A couple of days ago, a long-time friend and colleague sent me a link http://nyti.ms/GAb5MV to a New York Times essay about well-constructed sentences as mini-narratives.  The next day the latest New York Review of Books arrived with a review by Ian Buruma of Tony Judt's last (in both senses) book.  I mentioned Judt in an earlier post as someone who, as he lay dying of ALS, was imprisoned in his own body.  Whenever I felt sorry for myself during the seven weeks I had to wear the abduction brace, I thought of Judt and reminded myself that I didn't have it so bad.  I started eagerly reading Buruma's review, but was stopped short by the second sentence, a mini-narrative gone badly awry:  "We even know from his last book, a brilliant compilation of his ideas on history and politics, distilled just before his untimely death from a series of conversations with Timothy Snyder, that he had wanted to write a history of trains."  Even Buruma nods, to slightly alter Horace.

I often say that the most compelling opening I ever got in a student essay--not a sentence, but the intro to a sentence (and a mini-narrative)--came from a developmental English student many years ago.  His introductory essay began, "The first time I was up for murder one . . ." 

When I tell people how long I taught, one reaction is often "You must've seen a lot changes in students' writing."  I think they expect me to launch into a lament about a decline in abilities.  I would argue, however, that writing has improved over the last 45 years and that much of the improvement has to do with technology. 

1.  I spent the first thirty years of my career correcting 'writting,' 'simular,' 'definate,' 'existance,' etc., thousands of times.  And then, almost overnight it seemed, I never had to make those corrections again--a small point perhaps, but a very nice relief.

2.  There was a time when everyone talked about the "death of writing," supposedly replaced by oral communication.  But now, all the students are very used to writing: texting, IM-ing, blogging, posting on Facebook, e-mailing.  More writing doesn't necessarily equal better writing, but certainly students, like the rest of us, have acquired the habit of writing and know there's nothing to be frightened of.

3.  When I began teaching freshman comp. in 1966 (as distant as the Crimean War, it seems), we used to ask students to write 250-300 words.  They wrote in bluebooks with small pages and wide line spacing.  An essay of 300 words could easily cover six pages and look fully developed.  Now everyone "types" his/her essay, and 300 words is barely one page.  No one writes themes that short.  Again, more isn't necessarily better, but there's a good chance that ideas really are more fully worked through.  And just visually, the student has a clearer sense of the proportion that ideas occupy.

4.  Students are much more willing to revise.  In the BC (before computer) era, revision was an ordeal and usually meant changing a comma to a semi-colon or taking the extra 't' out of 'writting.'  Now it's easy to rearrange paragraphs, to cut or add sentences, to make serious revisions.

There is a negative consequence of this new age: although plagiarism has always been around, it has, at least in my experience, increased dramatically.  I had students who left the URL on their papers.  I had many students who didn't bother to change the font of what they pasted in or, if there were links in the copied matter, didn't notice that the links printed out in blue.  Of course, if it is easier for the students to plagiarize, it is easier for the profs to find the copied work, though this isn't much consolation.  One student, sobbing over her F, assured me that although I had found her copied work, she didn't know that she was cheating.  Her justification might have been more convincing had she not copied her work from a site called echeat.com. 

Plagiarism is always discouraging for teachers, whether it's easy to prove or not.  What finally worked for me was suggested by a book by Dan Ariely called Predictably Irrational.  For the last two years that I taught, all students had to append a handwritten statement, signed and dated, swearing that the work was their own and that all sources had been accurately acknowledged.  It's perhaps irrational that someone who had  no qualms about plagiarism would suddenly be ashamed to write this statement, but having to do so almost eliminated the problem.

I realize that this posting has nothing to do with the ostensible topic of my blog.  One thought led to another, one sentence to a subsequent sentence, and this is where I ended up.  And where I'll end.