Writing

Students in England: Watching the English

I buy lots of books and then don’t read them for years.  One such book is ‘Watching the English’ by Kate Fox (Hodder & Stoughton, 2004).  I bought it when it first came out, but I’ve only just read it.

It’s a quick and amusing read.  Full of generalisations, but good fun nonetheless.

‘Watching the English’ has a lot of commentary on how to tell a person’s class.  You’re bound to enjoy working out what social class you seem to be.  It’s not necessarily accurate…I appear to be in the realms of the Upper Class.

Anyone who knows me would laugh if they heard that.  And they’d continue laughing.  And then laugh some more.

People can be so cruel.

Anyway, I gave so many procrastination links out yesterday, that I’ve decided to leave the EduLinks alone today.  We’ll see how it goes.  Hopefully I won’t end up simply providing double the number of EduLinks on Thursday…

Today, I thought I’d point out what Kate Fox has to say about English university students and exams.  See if you can pick up a copy of the book if you can.  It’s not a serious social examination or madly scientific commentary.  It’s just a good read.

Kate Fox is a co-director of the Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC) in Oxford.  According to the SIRC website, her next book is about Shopping.  I hope it details student shopping too.

From ‘WATCHING THE ENGLISH’ by KATE FOX (HODDER & STOUGHTON, 2004):

“University effectively postpones true adulthood for an extra three years. As limbo states go, this is quite a pleasant one: students have almost all of the privileges of full adult members of society, but few of the responsibilities. English students moan and whine constantly to each other about their ‘impossible’ workload, and are always having what they call ‘an essay crisis’ (meaning they have to write an essay) – but the demands of most degree courses are not very onerous compared to those of an average full-time job.

“The ordeal of final exams provides an excuse for even more therapeutic moaning-rituals, with their own unwritten rules. The modesty rule is important: even if you are feeling reasonably calm and confident about an exam, it is not done to say so – you must pretend to be full of anxiety and self-doubt, convinced that you are going to fail, because it goes without saying (although you say it repeatedly) that you have not done anywhere near enough work. Only the most arrogant, pompous and socially insensitive students will ever admit to having done enough revision for their exams; such people are rare, and usually heartily disliked.

“If you have clearly swotted like mad, you can admit this only in a self-deprecatory context: ‘I’ve worked my butt off, but I’m still completely pants at genetics – I just know I’m going to screw up – and anyway there’s bound to be a question on the one thing I haven’t revised properly. Just Sod’s law, isn’t it?’ Any expression of confidence must be counterbalanced by an expression of insecurity: ‘I think I’m OK on the sociology paper, but statistics is just totally doing my head in…’

“The superstition element, or the risk of making a fool of oneself, may be an important factor before the exam, but the modest demeanour is maintained even after the desired result has been achieved. Those who do well must always appear surprised by their success, even if they secretly feel it was well deserved. Cries of ‘Oh my God! I don’t believe it!’ are the norm when such students receive their results, and while elation is expected, success should be attributed to good fortune (‘I was lucky – all the right questions came up’) rather than talent or hard work. An Oxford medical student who had got a First, and was being congratulated by friends and relatives at a celebratory lunch, kept ducking her head, shrugging and insisting that ‘It’s not really such a big deal in science subjects – you don’t have to be clever or anything, it’s all factual – you just memorize the stuff and give the right answers. It’s just parrot-learning’.”

Are we, as students in England, really like that?  Shocking! 🙂

What’s it’s like elsewhere in the world?

10 Commonly Misspelled Words & My Mad Memory Techniques

Rather than just publish a ‘best of’ post today, I thought I’d share some of the ways in which I remember the spellings of words.

But be warned.  Before I say anything else, I just want to explain that this post explains the way I personally remember how to spell certain words.  It may sound bonkers to you, but I hope they’ll help you as much as they’ve helped me.  Some techniques are a bit difficult to explain, so please feel free to laugh at my crazy ways in this post.  If nothing else, this will show you how our minds all work a bit differently!

On with the words:

1. ACCOMMODATION – There is a double C and a double M in this word.  I remember that by thinking there is enough room to accommodate all the letters.

2. STATIONERY/STATIONARY – I was taught this only last week and it’s so simple.  Stationery is writing materials/office supplies.  Stationary is remaining still.  So just remember “E is for Envelope”, so it’s STATIONERY and you’re away!

3. OCCASIONALLY – There IS a double C, but NOT a double S, and there IS a double L.  So it happens occasionally (geddit!?).  It happens sOMETIMES, but not ALLways!  (I told you these are weird and wonderful ways for me to remember!)

4. LIAISE – I can liaise with you because I have a pair of eyes (pair of ‘I‘s)…

5. SUBTLE – It’s subtle because there’s a B in it!  [These aren’t always the most creative of memory joggers, but so long as they work, eh?]

6. DEPENDENT – There’s no I in ‘dependent’.  That’s to say, you’re dependent on someone else.

And while there is an I at the start of the word ‘Independent’, I just remember ‘dependent’ and leave the slight inconsistency alone.

