![]() ![]() was going to break the 1851 treaty with the Lakota. For example, in a reading seminar about the westward expansion of American settlers, students were to discuss whether the author of one of the readings believed it was inevitable that the U.S. If students don’t know certain words, there are things they will not understand. More complex vocabulary leads to more complex thought “Wouldn’t that be a good word to use in your essay,” I ask her. I watch Adele as the light bulb goes on she sees the difference. Washington didn’t just think that economic opportunity was important for African Americans in the South he thought it was imperative. “ Imperative means the same thing as important, so why can’t we just say important?” asks Adele.īecause they do not mean the same thing, I tell her. ![]() They were, according to one definition of squalid, “extremely dirty and unpleasant, especially as a result of poverty or neglect.” This seven-letter word speaks volumes about the conditions of the urban poor at the turn of the century in a way that “dirty” or “really bad” just doesn’t convey. “Can’t we just say dirty?”īut the tenements weren’t just dirty. “Why do we need to know squalid,” they ask. They just don’t see the point about memorizing a bunch of words that to them just mean the same thing as other words they already know. Students often whine about vocabulary tests. This gives students reasons to use the words, not just memorize them for the L.A. teacher to collaborate on what words might be useful in my class. Since then, I’ve been working with the L.A. Do you remember the Jacob Riis photos I showed you in class yesterday of tenements? Weren’t the conditions in those tenements squalid? Would that help you remember the word?” Gavin was complaining to a friend that he kept forgetting what “squalid” meant. True, conditions were “really bad.” But isn’t there a better way to say that?Īnd then I overheard my students whining about their vocab test in Language Arts class. ![]() Again, I would get sentences like,Ĭity bosses helped poor immigrants because conditions in tenements were really bad. Students had to address the question of why city bosses flourished during the transitional time of urban growth before the Progressive Era. I had a similar insight when grading a writing assignment about the rise of city bosses and political machines. What makes the sentence above so much better is not just the addition of “that it destroyed the lives of young men.” It’s also the use of the word “devastating.” Of course the war was “really bad.” But “really bad” is such an underwhelming way to describe Remarque’s classic antiwar novel. The experience of war was so devastating that it destroyed the lives of young men. But really? This was all the student could come up with? And then, the epiphany, when I read another student’s paper: The author of All Quiet on the Western Front was trying to say that war was really bad. I read the following in a student’s paper. Part of the assignment required students to discuss major themes in the excerpts. I had the first of several epiphanies about why vocabulary matters while grading a stack of responses to an excerpt from All Quiet on the Western Front that I had read to my students. ![]()
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