Let’s Watch Our Words
As many of you know, among other things, I teach Humanities to junior high students. That means I teach a combination of English and Social Studies which means my students spend a great deal of time working on becoming better writers. Recently (the last few years), I’ve been noticing that it seems to be more difficult for them to write descriptively. They tend to write stories, poems, and memoirs with simpler words than I would like to see them use. As a result their writing includes many birds, flowers, cars, shirts, apples, and so on, instead of seagulls, roses, Toyotas, Polos, and Granny Smiths.
Over the years when I have asked my students to “be a little more specific” in their writing, many of them have told me it would be a lot easier if they knew what to call everything. That’s a little sad, isn’t it?
So, what does this all mean? Have we been failing our kids? Not at all. We’re providing the best lives and experiences we can. But I think it does mean that we could do a little better in helping them identify the parts of their world.
We live not far from a beach where I love to walk along the water. I see a lot of parents with their children on my walks and I can’t tell you how often I have heard a parent say “look at the bird.” Not “look at the seagull” or “the sandpiper” or “the pelican.” Just “look at the bird.” It’s good that the parent and child are experiencing the beach and all it is, but as that child grows, she is more likely to use the word “bird” to describe each and every bird she sees rather than distinguish one from another. And that will impede her writing – and her reading.
We’ve been talking about writing but let’s talk about reading for a minute. Many of my students start the school year saying they don’t like to read. Often it’s because they have had to read books they didn’t like. But that isn’t all that keeps them from loving books. Many other things affect their love of reading and one of the big ones is vocabulary. If they don’t recognize the words they’re reading, they are much more likely to give up on the book; they’ll also be more likely to not want to try another. And that means they won’t want to read at all which will have a huge impact on all the rest of their academic endeavors.
I’m not saying we all have to talk to our kids like we’re college professors. What I am saying is if it’s a comfortable moment in the conversation or the experience (like playing in the waves at the beach) let’s identify that bird by its real name. Better yet, if we aren’t sure what kind of bird it is, let’s get a bird book at the library and look it up together. Or Google it together. How cool would that be? Not only would it extend the experience, but it would send the message that it can be fun to research. What a concept!
So my suggestion this week is that we start to call a rose “a rose” – not just a flower. And maybe that car over there is a Ford, and maybe that apple in the bowl is a Macintosh.
What do you think?
