a very nice, very popular non-white who somehow got through college and was a certified teacher. She could not spell or do math. Her other skills were questionable. She was lazy to the bone.

When the entire program was being cut back, the decision was made [over my strong objections] to retain her and get rid of the hard working, non-degreed program assistant [who was also a minority].

I found it incomprehensible then that the decision could be made to keep the incompetent in favor of the competent.

The administrators are as responsible as the teachers in defining what is acceptable work, both from teachers and students.

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Bert
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 01:32 PM

If you think that the standard of writing is bad, then you should check out the Engineering students.

I knew a degreed mechanical engineer who couldn't do simple trig (with a full function calculator) and who couldn't calculate the weight of a pressure vessel.

Another couldn't get the tube out of a spray bottle, it had fallen off inside the bottle and the lip at the top of the bottle had him completely fooled. I straightened a paper clip and stuck it down the tube. He was amazed and said he'd spent half an hour trying to get it out.

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Peace
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 03:52 PM

Good Lord. I was searching news regarding storms in the US and eastern Canada. Here's one headline with a few sentences.

'Young Man Dies in East Palo Alto While Hanging Christmas Lights

A 23-year-old man was electrocuted while hanging Christmas lights in the San Francisco Bay Area city. The man, who climbed at about 60 feet up a tree, has died instantly.'

I have nothing to add.

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: katlaughing
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 03:55 PM

The Chicago Manual of Style is also available on-line with full search functions, Q&A section, etc. It's an invaluable resource. It also allows non-subscribers to search certain free databases for help with their questions.

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 04:46 PM

The Chicago Manual of Style is, in the US, the preferred reference for most book publishers in the non-fiction field ¹.

If you are writing in some other genre, there probably is an "industry standard style reference" and Chicago is quite likely to be acceptabe, but you should check with the publisher (confirmed or potential). Quite obviously, in some fields of writing, the correct reference must be "None" but it doesn't hurt to check.

The Associated Press Style Manual is another that's widely available and is apparently in every newsrag editor's desk; but little editing seems to be done. The AP manual is much looser about what's acceptable – except in a few very specific cases, mostly where the publisher might get sued if you do it wrong.

If you're writing for magazine publication, it's almost mandatory that you know what the conventions are for the individual publisher(s) to whom you might be submitting your material. This is especially true for "technical" magazines, some of which have (or have had) some rather "arcane" requirements. Many of the more respected(?) magazine publishers may have in-house editors to clean up things for you; but others may expect you to meet all their rules from scratch.

A factor perhaps in the "grad students who can't write" is that most schools, where a thesis is required, have their own "thesis style specifications," and it's not uncommon for each school/department within a university to have "unique requirements." Students who have spent time and effort conforming may "just assume" that their thesis represents style and methods applicable everywhere. While quite obviously this is often not the case, their thesis may actually be the first thing they've ever written that was subject to "critical review" [with the obvious possibility that they may have been forced to conform to "personal preferences" of an idiotcynicratic professor who was assigned as their thesis advisor].

It appears that the main complaint in this thread though is not about the lack of style, but about basic illiteracy. No arguments on that.

¹ This may be a rather loose categorizing. It is quite well known that Microsoft Press claimed to use Chicago, at least quite recently. While the enforcement of "style" there obviously isn't too "tight," the real question is whether Microsoft publishes "non-fiction," which can be quite legitimately debated.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Peace
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 04:47 PM

I am NOT illiterate. My parents were married when I was born.

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Rowan
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 04:53 PM

Emma B and Q have kindly mentioned the various style manuals regarded as authorities in the two centres of English writing in the northern hemisphere. South of the equator, where our use of the language may well be regarded as idiosyncratic by those north of it, we are well versed in taking on some uses and discarding others.

Old farts, like me, may have been taught well enough and have learned our conventions well enough; at the time I was at school, British conventions would have predominated. But evolution does indeed proceed apace. When I got to uni I had to learn other conventions, especially for citations and bibliographic referencing. This is where I learned to use italics for book titles, so "The Chicago Manual of Style" and Cassell's 'Guide to Common Errors in English' would both drop all quotation marks and become The Chicago Manual of Style and Guide to Common Errors in English respectively.

Of course, we do have our own Style Manual, published for a while by the Australian Commonwealth Government Printing Service, but I can't find my copy. Many Australians don't know of its existence and I suspect there are many more quite happy to live up to their reputation for insouciance in the face of authority and thus happy to ignore its recommendations. Sigh!

So, we keep labouring in the vineyard, encouraging clear communication and felicitous expression.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 05:02 PM

The Aussie Gov't style manual reminds me that I've also run into the US Government Printing Office Manual, usually referred to as the "GPO Manual." It's less available outside US government, but perhaps is one that should be included in the list.

It must be noted that elected members of government are mostly exempt, even/especially at very high levels.

(Maybe that manual also applies only to non-fiction.)

John

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 06:09 PM

Rowan, italics are commonly used topside in North America. I didn't mention them because I was too lazy to look up how to post italics in html, although the recipe is easy to find in Mudcat because FAQ has instructions.

When preparing a paper for publication, a real bugbear is the Reference list. Different journals have different rules on abbreviations, order of items in a citation, etc., probably set by some editor in the dark ages, and which may not follow recommendations in any style manual. And of course magazine citations are different from book citations. Fitting to a publication's stone tablets can be a real headache.
This has little to do with a student's writing ability.

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Rowan
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 06:53 PM

G'day Q,
You're quite correct. I was just demonstrating how I learned how I could weasel out of the " vs ' situation when dealing with book titles. You probably already know this but EndNote is a popular (and, very good) bibliographic database for dealing with the various conventions and requirements used by editors for citations and reference lists. When I last counted there were more than 250 different templates for different journals and none was the exact way that the two Oz archaeology journals wanted theirs; I had to make up templates for use by local students.

