Fractured History and Geography: An Examination of Why Students Choose 'Wrong' Words To Write and Talk about Social Studies Topics.

This paper analyzes "confused history" on the part of students and where that confusion might originate. The study is based on a modified form of content analysis of articles by R. Lederer. The articles offer a compilation of student errors in history and geography. Two major categories of errors are recognized: (1) Type I, represented by errors not necessarily representative of historical misconceptions, includes misspellings, silly sentence construction, phonetic mix-up, substitution of unknown words with known words, and transposition of similar sounding consonants; and (2) Type II, perhaps representative of deeper misconceptions, involves conceptual errors and misguided or "fuzzy logic." This second category may have a greater impact on the scholarly representation of history for the student and the teacher. Examples of each type of error are analyzed with suggestions made for correction. (EH)