Stereotypes in writing essays

Students often use stereotypes to support their ideas.  They will write, “Everyone thinks teenagers are lazy,” or “City people are rude,” or “People in Mississippi are prejudiced.” They do this without a second thought, and, of course, it is up to their teacher to make them think a second time.  Some stereotypes are so common that they are barely noticed, like “Well dressed students spend a lot of money on their clothes.” (Some, of course, take the time to find outlets where they can buy fashionable clothes cheaply.)  Or “Everyone smokes marijuana these days.”

A teacher can point these out one by one, but better would be an exercise to alert students to their propensity to stereotype, and then review where their impressions came from — television or movies, their parents, a news report which gave misleading information, a single experience?

Exercise: Have students gather in groups and list the qualities of various people:  men in skirts, people with tattoos, Scandinavians/Jamaicans/Zulus/Chinese.  You might throw in a group about which they would likely know nothing, like Paraguayans, or Siberians, and then discuss their impressions of them.  Would a Paraguayan visiting the class operate free of stereotyping, or would the students construct an image of the “typical Paraguayan” from whatever scanty knowledge they have?

linguistics, linguistics in the classroom, stereotypes, teaching writing

Teaching Writing