Which requires one to understand syntax, in much the same way as I had to when writing Fortran. And when John wrote
A factor perhaps in the "grad students who can't write" is that most schools, where a thesis is required, have their own "thesis style specifications," and it's not uncommon for each school/department within a university to have "unique requirements." Students who have spent time and effort conforming may "just assume" that their thesis represents style and methods applicable everywhere. While quite obviously this is often not the case, their thesis may actually be the first thing they've ever written that was subject to "critical review"
I was on very familiar ground. I've lost count of the variations described by different parts of some universities as "Harvard" rules for citation and referencing.

This may excuse some confusion among graduate students when dealing with specific techniques but, as you and John both point out, the topic of the thread is really about felicitous (rather than barely functional) literacy.

As I implied above, many of the teachers of graduate (and other) students are unable to write correct (however defined) English; what's worse, they're apparently ignorant of their own ignorance.

That's one of several bugbears. I happen to think that lack of attention to detail is one and Katlaughing's description of a teacher who refused to even hand them back to her students saying they would be devastated by all of the red marks speaks to me of another. I'd interpret that teacher's reaction as showing she is more concerned about her standing with students than about substantive content; such concerns are common among beginning teachers who have not yet developed their armoury of 'classroom' techniques.

Rant subsiding.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 07:27 PM

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 18 Dec 07 - 05:35 AM

Monkeys can do mental math, too

Rhesus macaques perform quick addition almost as well as college kids

I really should just stop with the headline and let everyone wonder ... but:

MSNBC staff and news service reports
updated 7:50 p.m. CT, Mon., Dec. 17, 2007

Rhesus macaque monkeys performed nearly as well as college students at quick mental addition, researchers reported Monday, adding to the evidence that non-verbal math skills are not unique to humans.
The study from Duke University follows findings by Japanese researchers earlier this month that young chimpanzees performed better than human adults at a memory game.

Prior studies have found that non-human primates can match numbers of objects, compare numbers and choose the larger number of two sets of objects.

"This is the first study that looked at whether or not they could make explicit decisions that were based on mathematical types of calculations," said Jessica Cantlon, a cognitive neuroscience researcher at Duke whose work appeared in the open-access journal PLoS Biology.

"It shows when you take language away from a human, they end up looking just like monkeys in terms of their performance," Cantlon told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Her study pitted Boxer and Feinstein — two female rhesus macaques named after U.S. Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein of California — against 14 Duke University students.

"We had them do math on the fly," Cantlon said.
The task was to perform mental addition on two sets of dots that were briefly flashed on a computer screen. The teams were asked to pick the correct answer from two choices on a different screen.
The humans were not allowed to count or verbalize as they worked, and they were told to answer as quickly as possible. The monkeys and the humans all typically answered within 1 second.

The college students answered correctly 94 percent of the time, while the monkeys were right 76 percent of the time. Both the monkeys' and the students' performance worsened when the two choice boxes were close in number, following a similar downward-sloping curve.

"If the correct sum was 11 and the box with the incorrect number held 12 dots, both monkeys and the college students took longer to answer and had more errors," Cantlon explained in a Duke news release. "We call this the ratio effect. What's remarkable is that both species suffered from the ratio effect at virtually the same rate."

Cantlon told Reuters that the study was not designed to show up Duke University students. "I think of this more as using non-human primates as a tool for discovering where the sophisticated human mind comes from," she said.

The researchers said the findings shed light on the shared mathematical abilities in humans and non-human primates and shows the importance of language — which allows for counting and more advanced calculations — in the evolution of math in humans.

"I don't think language is the only thing that differentiates humans from non-human primates, but in terms of math tasks, it is probably the big one," she said.

As for the teams, both were paid. Boxer and Feinstein got their favorite reward: a sip of Kool-Aid soft drink. As for the students, they got $10 each — enough for a beer or two.

This report includes information from Reuters and msnbc.com.
© 2007 MSNBC Interactive

They didn't say they tested the monkeys against grad students, but the results likely wouldn't have changed.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Folk Form # 1
Date: 18 Dec 07 - 07:11 AM

Monkeys are brighter than students. No surprise there.

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 18 Dec 07 - 08:10 AM

Not necessarily brighter than. ... ... Just not much different than.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 18 Dec 07 - 08:35 AM

EBarnacle

Your comments about which worker to keep reminded me...

Aussie nurses once used to have start as 'pan scrubbers', and work their way up. Well, you know what I mean ... :-P

Now they all have to do a 3 year full time Uni course. This has bred a category of nursing known in the trade as "hands off nursing"... :-)

I'm not making this up you know...

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Bert
Date: 18 Dec 07 - 01:18 PM

Ah John, But the monkeys didn't have the disadvantage of having to attend our schools.

Subject: BS: Graduwat stewdunts hoo carnt spel
From: skipy
Date: 18 Dec 07 - 08:01 PM

knot liyk i cann
skopy

Subject: RE: BS: Graduwat stewdunts hoo carnt spel
From: Azizi
Date: 18 Dec 07 - 08:30 PM

C u can spel rite 2 w/o efen tryin 2 do it!

Subject: RE: BS: Graduwat stewdunts hoo carnt spel
From: skipy
Date: 18 Dec 07 - 08:33 PM

I waz doin my besht
Skoppy

Subject: RE: BS: Graduate students who can't write
From: Rowan
Date: 18 Dec 07 - 08:42 PM

Jasper Fforde's Well of lost plots might explain what's happened to Aziz and Skipy.

Cheers, Rowan