Posted on 10/08/2010 7:55:34 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
When you run into malaprops among Advanced Placement students, you really have to ruminate over the condition of education. “Reading 800-plus Advanced Placement essays at a table of other people doing the same thing tends to inspire waves of correctorial comments of the ‘kids say the darndest/silliest/inanest things’ variety,” Lisa Fluet writes in the October 8, 2010 issue of The Chronicle Review.
Fluet, an assistant professor of English at Boston College, shared a few of these:
“Some new vocabulary I learned, and some things students asked me to contemplate as a reader of their essays:
“‘Dead ass’ means ‘very serious,’ Example:
“‘Dude, are you serious?’
“‘Dude, I’m dead ass.’
“The short imperative answer to an essay question pertaining to exile: ‘See Lord of the Flies.’
“A self-important character can be very ‘egotesticle.’ Such a character may also be guilty of ‘hipocracy’ (government by the hips, for the hips). Tone and irony can be very ‘lucifying’ in making these attributes clear to readers.”
With writing like this, these students should be prime candidates for jobs with that other AP—the Associated Press.
Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org
Joe Biden
"The essay section of the AP English Language and Composition exam, also called the free-response section, requires you to write three essays. As of May 2007, you're given 2 hours and 15 minutes to complete the essays. (This includes an extra 15 minutes exclusively for reading the passages for the synthesis essay.) The suggested time for writing each essay is 40 minutes. You must complete all three essays within the 2-hour writing time limit. You must write an essay on each of the three essay topics; you have no alternative choices.
Each of the three essays is equally weighted at one-third of the total essay score, and the total for the essay portion equals 55% of the entire AP test score. You're given an essay-writing booklet in which to write your essays; the actual test booklet includes some blank space to plan your essays."
Three essays in 2 hours? That doesn't leave a lot of time for proof-reading, corrections or re-writes; and even the BEST writers make mistakes in their 'drafts'.
It might be intersting to see what the writer of the article could come up with if HE was required to write something for critical review under that tight a deadline.
Done it. I wrote the same exam, was out in about an hour.
Advantageous to anyone old enough to have proofed by hand and composed by hand. I’m just old enough, we didn’t write by computer until about junior high or so.
The author has surely hit the nail between the eyes this time.
I also wrote the AP English exam when I was in High School. However, I am 100% sure I had SOME errors in the essays I wrote which I would have been embarassed about had they been pointed out to me.
That's not so much a malapropism as a mangled metaphor.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to make like a tree and split.
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