Students are taught to write in a special way, using lots of fancy words; those words are seen as having some special value in and of themselves, even though th

Students are taught to write in a special way, using lots of fancy words; those words are seen as having some special value in and of themselves, even though the words do not contribute to the writer's self-expression. The author calls this kind of writing Engfish. To make it worse, all the teachers (having previously been good students) use these same words, and so the students naturally try to mimic the teachers. (Personal observation: science writing is like this x100, packed to the gills with unnecessary words.) Further, the author contends the problem isn't just too much complexity, but that mimicking this form distracts from the important pursuits in writing: telling a story, expressing your own unique experience, writing something memorable and enjoyable. A phrase that stuck out to me was: "Most English teachers have been trained to correct students' writing, not to read it" – which is challenging, because to read the writing you have to engage with the content not just the form, and then having engaged with the content you can critique the form now that you have some idea what the writer is trying to say. The reading can't be rote if the writing isn't to be rote, but try that when you have a stack of poorly written stuff made by kids. It's also challenging because the writer doesn't necessarily have anything to say when the writing is assigned, so you might search for something that isn't there.