7. EXAGGERATE – Yet another silly way to remember, but it works very well for me.  I exaggerate that there are 3 Gs in the middle of the word.  It always reminds me that there are really just 2…

8. BARGAIN – His wife asked, “Why did you ‘gain’ a ‘bar’?” and the husband replied, “Because it was so cheap!”

9. MINUSCULE – If you minus ‘cule’, you’ll just get the word minus.  Add it together again and you get MINUSCULE.

10. YOUR/YOU’RE – The apostrophe in the word YOU’RE is essentially in place of the letter ‘A’.  So if your sentence makes sense with YOU ARE, you know it’s fine to put YOU’RE.  Using that previous sentence, YOU’RE would not have made sense, because it would have read:

“So if YOU ARE sentence makes sense…”

That’s why I used the word ‘YOUR’.

—

Well I hope you got this far!  Well done if you did.  Does it all sound too strange, or have any of these memory joggers helped?  Do you have any crazy tips yourself?  Or sensible ones, of course!  I’d love to hear about them.

Writing Essays – Don’t Fool Yourself

Studying Late

I’ve seen it so many times.

I’d ask my mates if they wanted to go out and do something. One would say, “I’ve got an essay due in tomorrow by 10 o’clock.”

“How much have you done so far?” I’d ask.

“Well, I’ve got some of the quotes I want to use, and I’ve photocopied half a chapter from one of the books in the library on the subject, so all I need to do is write the essay tonight.”

“So you’re going to sit down and write an essay from scratch in the 15 or so hours you’ve got before it needs to be handed in? Are you even going to get any sleep?”

“I doubt it! I’ve got an essay to do, remember!?”

I shouldn’t have always been so surprised. This type of conversation happened regularly. With lots of different people. Rather than work steadily through an essay over the time period set, they were using a dangerous ‘last minute’ method so the ‘punishment’ lasted as little time as possible.

I don’t know why this method of working won’t go away, because:

  • It’s not useful
  • Your grades will suffer as a result
  • A high dose of stress is never a good thing
  • It gets in the way of reality. Everything stops for this essay.

Don’t kid yourself that this is a good way to work. In fact, don’t kid yourself that it takes away the stress in the long run.

Say you have an essay to complete that requires approximately 1500 words. Let’s add that you have about a month before it’s due in. That’s 30 days to play with.

Here’s what you can do with that time:

  • Make a few very brief notes on what you think your answer would be. Total time shouldn’t be more than about 20 minutes. It’s just to get your mind working.
  • Get down the library just before or after a lecture (so it’s just another part of your day, rather than a forced need to be somewhere). See what books are there, take out any relevant books and photocopy any snippets you think will be helpful. Total time will depend, but you’d be doing this at some point anyway, so you might as well get it out of the way quick, while it’s fresh in your head (and before everybody else has taken the books out that you wanted…)
  • After digesting your research, see if it’s changed your viewpoint to answering the essay questions? If so, spend another 20 minutes or so roughly sketching how you would now see the finished essay.

Hopefully these elements can be done in the first few days of being given your assignment. It should already put you in a commanding position. Next:

  • Try to write an introduction and a conclusion. It doesn’t need to be perfect, because you can make any changes later down the line. Total time = 1-2 hours (possibly quicker if you already have a strong arguement/opinion in your head already).
  • Now you’ve got a clear path, take the research notes you’ve made and look for quotes, passages, names and references that can help strengthen or prove what you’re trying to argue. Total time depends on how much background research you’ve got, but it won’t be too long and you can even do it in quick bursts of 10-15 minutes when you’ve got a few free moments.
  • If necessary, go back to the library and find more good quotes and references. This is optional and you may feel you already have enough to go on.

With all this sorted, you can now work bit by bit on the last thing:

  • WRITING!

Some people work well with a word limit. Whether you set 150 words a day, or 500 words, just try a few short jabs and you should quickly be on the way to a full work.

Other people work better on time limits. Rather than spend a stressful 10-20 hours writing an essay just before it’s due in, it’s good to give yourself lots of sessions, somewhere around 30-60 minutes each time. Once you get over the worry that you’ll be obsessing over your essay all the time – exactly what you’re aiming not to do – you should realise after a few sessions that the work is naturally progressing. With your initial concern over, it shouldn’t be a problem for your future essays.

At some point, with your arguments written up and about the right word count, you’ll need to focus on making what you’ve written as good as possible.

But just think, you wouldn’t have had that chance if you only used one shot at writing the essay in a tired and hurried state.

So instead of using a huge and inappropriate 15 hour writing binge at the last minute, split it into little chunks over the whole time you’ve got.

And if your style works best when doing it all in one go, PLEASE don’t do it at the last minute. Try to make your binge much further away from the deadline. That way, you can still spend an extra hour or two ironing out the creases.

It’ll be worth it for your grades AND for your sanity!

Literature