I guess I'd define good pedagogy as getting through to as many students as possible. When you're teaching to the group, it's sure as hell difficult to modify your teaching style for one student. Not that it shouldn't be done in some circumstances, but it's difficult.

I haven't taught to large classes, so I'm sure it's been easier for me, but sometimes it can be a simple as rephrasing an idea. The hardest part is to get kids to speak up if they don't understand.

Sometimes the passive voice is called for.

Like when you can't actually name your boss as the one who fucked up: "The tracking sheet for that manuscript was not filled out," when the only person who is supposed to fill the sheets out is your boss.

(Where "your" = "my.")

Passive voice lets you point the finger without actually saying your boss didn't do his job.

Sometimes the passive voice is the only choice, but in the example of that English paper, it really didn't work, just made the point I was trying to make very confusing.

He did love the title of the paper, though--that was the one that I wrote on Wordsworth's take on memory while musing on the River Wye, and called it "Misty Water Colored Memories of the Wye We Were."

I may have misunderstood, but it sounded to me like the teacher did not explicitly say before the quiz that any use of textspeak or otherwise nonformal language would lead to a zero on the entire quiz.

I don't think that you should have to tell your students not to use textspeak on assignments. This student knows not to write an exam like she's talking to her friends, and she should know not to use textspeak in formal writing.

I admit to having some issue with failing the student because of one question, but I totally see where she was coming from. As I said, I would have given the student a chance to take a makeup exam.

Well, I'm sure the student won't use textspeak again, and that's the most important thing.

I've had to do a lot of passive voice killing in my writing. I try to question myself every time I use 'was' or 'were' in a sentence (I know that using 'to be' is not always passive, but it's often weak if not actually passive), though sometimes I'm not so good about this rule.

When I use the passive voice, it's usually either to add some variety or to not place blame when someone was supposed to do something and didn't.

I've had to do a lot of passive voice killing in my writing.

It's hard to avoid in academic writing - but that irritates me. I use it where necessary, but I refuse to write such phrases as 'The author of this paper concludes that...' which one of my teachers in research methods class actually advocated. Ugh.

The whole French school system is pretty much based on this--or rather, highlighting both the bad and the good. I remembered a few incidents in grad school when a French TA or professor didn't understand that calling someone out for shoddy work or a bad grade was something just not done.

The year I studied in France the exchange program from our school would take the grade the teacher gave us, compare it with other native and exchange students in the class, factor in somehow the teacher's evaluation of us and our evaluation of the teacher, and *somehow* come up with a grade. I got a 12/20 in French lit and a 16/20 in Prehistory (he was so nice to me, for me to get that grade on an oral exam on a randomly chosen subject). My American GPA went up.

I heard many times the explanation that they're really tough at University, especially the first year, because it's so cheap for French students to go to college that they need to weed a bunch out. I don't know how true this is, or was in 1996, anyway.

It's hard to avoid in academic writing - but that irritates me. I use it where necessary, but I refuse to write such phrases as 'The author of this paper concludes,' which one of my teachers in research methods class actually advocated. Ugh.

The author of this post concludes you are correct.