by Will Martin, DRW Assistant Instructor

Goals: The goal is to highlight the unreliability of the MS Word thesaurus, hopefully encouraging the students to use it more cautiously. This handout should probably be distributed early in the term, before the first written assignment falls due.

Rationale
Students often attempt to make their writing sound more "academic" by replacing simple words with more complex ones using the Microsoft Word thesaurus. The results are frequently ridiculous, and never really make the student sound more intelligent.

To prevent this, the attached handout (in both RTF and PDF formats) consists of a brief re-telling of Little Red Riding Hood, followed by the same retelling with a large number of words replaced using the MS Word thesaurus.

Using the Handout
The assignment is most effective when read aloud in an expressive voice, either by the instructor or by one or two students. However, you could also distribute it as assigned reading instead of using it in class. Use your own judgement.

This will rarely (if ever) take more than about ten minutes.