

How T.H. Huxley helped me teach my students how to write - bootload
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/stories/2009/2708509.htm

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bootload
_"... It is an unfortunate aspect of teaching science that our students do not
believe that writing is a skill that they need to acquire. Some of them even
chose to do science at University because they prefer to memorise factual
material. Many of them have told me that I should not care about their grammar
and spelling, because I teach science, not English.

But English is not like other school subjects: it is the condition of academic
life. In the past, my senior students eventually came to terms with this after
years of writing essays, but the commencing students, especially the ones
straight out of high school, completely rejected this notion.

However, these days, youngsters have a passion for writing that Huxley shares.
They have a flair for correspondence. It is a condition of their social life.
The emails and texts and messages that they send each day may rival the number
of words Huxley wrote daily with his quill. There is only a difference of
quality.

So I had this bright idea: I would get my students to write a letter to T.H.
Huxley in response to his 1880 book and tell him what was really going on in
the nucleus of the cells of the crayfish. They had to be polite and use
'proper English' so that T.H. would understand them, and they had to
understand meiosis, but since it was in their textbook and had been covered by
lectures, this should not have been difficult.

And then I had another idea: instead of covering their letters with red ink
(which they would ignore), I would write them a letter back. And because
Huxley did not know he was marking students' essays, he did not give them a
grade. They could tell from the letter whether he liked their letter or not.
Either he dismissed their letter as a hoax by local schoolchildren (which was
likely if their grammar and spelling was below par) or he engaged with them as
a fellow scientist. ..."_

This is very subtle way of scolding those who don't quite rise to the level
expected. Way more subtle than a "RS", red marks or grades. Click the _"Show
Transcript"_ to read the full article.

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ZeroGravitas
Wasn't there research published recently that showed that not only were people
writing more (via email and texts) but they were writing better too and in
particular they were good at _kairos_ , which means students today should be
better at varying their tone for different audiences (like imaginary 19th
Century correspondents) than we were as kids.

There's an overview here:
[http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-09/st_thomps...](http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-09/st_thompson)

Though I'm impressed with the creativity of both the assignment and the
"marking" scheme.

