Marking
Sometimes the worst part of my job is not the marking per se, it's the marking of complete drivel by students who just cannot be arsed to make the effort.
At the moment, I am marking GCSE coursework. It's a media assignment: What cinematic techniques are used in the prologue to The Dark Knight and how do they create tension, and they are being marked for their writing skill (in contrast to their reading skill), which means that they have to focus both on their analysis of the film AND the way they write about it: SPG, fluency, style fit to audience/purpose, vocabulary, sentence construction etc.
My class are roughly equivalent to Set 2 in a 5 form entry school. They should be on target to get B grades, and this is the piss that I am currently marking (all sic):
The camera shots how the camera angle is important and how shots change. The mise-en-scene has tension building importants like how do the costumes and props build tension in the opening sequence. They make load noises which is one of the key factors of the props and how they build tension.
Compare that with this, written by another student in the same class:
The use of non-diegetic sounds also create a sense of tension and suspense. These sounds include: the use of tempo in the music, this builds up tension as it slows down and speeds up; it generally builds to something unexpected. Also the use of a ticking sound gradually getting louder imitates a clock drawing our attention to their time, that they are running out of time, that the clock is counting down. This initiates a response that something has to end and makes us wonder what will happen when the clock runs out.
Now, it's not perfect, but it is a first draft and most students can't use commas accurately no matter how many times you explain it.
The worst thing is knowing that I will annotate the first student's essay to within an inch of its life and they will still give me an identical essay for the second draft, while the top grade student (that is an A/B borderline piece of analysis) will make every single correction exactly as suggested, but it will be my balls being busted in the summer next year when the first kid flunks his exam.
At the moment, I am marking GCSE coursework. It's a media assignment: What cinematic techniques are used in the prologue to The Dark Knight and how do they create tension, and they are being marked for their writing skill (in contrast to their reading skill), which means that they have to focus both on their analysis of the film AND the way they write about it: SPG, fluency, style fit to audience/purpose, vocabulary, sentence construction etc.
My class are roughly equivalent to Set 2 in a 5 form entry school. They should be on target to get B grades, and this is the piss that I am currently marking (all sic):
The camera shots how the camera angle is important and how shots change. The mise-en-scene has tension building importants like how do the costumes and props build tension in the opening sequence. They make load noises which is one of the key factors of the props and how they build tension.
Compare that with this, written by another student in the same class:
The use of non-diegetic sounds also create a sense of tension and suspense. These sounds include: the use of tempo in the music, this builds up tension as it slows down and speeds up; it generally builds to something unexpected. Also the use of a ticking sound gradually getting louder imitates a clock drawing our attention to their time, that they are running out of time, that the clock is counting down. This initiates a response that something has to end and makes us wonder what will happen when the clock runs out.
Now, it's not perfect, but it is a first draft and most students can't use commas accurately no matter how many times you explain it.
The worst thing is knowing that I will annotate the first student's essay to within an inch of its life and they will still give me an identical essay for the second draft, while the top grade student (that is an A/B borderline piece of analysis) will make every single correction exactly as suggested, but it will be my balls being busted in the summer next year when the first kid flunks his exam.