Surprise, surprise....

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I’m a little surprised by this article but not surprised at the same time. I have gone to two different schools now and at each of them, students are required to take and pass English courses that should address this very problem. I guess I didn’t realize the problem was so widespread. But even if I hadn’t taken these classes, this would still surprise me in a way due to the fact that I can just infer that a professor doesn’t want a student getting every quote from Wikipedia or from Google. One thing that really grabbed my attention is when she mentions that the difference between journals and popular magazines and articles and abstracts were being lost on students. Maybe it’s just me but I think this signals that something else, more fundamental, is wrong. Although I can see how it relates and contributes to this problem, this seems to be more of a problem of early education about different types of literature, which, to me, is more disturbing. It’s more disturbing because it has nothing to do with research and everything to do with English classes from the lowest level. Later in the article, she goes on to mention several times student’s lack of direct experience in a library. It has been my experience that students lack this because of the lack of resources in the libraries at the elementary, middle and high school levels. I always just assumed that was why most first year college curriculums included those types of courses. One of the solutions she suggests about teaching the language of library research really caught my eye. It seems so simplistic that it almost seems like it wouldn’t be a problem until I think about my own research and I realize that I mostly guess when it comes to some of the words she mentioned like “text image”, “verbatim image”, or “search wizard”.