"... It is an unfortunate aspect of teaching science that our students do not believe that writing is a skill that they need to acquire. Some of them even chos

"... It is an unfortunate aspect of teaching science that our students do not believe that writing is a skill that they need to acquire. Some of them even chose to do science at University because they prefer to memorise factual material. Many of them have told me that I should not care about their grammar and spelling, because I teach science, not English. But English is not like other school subjects: it is the condition of academic life. In the past, my senior students eventually came to terms with this after years of writing essays, but the commencing students, especially the ones straight out of high school, completely rejected this notion. However, these days, youngsters have a passion for writing that Huxley shares. They have a flair for correspondence. It is a condition of their social life. The emails and texts and messages that they send each day may rival the number of words Huxley wrote daily with his quill. There is only a difference of quality. So I had this bright idea: I would get my students to write a letter to T.H. Huxley in response to his 1880 book and tell him what was really going on in the nucleus of the cells of the crayfish. They had to be polite and use 'proper English' so that T.H. would understand them, and they had to understand meiosis, but since it was in their textbook and had been covered by lectures, this should not have been difficult. And then I had another idea: instead of covering their letters with red ink (which they would ignore), I would write them a letter back. And because Huxley did not know he was marking students' essays, he did not give them a grade. They could tell from the letter whether he liked their letter or not. Either he dismissed their letter as a hoax by local schoolchildren (which was likely if their grammar and spelling was below par) or he engaged with them as a fellow scientist. ..." This is very subtle way of scolding those who don't quite rise to the level expected. Way more subtle than a "RS", red marks or grades. Click the "Show Transcript" to read the full article.