FSU trustees OK removing hundreds of courses from GE requirement

This plus the fact that students don’t read anymore. They have very little understanding of how words are “strung together”, whether they’re reading fiction or informational text.

Back in the day a standard text for HS English was Readings for Writers. Nowhere to be found now.

 

Oh, they're not making people learn English anymore? Well, I'll be.

 

I assume it must have gone the way of cursive

 

I’m aware and have used it myself. The issue is that it is only good enough right now to give you turkey on plain white bread if you asked for a turkey sandwich. It cannot do a great job of giving the right additions and condiments to make it a full on sandwich. It will likely get better but the bottom line is if you do not know how to write in a clear and concise manner, you will not be able to make the corrections needed to turn an AI paper into one that appears to be written by a person.

 

You need to work on your reading comprehension.

 

You need to work on your reading comprehension as well.

 

I guess I took the wrong electives

 

It may have the opposite effect. It's a new technology. I'm sure people at one time lamented calculators because they would erode math skills. AI will change things. But will it change things for the worse? I don't know. Might just change how things are done.

Your grad students are poor writers? Wow. That's surprising. I would have assumed you couldn't get into grad school if you're a poor writer. Do you work in an area that isn't very writing intensive?

 

Cursive sucks. That is all.

 

Music Education - not the most writing intensive field, but they also shouldn't be total dummies. They were teachers before pursuing the grad degree. I taught online for UF for several years, so the students were from all over the states + international. One of the best writers was from USVI. The Master's students up here were just as bad. Subject/verb problems, passive voice, lack of understanding proper citation practices, etc.

 

I didn't claim that. In fact, I gave a diff reason up thread.

 

IMO, the biggest thing that could improve writing skills at the lower levels is more reading. Imitation is the the first step toward better writing. The main problem is that society is becoming functionally illiterate, at least in the manner of literacy that we think of. Those kids are probably more "digitally" literate than any of us, but you have to really work to achieve some print-style literacy. In an instant reaction world, it clashes a lot with the concentration and discipline needed to read and write print.

 

BTW, have you seen some of the errors that have come from reporters using AI to do some of their research for their articles and not bothering to fact check them? I bring it up since it shows that some people are beginning to relay on AI so much that they do not double check what they get from it and it can lead to some interesting results.

 

One word: Texting.

Another: Twitter.

This is how they communicate. They would (this includes people like my father to be honest) rather text than pick up the phone and dial. There is no way this mentality doesn't erode what we would consider good writing skills. Someone upthread mentioned how his autocorrect turns "because" into "cuz" and let that sink in for a second.

Now, obviously, language changes over time. But it's hard to look at this and not see a dumbing down in process.

 

The invention of writing technology caused a lot of consternation in its day in Greece. The detractors thought it was cheating and would destroy people's memorization skills. I suppose they were kind of right about that, because there is little need to do the sort of difficult memorization training to recall the Odyssey from memory or something. Oral tradition is dead because we can just write anything down worth remembering. We dont really use our memory to its full capacity anymore (unless its remembering guys who played sports 20-30 years ago). But writing made a lot more interesting things possible too.

 

Haven't seen that. I'll have to search for some Ytube videos. I imagine there are some doozies. On a separate but related note, I participated in an AI research project through the U of MN. They had me share a project from my class, assignment description & template. ChatGPT completed the project, then they had me grade it. It's a lesson plan assignment for pre-service teachers, not writing intensive, but does call for some narrative. I tried to be unbiased in my grading, thought it's virtually impossible. Anyway, ChatGPT earned an 87/100. Students' avg scores tend to be only a bit higher (90ish).

 

I'm not meaning to pick on this author because I think there was another one about a Carter pardon. But this author likely used AI to see if there were other POTUS that pardoned their children. I guess his AI search came back and said George H.W. Bush pardoned his son, Neil, which never actually happened. This author preceded to write an article about it for Esquire and they published it without realizing that pardon did not happen.