In spite of the wonders of the Web, looking online for information is not always the best approach to take. I’m one of the moderators of the Linguist List (http://www.linguistlist.org), one of the largest discipline-specific, academic e-mail lists in the world, with over 12,000 subscribers. We also run the Web site that serves as the central clearing-house for information in linguistics. Although I love participating in the great exchange of ideas made possible by the Web, a downside has emerged.
If you type the word “linguist” into any search engine, you will almost certainly get as one of your highly ranked hits the Linguist List with my name and e-mail address on it. Every day, I get dozens of messages similar to this fictitious example:
“Dear Dr. Carnie, I am a student at the University of X, and I am taking an introductory class in linguistics. My teacher has assigned us the task of finding out about the origins and structure of the word ‘ultrasound.’ Could you please tell me everything you know about this word? My assignment is due tomorrow morning at 8 a.m., so I would appreciate it if you could respond as soon as possible.”
When I started getting pleas like that a few years ago, I felt genuinely sorry for the students, and I did my best to answer their questions and look up sources for them. After all, some kinds of information are difficult to find unless you ask for help from an expert in the relevant field. I’ve come to realize, however, that the Web has caused a new kind of laziness among undergraduates and high-school students. I call the phenomenon “cyber-sloth.”
Many young people think that if information can’t be found in cyberspace, then it can’t be found at all. While I encourage my own students to make full use of the amazing electronic resources available to them, I’m finding that more and more I have to remind them that our university has a wonderful resource called a library, filled with a type of database called a book. Better yet, the library has trained professionals who’ll help them find the information they need.
Last year, I took one of my classes to spend some time in the library with our linguistics librarian. I was amazed to discover that one student, a senior in her final semester, had never activated her library card. Don’t get me wrong: I’m no Luddite, but I want my students to know that sometimes cracking open a book like the Oxford English Dictionary is better than using a search engine.
When I was an undergraduate, the idea of writing a letter to an expert about a basic question would never have crossed my mind. I would first have consulted a dictionary, encyclopedia, or textbook, or even plunged into a primary source, like a professional journal.
I am much more picky these days about which e-mail queries from nonprofessionals I answer. I respond to questions in my own specialty, when I know there really isn’t a decent source available in print. Sometimes, I refer the questioner to someone else who is more qualified; our Web site has a service called Ask-a-Linguist, which we created specifically for that purpose. I also try to help people from places without decent libraries, like Third World countries.
Those are the rare cases; most of the questions I get could easily be answered by opening a reference work or textbook, even if the information isn’t yet on the Web. I respond to those queries with a polite note suggesting that the questioners first try their libraries, and offering to help them if, after that, they still can’t find the answer. Few people take me up on that offer.
Academic cyber-sloth isn’t limited to research; it also affects teaching. Some of the students who send me e-mail questions say that their instructors have told them to write to an expert rather than look their questions up. Surely part of teaching is identifying the kinds of information that are readily available from reference material -- both print and electronic -- and those that only an expert can provide.
The problem extends to cheaters, too. The Web has made plagiarism much easier. At some sites, you can buy papers that are already available, or -- for an exorbitant fee -- have a paper written particularly for you. Last year, professors in my department caught a record number of plagiarists in our large, lower-division classes. Two students, who are actually quite bright, handed in papers that were cut and pasted directly from online sources. Despite our lectures at the beginning of each term about what constitutes plagiarism, one of those students was surprised to discover that what he had done was illegal.
The Web is a fabulous resource that no student or scholar can ignore. Somehow, though, we have to convince people that learning requires more than high-speed connections and a good search engine.
Andrew Carnie is an assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona and the coeditor, with Eithne Guilfoyle, of The Syntax of Verb Initial Languages (Oxford University Press, 2000).
http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review Page: B14
