hi guys,
so i'm grading student papers this morning and am having trouble with one of them. actually, i've had trouble with the writer all semester. her ideas are usually strong, but there's always a trillion "iceberg" errors. because of my teaching philosophy (which has received reinforcement from this class), i've let a lot of these errors slide. i do mark the bigger ones, such as incomplete sentences, but generally i was hoping they'd correct themselves over the semester.
well, she's just turned in another big paper and it's riddled with run-ons, misspellings, incomplete sentences, and so on. this is the fourth draft that i've seen, and thus the forth time i've suggested tightening up not only ideas but also the tip-of-the-iceberg stuff. i know it's small beans, but when you have so many! well . . . i told her that time spent proofreading will strengthen her argument.
so i'm not sure what to say on this fourth draft. i guess it's tighter in some areas, but others are still very sloppy. i don't know if i'm allowed to do this, but here's some examples of what i mean:
-I asked the students that I interview the reaction was mixed.
-I guess you background and the ways you were raised does play a big part in how you look at major things that our happen in our world.
-A lot of African Americans lean to democratic side and most Caucasions people lean to the republican side of things. A lot of the African Americans really support Gores efforts but are blinded and main points of global warming. However, both races were somewhat knowledge of the subject and gave strong opinions.
-Social group does have and affect on this because these are the things they surround themselves with on the everyday basis letting their mond wonder from important things as others would say.
-In my interview a lot of the students were not sure what the university was doing, there were a few that were as well.
so how do i grade something like this? yes, i can understand her points--but it takes effort and patience. and to be honest, i'm getting frustrated. on every paper i've given her extra opportunities to revise. we've met a few times as well, and she's been to the writing center. as mentioned, this is the fourth time i'm reading this paper.
any comments would be really helpful.
mel
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4 comments:
It looks like you'll just have to bite the bullet and give her the appropriately bad grade. Her grammar has moved beyond the tip-of-the-iceberg and compromises understanding. I would look at it the same way I would look at a weak thesis, weak support, etc.
I can tell you that, as a tutor, a lot of my students simply didn't take the effort to run a spell or grammar check before showing me their papers. These editing tools don't solve EVERYTHING, but they do make the job of the teacher 100 times easier by sorting through very common, simple surface errors and things like subject-verb agreement. It may sound crass, but sometimes people are just lazy when it comes to stuff like this. It's not that they lack the competence, it's that suface editing is extra work that a lot of people feel that they just don't have to do.
I can't really think of a good excuse for NOT running these checks. She's essentially making you do the work that she didn't feel like doing.
Mel
I agree with Brandon, you may have to bite the bullet on this one. I agree with Bob as well that she just may not be running the checks on her computer, but that is no excuse for poor quality work. Think about how you would feel if you put alot of work into an assignment and were graded accordingly, and a student like her did not and was not graded accordingly. You are teaching students that plan on going on after school and getting a job, ect. They should know how to read and write and correct their writing.
Are you meeting with her again? Are you sure she knows how to run the checks? That seems so silly to ask, but seriously who knows. I would grade her accordingly. When the grammer compromises the piece, it is a proble.
I hope this helps.
hey y'all,
thanks for the help. i think she does use spellcheck but little else. the result is a paper that has "words," yes, but many of them are conjugated or used incorrectly.
these dumb mistakes are so prevalent in her work (at every stage, in every draft) that i'm really beginning to question her reasons for being in college at all.
again, thanks for the comments. you guys really helped!
mel
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