Academic Language (i.e. Banned Words)

There aren't many things I used my first year of teaching that stuck around by my fifth year of teaching.  One that remained was a list of "banned" words.  While I got the term banned from a fellow teacher, I already had a list going on my own.  The banned word list helped condense many small pieces of revision advise into one document.

This list is intended for academic writing, not creative or informal writing.  The last four were for more advanced students, while the top of the list was mandatory for all students

Banned words include:

• thing, stuff
• you
• I (especially "I think," "I feel," and "I believe")
• like (when not used in a direct comparison)
• good, bad, nice
• slang (including profanity) and texting abbreviations  
• announcement sentences ("This paragraph is about..." or "This paper will discuss...")
• contractions
• vague pronouns
• "There is" and "It was" and other variations at the start of a sentence
• is _______ing, was ______ing
• all forms of "to be" (remove as many as possible)
• adverbs including very, really, and suffix -ly

Usually with the first essay, we go through the list in class and the students mark all their banned words.  Often, it becomes a game as students compare who has the most of a certain word.

A new lesson I'd like to add in the future would be a different way of introducing the list. 

First, I'll show the students a paragraph using many of the banned words.  Then, I'll show the same paragraph revised to remove the offenders.  After they've read both and shared their initial reactions, we'll put them up side by side and discuss the changes. 

Students could then revise an old piece of writing of their own, individually or in pairs, removing the banned words.  Debrief on how it changed the writing, possibly sharing examples. 

I recommend teaching students how to use the find function in a word processing program to make this step less cumbersome.  

Banned words are part of the revision process.  Drafting should be a time to get ideas on the page.  Students should not get bogged down in rules like these during that critical phase.  All errors are acceptable in a first draft.  Some students will need a lot of help letting go of rules in order to draft.