Do you know what "perspicacious" means?

[jedusor]

A student came into the TLC today for an appointment with me. He was Asian, and English was obviously his second language. He had a couple of papers with comments from the instructor for revision. He seemed intelligent, with good thoughts, but he had some issues with grammar and spelling- a fairly typical ESL student.

While going over his paper, I came across the word "perspicacious," underlined in red with three question marks from his teacher. At first I thought that he'd misspelled another word, but I couldn't figure out what word he meant, and he insisted that he had the right one. So I got a dictionary and looked it up.

Perspicacious: having or showing penetrating mental discernment; clear-sighted. He couldn't tell me where he'd learned the word, but he'd used it perfectly in his paper.

Because I don't know this particular instructor, I suggested he change it to a slightly more well-known word. If it had been Lisa or Casey, though, I would have told him to show them the definition and leave it in the paper.

Comments

[saffroncisco.livejournal.com]

I couldn't have told you what it meant. But I'd certainly heard of it.

If I'd been that teacher, I would have at least taken the time to look it up myself before marking it wrong.

I once had a community college English instructor who made incorrect punctuation and grammar corrections in a paper of mine that had (as most of my papers do) perfect punctuation and grammar. (Here on LJ I'm too colloquial and lazy to bother -- but in the academic world I don't make many mistakes.) I came back to him with a copy of Elements of Style and various other references and showed him that his corrections were wrong. He didn't like that much.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

I came back to him with a copy of Elements of Style and various other references and showed him that his corrections were wrong.

That's what I'd do, too, but as a tutor, I try not to encourage students to defy their professors. It could get me in trouble. I did tell him he had the option of taking it to the professor, but he decided to change it to a more recognizable word.