Dictionary exercises
I remember a particularly boring homework assignment once given by my 4th grade teacher, in which we had to find definitions of certain listed words from the dictionary and write them down verbatim. All of them. Sometimes words have various meanings and they mean different things in different contexts so I was impatient with the rote nature of the assignment and with the cramping of my hand as I copied the definitions. Most of the words were ones already in my vocabulary, so I found that the exercise confused rather than enhanced my understanding of them because it somehow muddled my mostly-accurate sense of context for each of them, contexts I had gained through natural use of language and by reading lots and lots of books. (I wonder what the reaction was of the kids who didn’t care much for language…)
Later in my public school education, I read Orwell’s 1984 with its Ministry of Truth, Newspeak and other notions of societal control. I’m thinking Orwell couldn’t really have predicted the things that are happening in contemporary society, but all the same he nailed part of the issue
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