Posted on 03/24/2011 10:30:22 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
Colleges and universities pride themselves on producing erudite citizens. Nevertheless, by nearly available benchmark, they are failing in this regard, although they don’t seem to realize it.
“While M. B. A. students’ quantitative skills are prized by employers, their writing and presentation skills have been a perennial complaint,” Diana Middleton wrote in The Wall Street Journal on March 3, 2011. “Employers and writing coaches say business-school graduates tend to ramble, use pretentious vocabulary or pen too-casual emails.”
“Meanwhile, the Graduate Management Admission Council, which administers the Graduate Management Admission Test, says average essay scores on the GMAT fell to 4.4 out of 6 in 2010, from 4.7 out of 6 in 2007.” Actually, the problem starts long before the graduates arrive at business school, if they ever get there.
“Over the course of the last 30 to 40 years, composition teaching has been taken over by a kind of cadre of theorists who keep coming up with new, different sorts of social science-based ideas of how students learn,” English professor R. V. Young told the Carolina Journal’s Mitch Kokai. “They have banished literature from the writing classroom.”
“I have heard many of them say that reading and writing have nothing to do with each other, which sounds to me like saying talking and listening have nothing to do with each other.” Young teaches at North Carolina State University and also edits the journal, Modern Age.
(Excerpt) Read more at academia.org ...
Good gosh. Reading has EVERYTHING to do with writing, in my opinion.
It has been my experience that people who read a great deal have better writing skills than those who don’t.
There are always exceptions both ways to this rule of thumb, but if one reads extensively, the patterns of grammar and syntax are embedded in the brain and can be implemented anytime something has to be written.
Furthermore, this is ACTIVELY discouraged. Western literature? Pah.
After all, all cultures are "equal" and the literary output from Zimbabwe is just as rich, eloquent and useful as Shakespeare.
/S
My brother-in-law would have disagreed and he was the literary output of Zimbabwe.
Oh good grief. Okay, I’ll change it then...the literary output of the unspoiled negrito tribes of the Philippines...:)
No,no, no. I mean my brother-in-law preferred British literature. He was rather fond of Dickens, particularly Oliver Twist.
"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read." -Mark Twain
ROTFLMAO! Now THAT was a funny way to misinterpret what you meant...
It reminds me of a conversation I had once with a group of people back in the late Seventies, and we were having an argument about Communism, and I said to one guy (who was considerably older than the rest of us) “You probably wouldn’t know what Communism was if it hit you in the ass!”
Well.
He bellowed that he had lived in the Soviet Union for five years as the son of a diplomat, and he DAMN well knew what Communism was! I had to laugh...I stuck my foot WELL into that pile...:)
When I saw your comment, I thought “Geez...what are the odds I step on someone who knows the one guy who has made some kind of literary contribution from Zimbabwe...”
I guess I can read, but my comprehension occasionally still suffers!
I didn’t have any exposure to Dickens until later in my life. (My dad was military, and I changed schools nearly every year)
My favorite is “The Tale of Two Cities” followed by “David Copperfield” and “Great Expectations”.
It has been great for me to be exposed to these later in life. I don’t watch television, so when I can’t read anymore, and every movie and television series is available online, I will be able to spend my dottering days watching things I have never seen like “Hill Street Blues” and “The Simpsons”...:)
I couldn’t agree with Twain more!
Taking my hypothesis to heart, if I were to read books like “A Clockwork Orange” as my standard fare, there is no telling where I would end up.
Hm. I thought this thread would get more interest. There is a resident population here on Free Republic that has specific interest in this area.
As I said to another poster, I do not disagree at all with that point. LOL, I assumed people knew what I meant when I said that.
I do know some people who write as if the only source of literature for them has been Taiwanese assembly instructions!
No problem;)
All great. I would also recommend Bleak House and The Pickwick Papers. Some Dickens I experienced early, some late, all terrific.
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