"Not I"

[steepholm]

I want to find out about the extent to which school pupils and university students are discouraged by English teachers/lecturers from using the first person pronoun in essays.

Does anyone know whether recent-ish research has been carried out on that topic - or where might be a good place to look for it?

Comments

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

I hate this. I understand it as a heuristic: too many students here will go whole hog with "I kind of get the feeling that they're" ("they"'re Shakespeare, who is a novelist) "are trying to say that life is hard."

But then my best students won't say what they think, because: I.

And J's grades come with a list of how well he's fulfilled various and stupid "rubrics," one of which is "does not use the first person."

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

It's actually printed on a standardized list, with a box for ticking? Wow.