Joanna,
I'm sure you're right that the root of the problem is insufficient
reading of academic and other well-written formal standard, although
plenty of academic writing is not well-written. The problem is that by
the time we get them as undergraduates, it's pretty hard to catch up on
all that missed reading. You can tell immediately the ones who were
exposed regularly to standard English while growing up. You hope the
others will pick it up from their reading in college, but I'm afraid
some degree of practice and memorization remains necessary, given the
amount of time we have with them.
Herb
-----Original Message-----
Bill brings up a factor that I forgot when I made my post:
hypercorrection in students' formal writing. This is also what leads to
many inappropriate vocabulary choices, irritatingly frequent uses of the
word "aspect", use of "within" instead of "in", and use of "amongst"
(which is British) instead of "among". Not to mention lots of awkward
syntax.
Still, I chalk this, too, up to insufficient reading and writing of the
kind of English they are expected to produce in college. There would be
far fewer odd vocab choices if students read more widely in the "lower"
schools. The main way children learn vocabulary (and I would assume also
prepositional collocations, which also have to be memorized, not learned
by rule) is by being exposed to words (and phrases) in context. Children
learn thousands more words per year than they ever work on in their
vocab. lessons.
***************************************************
Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
English Department, Cal Poly State University
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. 805-756-2184 ~ Dept. phone 805-756-2596
Dept. fax: 805-756-6374 ~ E-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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