Have a 3000 word essay due tomorrow morning first thing?
why are you reading this go do your homework.
But seriously though, hear me out, word limits are bullshit.
Setting a word limit on your essays or reports is just stupid. And no, I'm not just saying this because I have two essays due in the course of a week, definitely screwed and have layers of insecurity. What I'm saying is that when you have to reach a certain word count, you're just encouraging students to bullshit a bunch of irrelevant text just to reach a word limit.
ie.
Irrelevant text in reports is a major problem. These kinds of text are completely unrelated to the topic of the report and provide no context to the actual point. Irrelevant text is a major issue in many schools and companies, and it's starting to spread. There is no way to stop this and I just successfully wasted 5 minutes of your life, with this ironic paragraph talking about irrelevant text.
What teachers should really instead do, is encourage students to get to the point when writing essays etc. Setting word limits just discouraged students from approaching the project/task since they are under the pressure of meeting the word limit.
I get it, teachers have to set word limits because then students could've handed in one sentence and called it a day. Well, if they did that, they would've gotten a bad grade. And if they don't want a bad grade, they would have to work harder.
What about students that don't care about grades? I suggest setting a paragraph count instead of a word count.
Therefore, students could write their paragraphs as long or short as they like.
Tell me what you think in the comments!
kisses,
laura
