Let us not presume the students know the words
Prof Kiron Bansal of Indira Gandhi National Open University responded thus
Dear Sir,
Read your blog with great interest. I am teaching the paper: Foundations of Journalism: Writing for our MA students. I entirely agree with the observation that we should not assume that our students are familiar with such words and expressions. In my recent class I found that the students were not familiar with the expression 'cliche' which came as a surprise since most of them have English medium background.
The blog will be very useful for teachers as well as working journalists.
With regards
Kiron
Dear Sir,
Read your blog with great interest. I am teaching the paper: Foundations of Journalism: Writing for our MA students. I entirely agree with the observation that we should not assume that our students are familiar with such words and expressions. In my recent class I found that the students were not familiar with the expression 'cliche' which came as a surprise since most of them have English medium background.
The blog will be very useful for teachers as well as working journalists.
With regards
Kiron
Pardon this intrusive suggestion, but when teaching writing, it would be good to insist on the students referring to a dictionary than asking others for the meaning.
ReplyDeleteI have seen newspaper offices where when one needs a dictionary, an hour is spent searching for it - no, not the word, the dictionary!
Presuming that a word would convey a particular meaning the writer had in mind would be a horrible mistake.