Pretty much what they are taught/told to do in HS. No mystery
When writing term papers, why do so many college students spend the first two pages defining terms that every adult knows, by quoting online dictionaries? Is this something high school teachers encourage? Genuinely curious.
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But why would high school teachers tell students to do this? In no other kind of writing (apart from technical analytical philosophy) do writers lead with definitions.
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It’s all filler material. Gotta nail that word count somehow.
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Yep, that’s something that was actively taught and I had to beat out of people while working as a Writing Center tutor. It’s even worse now because kids are taught definitions are controversial and they have to define things “fairly” and account for prejudice.
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word length requirements + would rather be smoking weed and playing magic the gathering than writing ones fifth end-of-semester paper, if memory serves
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Former lazy student here: it’s to pad the word count when you have nothing to say and are pulling an all-nighter. Attacking the premise of the question and dragging the marker into muddy linguistic nitpicking can serve to obscure your lack of knowledge & preparation.
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Ofc only true if you’re a sharp tack. Dictionary definitions is loser chat, you have to start w/ made up potential obscure misreadings of the terminology right out of the gate. Most profs will still know you just haven’t done the reading but if you entertain them it’ll be ok.
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Lazy way of padding out the word count. Back in the day teachers at the High School level would have stomped that practice out early on. Surprised you're seeing it in University papers.
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A related thing I've experienced in my classes: students using a dictionary definition for a term that I've already precisely defined for them (and the dictionary def is almost never the same as my definition). Referencing dictionaries is a kind of odd compulsion among students.
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Why not just reference the textbook you are teaching with and presumably got it from? I want to say it's lazy, but it's almost more work!
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