November 11, 2009 – 5:47 PM
How shocking the vivid argot of young people today! Imagine our befuddlement when recently accosted by the indelicate language of the street corner in what was unfolding as an otherwise proper conversation with one of our well-bred and punctilious students. Though this would not be the first time we have been waylaid by the urban patois of our young charges, we were, nevertheless, sufficiently bemused that we paused to consider how we might intervene so as to take full advantage of the teachable moment that had presented itself. Here, after all, was one of our ambitious young students in the midst of a conversation about his summer employment with his SAT/ACT Grammar, Reading, and Essay instructor. As we have stated on previous occasions, our effort to expand the active vocabulary of America’s youth by shepherding them away from the slippery slopes of indolent locution is part and parcel of our ongoing quest to elevate and instruct these lexically challenged youths in the more subtle expressions found in the educated citizen’s vocabulary. Here is the expression that so took us aback:
October 14, 2009 – 8:54 AM
In working with young people, we often overhear the colorful patois of their generation. Though we are occasionally flummoxed by their exotic teen argot, we are sometimes nimble enough to discern and exploit such teachable moments when they present themselves. As part of our ongoing mission to encourage our students to expand their active vocabularies by renouncing their slothful locutions and supplanting them with the more nuanced phrasings afforded by sophisticated diction, we offer the following example from a conversation we recently overheard.
“My ACT tutor is one of the most brilliant educators I have ever met, but, when I saw him in the park the other day playing basketball, I realized that he’s really a ‘wack buster.’”
October 5, 2009 – 1:54 PM
As part of our ongoing effort to educate and elevate, we encourage our students to expand their active vocabularies by cultivating their own speech and, rather than unimaginatively following the herd, forsaking their teen argot with nuanced diction that will, no doubt, impress their friends and enemies alike.
September 9, 2009 – 8:13 AM
With protesters a few blocks away holding signs that succinctly conveyed the spirit of their protest gathering— “Obamecation. It takes the Village Idiot; Obama-cation Dumbing Down Students; Mr. President, stay away from our kids”—President Obama addressed the nation’s school children in his back-to-school speech that urged his audience to embrace the quintessential American values of hard work, individual responsibility, and education as a path towards a better life:
August 31, 2009 – 9:23 PM
The Sunday New York Times ran a front-page piece about the “future of reading” in our schools. The extensive article presents the story of a teacher who has embraced the not-so-uncommon practice of allowing middle school students to choose their own texts to read in language arts class. The pros and cons of encouraging young readers to curl up with a book of their choosing for a half hour of classroom time are aired out in a predictable way: the virtues of a model that fosters life-long reading habits are mildly juxtaposed with the perils of a pedagogy that permits adolescent boys’ to privately engross themselves in such trash as The Adventures of Captain Underpants when they, no doubt, would be better edified were they to engage in a classroom discussion of the adventures of Captain Ahab.
August 24, 2009 – 8:28 PM
This fall college-bound high school seniors will most likely find themselves distraught over that most daunting of all the various components that constitute the application package—the college admissions personal essay. The essay presents students an opportunity to speak in the present. At Academic Approach, we believe the personal essay is an opportunity to be seized. The essay can be the most powerful component of a student’s application file precisely because here, for the first and last time in the file, the very person who stands knocking at the door asking to be let in speaks directly to those who will answer the door.
December 16, 2008 – 11:42 PM
Every December, families receive their high school juniors’ PSAT (Preliminary SAT) scores. Suddenly, college admission is less of an abstract idea: scores are in-hand, deficits are obvious, and only six months remain in junior year to execute an effective plan. A flood of anxious questions follows:
“My scores are low. Does this mean I won’t get into college?”
December 16, 2008 – 4:16 PM
The College Board has adopted a Score Choice™ policy for the SAT that, according to the College Board website, will give students the option to choose, by test date, which SAT scores that they will send to colleges and thereby “allow students to put their best foot forward on test day by giving them more flexibility and control over their scores.”
December 16, 2008 – 1:53 PM
The College Board has recently announced a new test to be rolled out in fall 2009. Called ReadiStep, the new test is designed, as the College Board press release states, “to identify the skills that 8th grade students have and those that they need to develop in order to be more prepared for rigorous high school courses and for college.” The pencil-and-paper format test is two hours long and divided into multiple-choice sections of math, writing skills, and critical reading skills. Individual schools and school districts will decide if they want to employ ReadiStep and when they would administer the exam; they would also cover the fee of $10 dollars per exam.
September 30, 2008 – 12:05 PM
The people who open and close the gates to undergraduate programs at American colleges and universities, that is, the high school college counselors who help students with the application process and the college admissions officers who make the admissions decisions, recently held their annual professional conference. By far the most heavily attended session at the conference was a panel that discussed the professional organization’s recently published report on the place of standardized testing in college admissions. The National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC) released its report on the “Use of Standardized Tests in Undergraduate Admission” in late-September. Though the NACAC report has received some press coverage, mostly focused on the perennial question of whether or not schools are going to drop the test as an admissions requirement, it would be helpful for parents to consider the less sensational andmore measured language of the report itself in order to gain a clearer understanding of the current thinking of college admissions offices on the question of the place of the SAT/ACT in the admissions process.