Here’s a related challenge – students don’t know a noun from an adjective from an adverb. And rare is the student interested in etymology. I mean, how many know that synonym means “same name”? Those of us who studied Latin in high school – fewer and fewer – can deduce (induce?) many meanings from knowing some roots. I should look up etymology of pretty. In fact, should we ask students to try their words on the online etymology page?

Back to Michael’s comment – I do in fact check facebook that way!! But I have both bookmarks on the sidebar for the daily lookups plus Delicious tags for stored items.

One student told me that the reason students take the cliched topics (chestnuts) is that they are commonplace, topoi, about which they understand the concept, and the students feel baffled about new topics in unfamiliar territory. I had a pretty decent paper this term on the causes of the increasing popularity of longboarding (compared to skateboarding) and on the (hopefully unexpected) effects of the US ban on horse slaughter facilities. Students taking a topic dear to their hearts and willing to pursue a bit.

If students were as intellectually curious to just explore words and ideas – including the concept of keywords as something intellectually stimulating – this work would be easier. That’s the challenge – to reawake their curiosity.

A growing trend, it seems, is to use google for just about everything. The most recent data put out by google seems to show that many people are no longer even bookmarking the websites they frequent, but instead googling them through terms like “facebook login.”

Thanks for the links!