Poor Writing
Sep. 6th, 2005 07:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebI finished Collapse. Obviously I have allowed that book to change me in a good way. I enjoyed learning so many interesting things. "For example, within the last two decades there has been a worldwide boom in a fish called Orange Roughy, caught in Australian and New Zealand waters and providing the basis of a fishery that has been profitable in the short term. Unfortunately, closer studies showed that Orange Roughy are very slow-growing, they do not start to breed until they are about 40 years old, and the fish caught and eaten are often 100 years old." Unvelievable! These fish should be some sort of rare expensive dish, but I've actually heard of them. How can you not love a book with information like that?
But by the end, I could barely drag myself through the writing. At the nadir, I started arguing with the author about counting. It all started with this sentence: "Five sets of cultural values were particularly important: those involving sheep, rabbits and foxes, native Australian vegetation, land values, and British identity." First I counted four, then six. Then I decided that since the author was writing for a general audience, semicolons would be over our heads. Finally I realized that the punctuation was correct, and there really were five things if you realize that rabbits-and-foxes are part of the same phenomenon. Sort of.
Okay. Who cares? Normally I read for content, not to check the mathematical precision of redundant, ahem, introductory statements. I'm not the sort to even notice this kind of thing. He was just driving me nuts.
So today I checked out some books on instructional design. One, which shall remain nameless, looked promising, with words like this: "This book differs from most books [in that it does not leave designers to] go away confused, owning bits and pieces of a process that it is impossible, or at least difficult, to implement in a coherent fashion."
But already I can't stand the writing. When my responses range from "huh?" to "duh" with nothing good in between, well, it's no fun.
"Constructivism is not a concept that just recently hit the internet." Duh. "Its history dates back not only to the work of Piaget, but also to educational psychologist Lev Semionovich Vigotsky." Oh, goody for you; you can throw out exotic-sounding names. "Actually, Vygotsky's theories seem to gain more attention from modern constructivists." Whatever. Are you ever planning on actually telling me anything? Or are you just going to parade your terminology around for me? "His theories place emphasis on discovery and cooperative learning." Woo hoo! Content! "His studies proved that in many cases, a child learns by interacting with peers who have established higher capabilities and with adults." You need studies for this? "Vigotsky also recognized that children can learn to resolve a problem by thinking their way through it." Again, duh. It's almost like children are miniature people or something. "This method of learning is referred to as social learning." No, thinking your way through something does not require anything social.
"Another part of the foundation of constructivism lies in the concept of the zone of proximal development." Huh? "Children are working in this zone when they are assisted by adults or peers." Okay. Not sure why you need such a wacked out term for learning by watching, but okay. "This process refers to a situation in which the learner obtains competence from interaction either with an advanced student or with an adult who has proficient knowledge." You just said that in the last paragraph. "An example of this would be a new worker training by means of an apprenticeship." Duh. But "apprenticeship" would also have been a better term than "zone of proximal development."
I need to learn the terminology even if none of the actual concepts are new to me. That would let me interview well even if people insist on using esoteric terms. Well, now I know about the zone of osmosis maturation or whatever. But I was hoping to learn new concepts, too.
(Chapter one got much better at the end, so I guess I'll slog through some more.)
But by the end, I could barely drag myself through the writing. At the nadir, I started arguing with the author about counting. It all started with this sentence: "Five sets of cultural values were particularly important: those involving sheep, rabbits and foxes, native Australian vegetation, land values, and British identity." First I counted four, then six. Then I decided that since the author was writing for a general audience, semicolons would be over our heads. Finally I realized that the punctuation was correct, and there really were five things if you realize that rabbits-and-foxes are part of the same phenomenon. Sort of.
Okay. Who cares? Normally I read for content, not to check the mathematical precision of redundant, ahem, introductory statements. I'm not the sort to even notice this kind of thing. He was just driving me nuts.
So today I checked out some books on instructional design. One, which shall remain nameless, looked promising, with words like this: "This book differs from most books [in that it does not leave designers to] go away confused, owning bits and pieces of a process that it is impossible, or at least difficult, to implement in a coherent fashion."
But already I can't stand the writing. When my responses range from "huh?" to "duh" with nothing good in between, well, it's no fun.
"Constructivism is not a concept that just recently hit the internet." Duh. "Its history dates back not only to the work of Piaget, but also to educational psychologist Lev Semionovich Vigotsky." Oh, goody for you; you can throw out exotic-sounding names. "Actually, Vygotsky's theories seem to gain more attention from modern constructivists." Whatever. Are you ever planning on actually telling me anything? Or are you just going to parade your terminology around for me? "His theories place emphasis on discovery and cooperative learning." Woo hoo! Content! "His studies proved that in many cases, a child learns by interacting with peers who have established higher capabilities and with adults." You need studies for this? "Vigotsky also recognized that children can learn to resolve a problem by thinking their way through it." Again, duh. It's almost like children are miniature people or something. "This method of learning is referred to as social learning." No, thinking your way through something does not require anything social.
"Another part of the foundation of constructivism lies in the concept of the zone of proximal development." Huh? "Children are working in this zone when they are assisted by adults or peers." Okay. Not sure why you need such a wacked out term for learning by watching, but okay. "This process refers to a situation in which the learner obtains competence from interaction either with an advanced student or with an adult who has proficient knowledge." You just said that in the last paragraph. "An example of this would be a new worker training by means of an apprenticeship." Duh. But "apprenticeship" would also have been a better term than "zone of proximal development."
I need to learn the terminology even if none of the actual concepts are new to me. That would let me interview well even if people insist on using esoteric terms. Well, now I know about the zone of osmosis maturation or whatever. But I was hoping to learn new concepts, too.
(Chapter one got much better at the end, so I guess I'll slog through some more.)