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janm.bsky.social
Professor of German & Comparative Literature at Reed College. Recently finished a book about the languages of botany.
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Exactly. I tell them: "Overreading? We aren't even close to getting out of the realm of underreading!"
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(There's a newer version in Crises of the Sentence, but this should probably do.)
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I was going to try to guess what sort of software it might be, but then you gave it away.
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Sure, I'd like to be added.
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Has anyone said L'Avventura?
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One of my favorite spots anywhere.
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I saw that headline and just started laughing. Right on cue!
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Fresh peaches? Coffee milkshakes?
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😂
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IFF (if and only if)
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I guess I don't perceive clear trends in any particular direction, but of course, one tends to recall the strongest and weakest work, making it hard to know what is or isn't changing with the B students.
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My view about college writing is that we have to unteach what they learn in AP English w/ its timed tests. Nevertheless, I think that today's 1st-year college student comes with more formal training in close reading than 10 or 15 years ago, albeit w/ little sense of what to do with such skills.
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Interesting. This is really not my experience. If anything, my students are better at constructing arguments today than they were 10 years ago, although one could certainly say that their essays are more prone to follow fixed patterns and hence are on balance less creative.