MGTutoring.com. A Rational Perspective on Education.

June 20, 2011

Advice For Writing — and Math. And All Other Subjects.

Filed under: Education,Language,Logic,Philosophy,SAT, ACT, ETC. — Administrator @ 12:39 pm

In “Can You Drop It on Your Foot?” (National Association of Scholars, June 02, 2011), John Maguire says:

Student papers are often unreadable not only because their grammar is bad, and sentences incomplete, but also because they are way, way too abstract. Abstractions really trap students. Assigned to write about some idea, students get caught in the sphere of abstract words and stay there. Abstract words multiply on the page in unpleasant clusters. If you ask freshmen to write about, say, The relationship between wealth and productivity in a market society, watch out. Few will notice that the four abstract terms relationship, wealth, productivity and market society need definition or examples. They will just move those abstract terms around like checkers on a board, repeating them, and hoping through repetition that something will be said. The resulting paper will be mush.
…
An alternate approach might be to start the course with physical objects, training students to write with objects, and to understand that every abstract idea summarizes a set of physical facts. I do in fact take that approach. “If you are writing about markets, recognize that market is an abstract idea, and find a bunch of objects that relate to it,” I say. “Give me concrete nouns. Show me a wooden roadside stand with corn and green peppers on it, if you want. Show me a supermarket displaying six kinds of oranges under halogen lights. Show me a stock exchange floor where bids are shouted and answered.”
…
Students led into writing this way at the start of a course…find it strange at first, but…they will learn after six or eight weeks of practice that it does work; about that time they start to smile because their thinking on paper is clearer, they can see what they are talking about, and their writing has become vivid.

© 2011 National Association of Scholars. All rights reserved.

All subjects, from math to physics to chemistry to history to philosophy, should be taught in the same way. Concepts are classifications of real, individual things, and if a student does not know what real things the concepts refer to, he does not know what he is thinking, writing, or talking about; the students mind is then being destroyed and divorced from reality. Not healthy!! Don’t do it, please! In education, as in all else, please be objective: follow a human method (logic) in knowing the facts.

Mr. Maguire’s advice is good advice for the SAT and ACT, too.

 

“A Father’s Wish” By Edgar Guest

Filed under: Art,Language — Administrator @ 12:36 am

What do I want my boy to be?
Oft is the question asked of me,
And oft I ask it of myself–
What corner, niche or post or shelf
In the great hall of life would I
Select for him to occupy?
Statesman or writer, poet, sage
Or toiler for a weekly wage,
Artist or artisan? Oh, what
Is to become his future lot?
For him I do not dare to plan;
I only hope he’ll be a man. 

(more…)

June 1, 2011

“A Psalm of Life” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Filed under: Art,Language — Administrator @ 11:28 pm

Tell me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou are, to dust thou returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.

(more…)

November 17, 2009

“These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things”

Filed under: Language,Mathematics,Words — Administrator @ 8:32 am

One of my favorite phrases is “Q.E.D.” It means:

which was to be shown or demonstrated (used esp. in mathematical proofs).

1810–20; < L quod erat dēmōnstrandum

QED. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/QED (accessed: November 16, 2009).

November 16, 2009

Grammar: A Practical

Filed under: Language,SAT, ACT, ETC. — Administrator @ 12:33 pm

Seen in a laundry room (of an apartment complex):

We have received several reports of items (laundry baskets, clothes, ect………………….) being taken from the laundry room that does not belong to them. If it doesn’t belong to you, don’t take it!!

**If anyone is seen taking any item(s) that do not belong to them please report it to the office immediately.

Any grammatical mistakes in the quote? Stylistic issues? Punctuation problems? Errors of logic? What do you think?

This is the kind of thing you have to know and correct for the SAT and ACT.

October 20, 2009

A Speech, In German, by Mark Twain

Filed under: Humor,Language — Administrator @ 9:49 am

In an “ADDRESS TO THE VIENNA PRESS CLUB, NOVEMBER 21, 1897, DELIVERED IN GERMAN [Here in literal translation],” an address entitled “DIE SCHRECKEN DER DEUTSCHEN SPRACHE [THE HORRORS OF THE GERMAN LANGUAGE],” Mark Twain said:

It has me deeply touched, my gentlemen, here so hospitably received to be. From colleagues out of my own profession, in this from my own home so far distant land. My heart is full of gratitude, but my poverty of German words forces me to greater economy of expression. Excuse you, my gentlemen, that I read off, what I you say will. [But he didn't read].

The German language speak I not good, but have numerous connoisseurs me assured that I her write like an angel. Maybe—maybe—I know not. Have till now no acquaintance with the angels had. That comes later—when it the dear God please—it has no hurry.

Since long, my gentlemen, have I the passionate longing nursed a speech on German to hold, but one has me not permitted. Men, who no feeling for the art had, laid me ever hindrance in the way and made naught my desire—sometimes by excuses, often by force. Always said these men to me: “Keep you still, your Highness! Silence! For God’s sake seek another way and means yourself obnoxious to make.”

… I am indeed the truest friend of the German language—and not only now, but from long since—yes, before twenty years already. And never have I the desire had the noble language to hurt; to the contrary, only wished she to improve—I would her only reform. It is the dream of my life been. … I would only some changes effect. I would only the language method—the luxurious, elaborate construction compress, the eternal parenthesis suppress, do away with, annihilate; the introduction of more than thirteen subjects in one sentence forbid; the verb so far to the front pull that one it without a telescope discover can. With one word, my gentlemen, I would your beloved language simplify so that, my gentlemen, when you her for prayer need, One her yonder-up understands.

