Mark: I know. To be fair to my student, who’s not bad enough to deserve mocking on my blog, I think he just kept forgetting to rework the Africa section in his paper because I kept giving him such huge lists of other major things to fix. Still, though, my students are AWFUL about the whole Africa-is-the-second-largest-continent thing. Of course, so are Americans. Maybe it’s not so bad when they’re not speaking in English, though, because I’d imagine that African country names aren’t very high on their vocabulary lists (although given China’s current international policies, maybe they should be). They’re very comfortable talking about South Africa, but if I mention any other African country’s name it produces the Blank Face of Learning Death.

thank god we don’t do geography.

Also, what was the battle? Couldn’t you just say “Africa is not a country. You should write your paper about a country in Africa.” Or perhaps just “It is not a country, write your paper about Swaziland (or any particular country within Africa).”

Alternatively, you could try to start speaking about “Asia” as if it was a country. (This might be fun - “Asians love drinking vodka and eating coconut curries”)