Developing an academic voice is one of the hardest things for students to do well. We're so used to writing the way that we talk, with fragments, breaks in thoughts, and colloquialisms. Living in the IM and text message age also serves to create a digital language that somehow doesn't translate well into academia where Standard Written English still reigns.
Getting students to stop and notice their language has been an ongoing process. The following two exercises are simple, but they do the job of getting students to think about how eliminating the second person "you" and metalanguage like "I believe" or "In the following essay I will talk about" creates a much stronger academic voice.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment