McDaniel is, starting in ‘09-’10, requiring a 3rd year ‘writing in the discipline’ course for all majors. In preparation for this course, I’ve been collecting a list of words and/or phrases with philosophic implications of which most undergraduates are unaware. For example, many undergrads use ‘conclude’ as a synonym for ’summarize’, and ‘assert’ as a replacement for ’state’. I’m particularly interested in highlighting those with logical implications that are unknown to our students.
Another example that I can’t resist: a colleague of mine recently had a student who consistently used the phrase ‘due to’ in an odd way. When pressed, the student explained that her high school English teacher had told her never to use the word ‘because’ in formal prose. So whenever she wrote a paper, she wrote ‘because’ and then did a search and replace to change it to ‘due to’. The fact that she had made it to her 3rd or 4th year of college without correction staggers the imagination.
Here’s my initial list. Any suggestions or additions would be helpful.
Assert
Assume
Conclude
Necessary
Sufficient
Imply
Entail
Valid
Belief
Opinion (as in “Do I have to use sources in this paper, or do you just want my opinion”)
Infer
Conclude
Any more?
