{"id":182,"date":"2008-04-07T11:13:02","date_gmt":"2008-04-07T16:13:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/04\/07\/182\/"},"modified":"2008-04-07T11:13:02","modified_gmt":"2008-04-07T16:13:02","slug":"182","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/04\/07\/182\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

In Clueless in Academe<\/em>, Gerald Graff’s chapter about building vocabulary lists and advocating an authentic voice bring to mind a number of issues.\u00a0 His contention that vocabulary needs to be increased is certainly unique, but it fails to account for his own theory of compartmentalization. However, Graff’s argument about negotiating the minefield of authentic voice and scholarly support has far more credibility.<\/p>\n

Graff’s example of a teacher building up two vocabulary lists, one for Realspeak and one for academic-speak, is initially appealing.\u00a0 Students need to be able to have the variety of linguistic tools (words) that English offers.\u00a0 Building up vocabulary appears to be a worthwhile goal.\u00a0 How educators pursue that goal is an entirely different reality.\u00a0 The Graff example of the two columns will certainly engage students during that particular class\/semester.\u00a0 Unless this process and the words themselves are repeated year after year, most of the students will simply divorce the vocabulary from their Realspeak.\u00a0 A handful of students will incorporate it, just as a handful always manages to appropriate new scholarly words, but the majority of the class will simply discard the information.<\/p>\n

While his zeal for engaging students is laudable, Graff has forgotten the incredible appeal of compartmentalization.\u00a0 In an earlier chapter, he directly summarized this tendency and explored its powerful role within the academy.\u00a0 Somehow this lesson has escaped his analysis of these word-building exercises.\u00a0 The two-column approach to vocabulary only works if the students encounter these words in subsequent classes\/semesters\/years.\u00a0 Otherwise, they will allocate this information to the “something we did in English” category and eventually delete it entirely.\u00a0 Until this type of vocabulary or discourse becomes emphasized throughout the entire academy, only a few words will ever sink in.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, Graff’s discussion of authentic voice is far more realistic and insightful.\u00a0 Students are expected to show originality while writing in the language and tone of scholarly works.\u00a0 This dynamic is an absurd paradox that should not be proposed at the beginning of the process.\u00a0 Our current method of using these characteristics can easily confuse and stump even some of the more eager writers.\u00a0 Using quotations can help students overcome this hurdle, but exposure is one of the best predictors of future use.<\/p>\n

One of the difficult issues here is measuring outcomes.\u00a0 How can we make sure that a particular lesson or strategy yields a specific result?\u00a0 The answer cannot be defined in this computerized input-output methodology.\u00a0 In interviews, many graduates will make a comment about how they wish they could retake courses using their current knowledge.\u00a0 These graduates or “experienced” students learned a great deal of information spread out among an enormous variety of fields.\u00a0 It is only at the end of the process that this seemingly disparate information begins to appear valuable.<\/p>\n

Consider Graff’s vocabulary list activity.\u00a0 While many students will compartmentalize the words and consequently discard them, other learners will hold on to a few of them.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Well, it is likely that these students encountered these new words in another class or outside of school altogether.\u00a0 For these students, the activity connected with some other aspect of their lives.\u00a0 Not surprisingly, the new scholarly words were deemed useful and retained (transferred).\u00a0 Measuring the human mind and the learning process is not a linear or simple process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Clueless in Academe, Gerald Graff’s chapter about building vocabulary lists and advocating an authentic voice bring to mind a number of issues.\u00a0 His contention that vocabulary needs to be increased is certainly unique, but it fails to account for his own theory of compartmentalization. However, Graff’s argument about negotiating the minefield of authentic voice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[113],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}