I have so much to say, yet I fear that most students will not understand me.
Sometimes I speak in Spanish, just because I feel like it. Other times, I have no choice, since sometimes I am working with students who are not yet proficient in English (yet they are enrolled in English-speaking classes)
Most of the time, the confusion emerges when I use big words.
Arbitrary.
Admirable.
Words whose meanings I know enough to sense them, though I would be hard-pressed to produce a dictionary definition. Still, literacy is built on impressions, not by-rote imitation.
High school students ought to know the meaning of those two words above, yet in the past students interrupt me on masse, declaring that they do not.
"You use too many big words," they tell me.
What gives? Don't they read? Why would they? Most of the stuff foisted on them in English is prepackaged with predictable questions, all of which obviate the need for permanence in our lives. Literature is supposed to reflect reality, yet textbooks do anything but.
Some students are engaged to read more perceptively, is there is an AP exam in May. It's too bad that reading is no fun for most kids. Perhaps if they got to choose whatever they wanted to read, they would read more, and learn more vocabulary.
Next time I say word, whose meaning I mean in all its sense, and a student does not understand, I shall write the word down.
Why should I dumb down what I am saying? Better yet, let's help the student to wise up!