JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION
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ON IMPROVING THE LINGUISTIC SKILL OF STUDENTS JULIUS SUMNER MILLER West Los Angeles, California
THEREIS no denying that linguistic competence is deplorably lacking among college graduates. By this I do not mean competence in a foreign tongue; I mean command of rudimentary English, of the mechanics of communication, of syntax, grammar, sentence organization, spelling. Our technical graduates are particularly victimized by this, and industrial men as well as academicians are pained by the often semiliterate performance. The industrialists complain that our students write reports garbled in organization, grammatically meaningless, and at,rociously spelled. The academicians know this to be pretty largely true, but if they complain they appear to do little about it. With the risk of heresy I dare to suggest that we, the teachers, are in part responsible-maybe in large part in the technical subjects. In truth, I fear in larger part than we care to admit! I believe that the widespread use of multiple-response quizzes and exams contributes to this linguistic inadequacy. Chemistry students and physics students can now pursue course after course without ever having to write a connected account of a topic. All they need do is pick out t,he right answer. The old-fashioned essay is dead. To ask for a return to the classical methods-writing essays and classroom recitation-will not meet with too promising approval. After all, multiple-response are elegant things to grade! How then can we aid the student's cause and not belabor our own? This brings
me to the scheme I have now tried for several years and which has proved to have some measure of usefulness. T h e students construct multiple-response questions. After I have administered a few multiple-response quizzes of my own coin (or the standard exams available on the market) I require the students to make out their own questions-statements followed by five completions, one of which is acceptable. Numerical problems are not used. Statements of theory, principle, fact, hypothesis, and so on, which can be put in good grammatical structure are ~vhatwe want. This is no small order, as anyone who has made out multiplechoice quizzes will attest. I t involves painstaking study of the point in question and very considerable labor in putting it into acceptable English. Finding five "good" answers (or completions), four of which are not correct but seem so, calls for some critical thinking. The exercise constitutes a magnificent review devire but above all gives practice in the mother tongue. These contributions I read with red pencil in hand. Acceptable ones I often use in subsequent quizzes! A competitive spirit often arises in class, which is itself a healthy concomitant to learning. Experience over several years shows that the subject is better commanded, and I believe I observe a substantial improvement in linguistic skill. The students themselves attest to the merits of the device-a recommendation I consider adequate.
