Still on the death march from last semester, alas, but thought I’d take time out to share a few choice specimens.
From a coursework in which the students were supposed to build an expert system to identify British birds (having first read the RSPB website or similar):
- The “barnade gosse”
- The “magple”
- My personal favourite, that bird with a duck-shaped beak, the house sparrow (admittedly from a Chinese student, but I would have thought that sparrow numbers had recovered since the Four Pests Campaign)
From a coursework in which the students wrote a report explaining why hypertext fiction never really took off (and whether there was any chance of a resurgence):
- In the references section, “Ryman, G. (1998) 253: the priest remix, London: Flamingo.”
I think that I’d pay good money to see a Father Ted-accented version of 253.