HT: Paul B and Hannes H

Call this “How Not to Write For the SAT”…

October 5, 2009

The History of “H”

Filed under: Language,Words — Administrator @ 8:36 am

Here is the history of the letter h:

the pronunciation “aitch” was in O.Fr. (ache), and is from a presumed L.L. *accha (cf. It. effe, elle, emme), with the central sound approximating the value of the letter when it passed from Roman to Germanic, where it at first represented a strong, distinctly aspirated -kh- sound close to that in Scottish loch. In earlier L. the letter was called ha. In Romance languages, the sound became silent in L.L. and was omitted in O.Fr. and It., but it was restored in M.E. spelling in words borrowed from O.Fr., and often later in pronunciation, too. Thus Mod.Eng. has words ultimately from L. with missing -h- (e.g. able, from L. habile); with a silent -h- (e.g. heir, hour); with a formerly silent -h- now vocalized (e.g. humble, honor); and even a few with an excrescent -h- fitted in confusion to words that never had one (e.g. hostage, hermit). Relics of the formerly unvoiced -h- persist in pedantic insistence on an historical (object) and in obs. mine host. The use in digraphs (e.g. -sh-, -th-) goes back to the ancient Gk. alphabet, which used it in -ph-, -th-, -kh- until -H- took on the value of a long “e” and the digraphs acquired their own characters. The letter passed into Roman use before this evolution, and thus retained there more of its original Sem. value.

ha. Dictionary.com. Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper, Historian. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ha (accessed: October 01, 2009).

Etymology is fascinating. And it helps in reading, and on the SAT and ACT. It makes you familiar with roots, suffixes, and prefixes, and gives you stories to help remember the meanings of words. Stories satisfy the mind’s need for integration.

September 1, 2009

Reading Pedagogy: The Old is New

Filed under: Culture,Education,Language,Reading — Administrator @ 12:08 pm

In “Glorifying Indifference to Literature” (Core Knowledge Blog, August 30, 2009), Diana Senechal writes:

The New York Times story on the “reading workshop” method glorifies indifference toward literature.

…

This so-called movement is led by people who don’t love literature enough to defend it, and who don’t care about history enough to find out that their revolution is nothing revolutionary. It glorifies a certain indifference.

The movement writes off the literature itself. It writes off the teachers who teach it well and inspire their students to love it. It writes off the possibility that literature will affect students’ entire lives and stay in their minds, in ways that teen novels cannot do. Proponents say, “Look, the kids are reading; this is working!” They do not stop to think that reading 20 pages a day is not the same as grappling with literature. The chicken coop is not a palace. (Oops–no one teaches Dostoevsky anymore.)

I taught Sophocles’ Antigone (among many other works of literature) to my eighth grade ESL students. We had heated debates in class. Students wrote thoughtful essays. I thought, “How much more they will understand when they read it in high school!” Then I realized they probably wouldn’t read it in high school. They would probably never have it assigned to them again.

Amen.

Mr. Robert Pondiscio says in “New York Times Discovers Reader’s Workshop” (Core Knowledge Blog, August 29, 2009 ):

Update: “Progressive schools let kids pick their own books in the 1920s and 1930s. Now it is supposed to be a major innovation. Ha!” tweets Diane Ravitch, who is quoted in the piece.  The paper “applauds the death of any version of a common culture.”  Just desserts of the NY Times,” she adds.  “By encouraging the death of reading, they doom the NY Times.”

“Progressive schools.” That’s John Dewey’s baby…

August 31, 2009

The Power of Reason: A Helen Keller Anecdote

Filed under: Child Development,Education,Language — Administrator @ 10:27 am

On the Internet is some 1930 newsreel footage (2 min 58 sec) of how Annie Sullivan taught Helen Keller to speak. Amazing…   HT:  Dr. D. H.

And “Helen Keller: In Her Story (clip)” is good. It has the comment — very pregnant with meaning and implications — “her hand is her chief link to the outer world.”

August 26, 2009

Anecdote on the Death of Writing…and Thinking

Filed under: College,Culture,Education,Language — Administrator @ 6:43 am

In “What Should Colleges Teach?” (New York Times by way of EducationNews.org, August 25, 2009), Stanley Fish writes:

A few years ago, when I was grading papers for a graduate literature course, I became alarmed at the inability of my students to write a clean English sentence. They could manage for about six words and then, almost invariably, the syntax (and everything else) fell apart. I became even more alarmed when I remembered that these same students were instructors in the college’s composition program. What, I wondered, could possibly be going on in their courses?

I decided to find out, and asked to see the lesson plans of the 104 sections. I read them and found that only four emphasized training in the craft of writing. Although the other 100 sections fulfilled the composition requirement, instruction in composition was not their focus. Instead, the students spent much of their time discussing novels, movies, TV shows and essays on a variety of hot-button issues — racism, sexism, immigration, globalization. …

As I learned more about the world of composition studies I came to the conclusion that unless writing courses focus exclusively on writing they are a sham, and I advised administrators to insist that all courses listed as courses in composition teach grammar and rhetoric and nothing else. This advice was contemptuously dismissed by the composition establishment, and I was accused of being a reactionary who knew nothing about current trends in research.

Copyright 1997 – 2009  EducationNews.org

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