Rewrite?

Comments

1. Val says:

   November 25, 2008

   You actually said that the paper was unreadable? Then again, I think that was what my AP English teacher meant when I read out a draft in class (as a newly minted high school junior) and he looked at me with total horror and (if I remember correctly) did a bit of just opening and shutting his mouth and spluttering.

   On the plus side, there’s nowhere this kid can go but up, right? ( :

   Stay sane…and congrats on the new Asus (even though they really could use a better name)! Shiny.

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2. gordsellar says:

   November 25, 2008

   I did indeed… because it was. And I was only repeating what his classmates told him, and noting that it wasn’t because of them.

   It was stuff like this:

   “The developmentist tendential strategy of family growing seasonal nuclears reproduction is tends to rating lower and much lower and many so geriatric caring is continuing shadow line into the deepest of the ocean.”

   Except with more long words. Pages and pages of that. (Though I made it up, it’s not an excerpt.) I know he’s writing in a foreign language, but he also took none of the prerequisite classes (which we don’t present as prereqs, which is part of the problem) and partly because he ignored everything I said about carefully not looting your dictionary, using the English you know, and proofreading. I’ll put it this way: if his peers could (mostly) produce readable, clear, and intelligent writing by following what I taught — above all, clarify and simplify and get the point across at any cost! — then so could he.

   As for going up — true. Though I kind of fear he paid someone to write this essay, something I could never prove and which is even sadder. But he may pull something off, who knows?

   Thanks on the congrats. I like the little gadget…

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