I've just finished grading a stack of papers by Basketweaving Technology students. I know that they are unused to writing, so I wanted to give them a chance to practice before they do their final year project that will include a 40-page write-up.
Do they not learn in school how to put page numbers on their papers? Is a chatty blog-style, filled
with first- and second-person pronouns, considered proper academic style today? Do they honestly not understand how to reference a statement? It really does not suffice just to list a lot of URLs with long strings of numbers and letters in a "Reference list". It's even worse when they state nonsense and give a reference that of course does NOT state what they think it did.
Don't get me started on the Wikipedia references. I mean, come on, there's even a LINK on every single frigging Wikipedia page "cite this page"! It will give your copy&paste versions conforming to a wide variety of citation styles.
A friend asks me why I bother having them write term papers and give feedback. I should just give multiple choice exams and be done with it. I suppose that I dream of some students actually studying the feedback I gave and learning from it. Meanwhile, is there any whisky left?
Suzy from Square State
I hear you. I've been moving away from exams, toward papers / presentations / in-class activities of various sorts, because I want students to play around with interpretations and ideas rather than memorizing-and-spitting-back, but it seems like the rest of the world has moved in the opposite direction and nobody knows HOW to write a paper any more. (Protip: the phrase "I was like, wow" should not appear in academic writing.)
ReplyDelete"I was like, wow" - too funny. My husband started the adjunct circuit half-a-decade after me. He used to laugh at me. When he started, he used to give clear feedback sentence-by-sentence. Now he just uses the "show markup" function and deletes use swaths of fluff without comment and sends them back.
DeleteThat's the scholarship that, like, counts.
ReplyDeleteI can't help wondering what the 40-page writeups look like, because throwing them into that deep end seems highly unlikely to work out well.
ReplyDeleteYou may well be doing this already, but can you have them do something that's more closely related to that writeup than a "term paper" (which admittedly can mean a lot of things)? If the writeup has sections, is there a way for them to practice writing one or more of those, with very specific instructions? Of course some of them won't follow those instructions, but the ones who do might learn a thing or two, and be better prepared for the writeup. Or at least one can hope.
But basically the answer is no, they haven't learned those things. And if you're the last developmental step on the way to writing the 40-page writeup, they're beginning to learn way, way too late.
The Comp 100 instructors say they can't fix all the students' writing problems in one semester, and they're absolutely right. But in my ideal world, the Comp 100 instructors would be both willing and able to assign failing grades to substandard work. Is that unreasonable?
ReplyDeleteIn an even better world, high-school English teachers would be so good, students would breeze through Comp 100, which is what happened with me. Yes I know, that's unreasonable.
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