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Showing posts with the label literacy

Can good writing be taught?

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Not according to one of the best contemporary essayists, Jacob Eptsein: A fter thirty years of teaching a university course in something called advanced prose style, my accumulated wisdom on the subject, inspissated into a single thought, is that writing cannot be taught, though it can be learned—and that, friends, is the sound of one hand clapping. A. J. Liebling offers a complementary view, more concise and stripped of paradox, which runs: “The only way to write is well, and how you do it is your own damn business.” Learning to write sound, interesting, sometimes elegant prose is the work of a lifetime. The only way I know to do it is to read a vast deal of the best writing available, prose and poetry, with keen attention, and find a way to make use of this reading in one’s own writing. The first step is to become a slow reader.  Read the full article here

Is the general standard of English declining?

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Or  has there 'never been a time when English was not thought to be going to hell in a handcart'?  Complaints about English are (a) as old as the hills, (b) based on no linguistic logic, and (c) ultimately futile, since no one can stop language from varying and changing.   In The Language Wars , Henry Hitchings argues there has never been a time when English was not thought to be going to hell in a handcart. He cites what sounds like a contemporary essay on "the growing illiteracy of American boys" and invites us to guess when it was written. The answer turns out to be, in 1896 – and the boys whose illiteracy so alarmed the essay's author were not hillbillies or slum children, but Harvard undergraduates.  Source But aren't young people today reading far less?  Is the Internet destroying our 'book culture'? Adam Gopnik summarises the different approaches to this question: Never-Better : The internet is opening up a new information democracy. Everyone