| What Weskid said, that's sort of what I was getting at. Some people can write really concise arguments in their papers. I'm not one of those people. But for example, I wrote a paper last semester or possibly last year in which a friend of mine (an English major) looked at it. One paragraph was trimmed down to 1-2 sentence. She knew what words could be used to connect the ideas I was trying to get across the paper.
I really don't see it as a problem of students not developing their ideas enough. Students should be taught how to be short, sweet and simple and to the point. Because in the end, the longer something is in writing, it means the longer it takes for someone else to read it.
Branching a bit off into the real world, who the hell wants to read a proposed bill that's 10 pages long if it could have easily been 1-2 pages. Who wants to read a business proposal that's 25 pages long, if it could have been summed up in 1 page. It seems to me it takes more creativity and thinking to make sure one gets down what's important on paper rather than drilling through one topic for xx amount of pages. |