An Ode to the Spelling Chequer
Prays the Lord for the spelling chequer
That came with our pea sea!
Mecca mistake and it puts you rite
Its so easy to ewes, you sea.
I never used to no, was it e before eye?
(Four sometimes its eye before e.)
But now I've discovered the quay to success
It's as simple as won, too, free!
Sew watt if you lose a letter or two,
The whirled won't come two an end!
Can't you sea? It's as plane as the knows on yore face
S. Chequer's my very best friend
I've always had trubble with letters that double
"Is it one or to S's?" I'd wine
But now, as I've tolled you this chequer is grate
And its hi thyme you got won, like mine.
—Janet E. Byford
That came with our pea sea!
Mecca mistake and it puts you rite
Its so easy to ewes, you sea.
I never used to no, was it e before eye?
(Four sometimes its eye before e.)
But now I've discovered the quay to success
It's as simple as won, too, free!
Sew watt if you lose a letter or two,
The whirled won't come two an end!
Can't you sea? It's as plane as the knows on yore face
S. Chequer's my very best friend
I've always had trubble with letters that double
"Is it one or to S's?" I'd wine
But now, as I've tolled you this chequer is grate
And its hi thyme you got won, like mine.
—Janet E. Byford
Reading is not a simple task! Simple decoding of the symbols isn't so simple. The meaning must be interpreted in order to be fully understood. But for some reason humans have always found a need to make reading difficult. Whether it be the ancient Egyptians using complicated hieroglyphics to prevent the common person from becoming literate and keeping reading and writing to certain classes of the populace, or persons using L337 5p34|< today to keep others from reading their postings, reading has always at some level been intentionally difficult. Not every difficulty is intentional though. Homonyms, while occasionally fun, are an unintentional side effect of how we speak English and have collectively chosen to put those words into printed text.
Why did I start with what some may argue is an English teachers posting when I am a biology teacher? Because homonyms and other grammatical games take place in scientific texts. Some words have completely different meanings when used in a scientific setting, and others have multiple meanings depending on the discipline. Mole. I have have a mole on my face, I can have a mole in my garden, I can have a mole of iron. Put only those three uses of the word together and there is a mole of iron in the mole on the tail of the mole in my garden. Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. (Go look that one up! I'll wait.) No I did not choose two (usually) animal words for the sole reason I am a biology teacher. Well, perhaps I did. But I have a theory on that. NO I DON'T! I have a hypothesis. Whoa!
Scientific writing isn't written with the intention of being difficult. The reason many people find it difficult, is that it is written with the intent of being simple. Simple in science terms. Simple if you know what the intended meaning of the words are. Sadly most of the scientific texts that most people are familiar with are the dry boring texts from when they were in school learning the uses of different words in science. They were only reading the groundwork without having any useful application or interest. It is as if they were taken on a tour of fancy new expensive homes with all the new fun features they want in their dream homes, but they were only shown the foundations before anything else was built on top of it. I don't blame them for finding that boring!
Just as new readers may get frustrated and find reading difficult, so do new readers to scientific writing. Luckily the "cure" for both situations is the same, reading that is relevant to the reader. Something that the student will find interesting and applicable to his/her own life.
And that is something I can hang my hat on. Or would that be......
So...I have to ask...do you own a lot of cats? I don't know where you find these pictures...they are amazing. I also don't know where you heard the buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo thing, but that was amazing, too. I'll have to steal that one from you and use it in the future.
ReplyDeleteI'm maybe going to derail the subject of this posting a little bit, but I wanted to comment on what you wrote when you said, "Reading has always at some level been intentionally difficult." I think that is absolutely true. This reminds me of the "reading" tests that people gave Blacks in the South that they had to pass before they were able to vote...and the tests were made intentionally difficult. Some people have argued that tax codes, many legal documents, and congressional bills are made intentionally difficult too so that the average person (or the struggling reader) does not have access to understanding them.
There is a huge critique that people have placed against scientific language because they argue that it scientific language is exclusionary...that is, the "ordinary American" can't understand it.
http://www.soc.cornell.edu/hayes-lexical-analysis/schoolbooks/Papers/HayesGrowingInaccessibility1992.pdf
(Sorry--that's a boring paper, and it would be a snoozer if you read the whole thing, but it proves my point.)
There is a book by Halliday and Martin (1993) called "Writing Science" that describes the development of scientific language in Newton's writing. So Halliday shows that words like "refract" became "refraction" in order to let Newton structure his sentences more easily. But what happened was that science became rich in nominalizations, where active verbs (e.g., refract) are changed into nouns (e.g., refraction) which makes science texts incredibly difficult to read. Just think of all of the many actions that go behind a noun phrase as simple as "water cycle."
Halliday and Martin also say that scientific language is so difficult because of interlocking taxonomies and definitions--so you can't understand "molecule" without understanding what an "atom" or "covalent bond" is.
So, yes, whether intentional or not, scientific language can be incredibly difficult. Which just highlights the need for excellent vocabulary instruction in this discipline.
Thanks for a great posting!
Yeah, you hit what it was I was trying to say right on the head. I just stopped before it turned from a blog post into an entire paper.
ReplyDeleteI have not found that paper you linked boring at all! I have found it quite interesting so far... I bookmarked it to finish reading it properly tonight (I'm on page 5 of 6 right now and finding it good reading!). I was happy to see a magazine that I grew up reading in one of the graphs (Ranger Rick - perhaps a preview of a pending blog post?).
The vocabulary of scientific writing is, I openly and with many supporters admit, difficult. The sentence structure normally isn't hard to understand, but the vocabulary is. What you were referencing with Halliday and Martin highlights _our_ point. Specific words had to be made/used in order for the sentence structure to be accessible/coherent, and that is where scientific writing/reading gets difficult.
As the subject matter gets more in depth and more specialized, I can see where the need for and shift towards the higher difficulty vocabulary comes from. The timing as referenced in the linked reports shows the 50's and 60's as the point where the difficulty increased, which is strongly correlated to timings in increased understanding and knowledge in the scientific fields being reported.
I find it amusing that the steps taken to keep scientific writing simple make it more difficult simultaneously, although more difficult for a different reason.
OOoOps - Forgot to respond to your question. I personally only own one cat, Oscar. His photo is my profile pic. (The handsome grey one, yes I am biased) The other cats.... well... if you spend enough time on the internet you are bound to encounter cats.
ReplyDeleteOnce I am in a position to have a dog again I will. But for now, it's me and Oscar.