SparkNotes: the scourge of the SAT reading section

[icarusancalion]

"Yes, but describe the setting in the Lord of the Rings," I ask.

The student gives me a vague recap of the entire setting of Middle Earth, including stuff he shouldn't be able to know from the first two chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring"No. I mean in the first chapter. Where do the first scenes take place?" I reel in the net

Comments

[ivy03]

About ten years ago, when my dad was dean of a pathology department at a med school, the teenage daughter of one of his employees came up to him and asked him how to do better on the SATs. He told her to read a lot.

But--why would you ask your dad's boss at a company party how to improve your SAT score? That's random.

[shrewreader]

Hopefully, because your Dad's boss is actually A Good Guy, which your Dad said, and at the party, he expressed actual interest in you. Which led, since you're a teen, to the SATs. He sympathizes, saying, "those freaked me out, too. I remember having nightmares about the verbal, especially building my vocab."

"Really?" you ask, hopefully: if this grown up admits that stuff that freaks you out freaked him out, then maybe you're not the walking catastrophe the soi-distant Cool Kids say you are. "What did you do?"

"I read a lot. You know, newspapers, books, and these cool stories my friends and I used to write for each other about our imaginary adventures with Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe."

'cause, really, a guy cool enough to talk to one of his minion's kids at a party is -totally- Geek Like Us.

--PolyAnna Shrewkate

[icarusancalion]

Kids don't think the way we do. If they get an instinct that an adult can help, they'll just ask, without considering appropriateness

[raveninthewind]

I think I was living in my own world. I've never heard of SparkNotes... *g*

I can't even imagine not being an reader. Their worlds must be so colorless.

[shrewreader]

Neither had I before it started turning up in the TurnItIn Originality Reports for my students' papers......

[reedfem]

Okay, I feel better. I didn't know what it was either. I tried to live in the library when I was in school.

[icarusancalion]

I figured I was preaching to the choir, here.

Yes. Colorless indeed. Asked a student why he would use SparkNotes, and he answered, "Because it has all the answers."

I can't even begin to reply to that. The very idea that there answers that can be handed over tells me worlds about the failure of standardized testing.

[shrewreader]

I'm not sure which are worse: those who don't read, or those who cut and paste from e-notes and don't either a, quote or much less b, cite.

[icarusancalion]

The former. Even if they paste from e-notes, at least they've read it. Not reading short-circuits the whole point.

[sarka]

I've used SparkNotes - or something similar - only once. It was when I was reading Greek Philosophy, and while I didn't bother with the notes themselves, the chapter summaries I found sometimes saved me many hours of crazed "oh my god where did I read that thing about the shadow cave thingy" kind of searching. I always thought that was how you were supposed to use them...

[icarusancalion]

Theoretically. But that's not what kids do. They read them instead of the book.

[ncp]

We didn't have SparkNotes when I was in school -- we had Cliff's Notes. Same thing, really. I was TERRIBLE at interpreting literature, identifying themes, characters, settings, etc. but even then I knew it was cheating to just read the Cliffs Notes.

[icarusancalion]

I could even be mixing up the names. But same thing, yes.

Analytical reading's a skill like any other. Some get good at it, some don't.

But if someone never does the work, and then tries to take a test on it -- like the SAT -- then how can they expect good results?