Have you seen any poorly written articles lately?

[Shelydon]

I am looking for shortish articles or essays that are poorly written to give to my students as examples. I am contrasting these with some particularly good articles.  My students are 12-14, so age appropriate preferred.  I am wishing I had saved all the goofy internet articles I've read over the years.

[Rachel]

I feel like I’m seeing these all the time, but I don’t currently know of any. The worst culprit seems to be the local TV station. The stuff they publish online as articles are atrocious. 

[Shelydon]

28 minutes ago, Rachel said:

I feel like I’m seeing these all the time, but I don’t currently know of any. The worst culprit seems to be the local TV station. The stuff they publish online as articles are atrocious. 

That's a good idea.  I'll look at my local websites.

[wendyroo]

3 hours ago, Shelydon said:

I am looking for shortish articles or essays that are poorly written to give to my students as examples. I am contrasting these with some particularly good articles.  My students are 12-14, so age appropriate preferred.  I am wishing I had saved all the goofy internet articles I've read over the years.

My kids were just assigned this article to read in their online class. Probably longer than you are looking for, but you could use a section. It doesn't have a ton of typos, but it is just clunky...very formulaic with clumsy sentence structure.

My "favorite" sentence, that I made sure to discuss with my kids, was:
"Fish people get in saltwater include Swordfish, Marlin, Tuna, and others."

I had to reread it three times because my brain clung to "fish people" as the subject who were "getting in" saltwater...as "fish people" do. I had every person in my family read it, and each of us stumbled at the word "include" because it did not fit our mental model of the sentence thus far. Also, I'm not sure why swordfish, marlin and tuna are being treated as proper nouns...but that is just par for the course in that article.

I also "liked":
"However some kinds of fish can be taken with nets for bait and a few for food."

It leaves me with an mental image of fishing with a rod and reel with a itty bitty net on the hook as bait. Spoiler alert, that is not how they meant it. 😄

[Tanaqui]

Do you have any particular things you want to point out?

[Clarita]

1 hour ago, wendyroo said:

"Fish people get in saltwater include Swordfish, Marlin, Tuna, and others."

Here I am picturing these mer-people with swordfish, marlin, tuna and other bottoms. 

[Shelydon]

On 10/28/2022 at 10:04 PM, wendyroo said:

My kids were just assigned this article to read in their online class. Probably longer than you are looking for, but you could use a section. It doesn't have a ton of typos, but it is just clunky...very formulaic with clumsy sentence structure.

My "favorite" sentence, that I made sure to discuss with my kids, was:
"Fish people get in saltwater include Swordfish, Marlin, Tuna, and others."

I had to reread it three times because my brain clung to "fish people" as the subject who were "getting in" saltwater...as "fish people" do. I had every person in my family read it, and each of us stumbled at the word "include" because it did not fit our mental model of the sentence thus far. Also, I'm not sure why swordfish, marlin and tuna are being treated as proper nouns...but that is just par for the course in that article.

I also "liked":
"However some kinds of fish can be taken with nets for bait and a few for food."

It leaves me with an mental image of fishing with a rod and reel with a itty bitty net on the hook as bait. Spoiler alert, that is not how they meant it. 😄

Oh gosh.  This is perfect.

[Shelydon]

On 10/28/2022 at 11:01 PM, Tanaqui said:

Do you have any particular things you want to point out?

Things that are written in a clumsy manner or don't make sense.  Weird changes in tense, run-on sentences and using non-specific language ("he went there later").  My middle school students seem to have trouble recognizing these things in their own work, so I am hoping by looking at others, they will see the mistakes.

[Clarita]

On 10/28/2022 at 8:04 PM, wendyroo said:

My "favorite" sentence, that I made sure to discuss with my kids, was:
"Fish people get in saltwater include Swordfish, Marlin, Tuna, and others."

My favorite sentence is "Fishing for money is a very dangerous job, because people can die or be badly hurt." As well as "Ways to fish for money have become very simple, using large nets and machines to catch the animals." Where are these bodies of water where money is just swimming around.