Vocabulary

When I was in 3rd grade, I copied a lot of definitions out of the dictionary. I remember one time, while kicking it in the advanced reading group, our teacher gave us a stern talking to about our definitions. It seems almost everyone defined the word by using the word--so we still had no idea what the word meant. (It was some adverb or adjective that used the noun form in the definition.) I forget the word, but I never forgot the lesson. A definition only works if you understand all the words in it. Sometimes, that means looking up another word.

Most of my students have not learned that lesson yet. They blithely copy definitions, then make a guess what the word means when they write synonyms and antonyms. If they are dedicated enough to use a thesaurus, I can still catch them on their examples--that have nothing to fo with the word's meaning.

I know that they ate disaffected and disengaged, but it seems like such a waste of time. Why bother even doing the assignment if you don't get anything out of it? Yes, I know, I need to figure out a way get them to care; bla bla bla. I just don't get them sometimes. They're 16 years old, not 8. Aren't they curious?