Reviews for Portfolio learning

The average rating for Portfolio learning based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-02-07 00:00:00 John Frisbee Most of Lasch's suggestions are well taken, and if I followed them, my writing would much improve. He does not, however, seem to recognize that language changes. People use old words in new ways and people make new words. It happens. "Hopefully" has become, like it or not (Lasch says not), a word that means something like "it is to be hoped that." The most discouraging part is Lasch's guide to pronouncing certain words. He wants speakers to pronounce the voiceless "t" (or [t] in IPA) in the word "congratulations" instead of the voiced [d] (or, one would imagine, horror of horrors, the voiced affricate of [t]). Hint: an intervocalic voiceless plosive tends to become voiced. It's how language evolves. I recommend Strunk and White over Lasch. Lasch doesn't really offer much new, better than, or different from Strunk and White. And Strunk and White, at least in the more recent editions, have a final chapter in which they acknowledge that language does indeed change and that stylistic prescriptions owe a great deal to conventional notions.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-02-19 00:00:00 Michal Mac Though Lasch primarily wrote Plain Style for the University of Rochester's history department, this primer is useful for anyone wishing to understand the political and ideological implications of written style. The foreword, written by Rochester's Stewart Weaver, provides a compelling history of Lasch's "plain style" in his work as a scholar and teacher, while relating the experiences and beliefs that may have led Lasch to write Plain Style in the first place. In his comprehensive and well-reasoned guidelines, Lasch occasionally interjects a passing thought on the words and writing of his surroundings: two-letter postal codes, he writes, "...are bureaucratic innovations designed to surround the postal service with an illusionary air of efficiency"; of Pauline Kael's movie reviews, "... contractions mingle with the aesthetic, therapeutic idiom of jaded urban sophistication." Fascinating. By far the highlight of this book is a hilariously critical (but constructive) letter of feedback Lasch wrote on an especially unintelligible student paper, courtesy of Weaver. It's worth seeking out Plain Style for his frustrated response alone; no quotation would do it justice.