I’ve spent nineteen years sitting across from exhausted adults, watching them pour their hearts into a draft only to see their scores plummet because they fell for the “more is better” trap. Most textbooks will tell you that a good summary is about sophisticated vocabulary or complex sentence structures, but that is a lie that
I was sitting in a cramped, overheated seminar room last Tuesday, watching a bright student completely freeze up during a group discussion. He had a brilliant point, but he kept waiting for a silence that was simply never going to come. He was so terrified of being rude that he ended up saying nothing at
I was sitting in a humid, cramped exam hall in Johannesburg last Tuesday, watching a student stare blankly at a prompt about a bustling market. He had the vocabulary—he was using words like “magnificent” and “spectacular”—but he was using them like a blunt instrument, hitting the page without actually painting a picture. It is the
I remember sitting in a cramped exam hall ten years ago, watching a student stare at a prompt about a family member, his pen hovering uselessly over the paper. He wasn’t struggling with English; he was struggling with the expectation that he needed to be a novelist. Most textbooks tell you that learning how to
I was sitting in a cramped exam center last Tuesday, watching a student stare at a bar chart as if it were written in ancient hieroglyphics. He knew the data, but his writing was a repetitive, painful loop of “a lot of people” and “some people.” It’s the same thing I see every single year:
I was sitting in a cramped, dimly lit exam hall last Tuesday, watching a student stare at a blank page, her pen hovering just inches from the paper. I could almost hear the internal gears grinding as she struggled with a simple sentence, paralyzed by the fear of choosing between much and many. It’s a
I remember sitting in a cramped, windowless exam center ten years ago, watching a student’s face fall as I handed back his paper. He was brilliant, but he had used “I want” and “You are wrong” like a sledgehammer in his formal essay. He didn’t need more vocabulary; he needed to understand how to soften
I remember sitting in a dimly lit exam hall ten years ago, watching a student stare at a line graph with absolute, paralyzed dread. She had the data right in front of her, yet she was struggling with how to describe trends and changes because she was trying to hunt for “sophisticated” academic jargon she’d
I was sitting in a quiet corner of a lecture hall last Tuesday, watching a brilliant student—a professional with years of experience—stutter through a simple sentence about “advices” and “informations.” It wasn’t a lack of intelligence that tripped them up; it was a lack of habit. Most textbooks try to bury you in endless, abstract
I was sitting in my office last Tuesday, staring at a pile of practice essays, when I saw it again: “The man said… then the man walked… because the man was tired.” It’s the same pattern I’ve been marking for nineteen years. Most textbooks will tell you that you need a massive, encyclopedic vocabulary to