writing

[story645]

My world humanities teacher is making us sort of workshop each other's papers. Edit, then write up a comment sheet. I finally finished with four papers, and I'm just about ready to cry. These are all honor students, so I just find it way too hard to cut 'em slack. I can cut the kids that I tutor slack for any number of reasons, but it's harder with

Comments

[petitecrivan]

...honors students you say?

*headdesk*

[story645]

Yeps, honors students. I was ranting to one of the directors of the honors program about this. I blame high schools that don't have any real standards, and the fact that college essays aren't formal academic ones.

[dome36]

Chana

That is a very complicated work you have in your hands.

And I agree: it is not easy to achieve a very good level when it comes to writing. It is in fact quite difficult. I can speak for myself!

Dome

P.S. Probably when you will read these lines I will be already in the Big Apple :)

[kit_the_brave]

Boy, you're right about both the general writing level in college and about what it takes to fix it. Re: #6 - I think this happens when people aren't sure what to write, so they wander around for a while before they settle on something. Which would be fine if they then went back and took all the wandering out, but they don't. When writing is hard, it can feel really tough to have to take out anything that you've accomplished.

And yeah, it's not really fair not to be able to turn in a revised paper after all this!

[story645]

Must edit cause today she said that we could revise.

I think that 6 also happens when people get all freaked about paper length. Must have 4 pages, so lets throw thngs in. I know that cutting is hard, but it's necessary.

[stmargarets]

Wow, sounds like your teacher is abdicating a few duties. Part of grading papers is learning what the class knows/needs to work on and then providing that (and no re-writes! Sheesh!)

I think all of your comments sound fine - just take "you" out of your remarks - say "this paragraph needs a citation," "a clearer thesis statement is needed here." That sort of thing. It's less personal. Good luck!

[story645]

I didn't throw you into my real comments. Just into my rant. Though I found out today that she's letting us rewrite after we get back her comments.

[kerosinkanister]

10)To get above a C, pay attention to the rest. Diction and SPaG start becoming important, as does the quality of your ideas, the level at which you support it at, etc.

All too often good writing is hindered by poor SPaG. You see it in fanfic, technical writing, essays, etc., stuff like confusing lose/loose, there/their/they're. It's easy enough to fix and more than one or two can drop an essay's grade. The worst are actual spelling errors. Does anyone use a word-processor without spell-check these days?

[story645]

Spell check won't catch homonyms, which is one of those mistakes that I always make without meaning to. Yeah, SPaG is annoying cause it probably makes the teacher feel like the student treated the assignement as a one off/not worth polishing type of thing.