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    Joined: Apr 2009
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    Originally Posted by master of none
    Our teacher's union says that teachers assign no more than three writing assignments per semester so they won't have to read all the student's written work. That's in middle and high school. In elem, the teacher never reads the work. They just do "peer editing" and the peer assigns a grade according to the rubric the teacher teaches to the kids.

    This is a major difference between public and private school.


    wow!

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    You all are scaring me and/or making me feel lucky. DD, in second, writes an approximately 300-word assignment weekly and receives detailed feedback on it. She also writes a paragraph or two for spelling. This is just homework--I know she does more in class. I do think the writing homework is unusually intense, though.

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    dd, in second also, writes a weekly short story, using her spelling words. That is the Wed. assignment. But no 300 word weekly essays. Her teachers review all her homework.

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    Middle school was the deciding factor that both kids would attend a private high school. Imagine our thrill when our wonderfully gifted daughter scored at the 37th percentile on her writing section of her entrance exam.

    We soon discovered that dd had never been taught parts of speech, grammar or minimal vocabulary. To frighten you further, my dd was considered one of the better writers at her middle school.

    Her freshman english teacher was a hard ass nun who worked her as she'd never been worked. Dd detested this woman with every fiber of her being, especially as she rarely gave out As. She started everyone with a C and it's up to the student to earn the A.

    They wrote and got feedback and rewrote. Sister took DD through the necessary steps it takes to become a fluent writer. I loved this nun the minute she told the parents not to edit or help their kids with their assignments. She became DD's favorite teacher.

    Dd's vocabulary and writing are now at a level fitting someone who is gifted. And that school is worth every penny.


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    At the community college where I work, I am realizing that most of the developmental instructors don't grade. I am appalled by the lack of feedback. Meanwhile, we hold meetings trying to discover why the students aren't learning. Duh!

    In defense of peer editing, there is a place for it. Students learn to edit by using this system. However, they need both peer editing and a teacher's response.

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    Originally Posted by Bostonian
    It does if it is politically unacceptable to flunk too many people out of high school. The political pressure to graduate everyone is increasing. In his latest State of the Union Address, the president told states they should require everyone to stay in high school until they graduate or turn 18.

    I agree that current ideology and romanticism is getting in the way of helping students find what they're good at (rather than what adults think they should be good at). And pushing everyone to pass the Regents exam is crazy, and lowering standards to do it isn't going to fool anyone except the edumacators.

    Encouraging students to stay in school would be a good thing IF the schools were presenting a range of options to them, such as vocational education programs. These programs are free and students graduate from high school with skills that qualify them for good jobs. But they're getting less and less attention as schools push students to go to college.

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    Another article on poor writing skills:

    http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=2651
    No Wonder Johnny (Still) Can’t Write
    Students don’t write well and professors don’t want to help them.
    By J.M. Anderson
    February 10, 2012

    Ask college professors what their biggest gripe is with undergraduates today, and most will tell you that they don’t read and they can’t write. Ask college students if their professors are taking the time to teach them, and most will tell you that they aren’t.

    Let’s focus on writing. Good writing is largely a matter of taste and judgment that is cultivated through practice, experience, and extensive reading. Teaching it requires dexterity and finesse. Students can improve as writers when their teachers give them the attention they both need and deserve.

    Here’s a typical introductory paragraph from a paper in Western Civ II discussing how humanism and the Protestant reformation represent a radical break with the Middle Ages:

    "During the fourteenth through the sixteenth century the motivation was religion. During this time Christian meant Catholic as in Roman Catholic. As they believed in the Pope as the one who would save them to go to heaven. Just as the people who believed in the Prince, as the ruler for all to look up to as an example."

    Students who write like this need more than a few marginal comments on their papers; they need rigorous criticism of their writing and guidance in making substantive revisions.



    "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." - George Orwell
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    Oh, for goodness' sake. What the author of that article doesn't seem to realise is that the time a professor has available to spend on teaching or marking is limited. If I spend more of my limited time on teaching or criticising my students' writing, I will have to spend less of it on teaching and criticising other things, like, you know, the stuff the students have enrolled on my course to learn... Even if I had more time per student to spend, writing wouldn't be in the top three most valuable things I could spend it on. Perhaps the situation would be different if I taught in the humanities, but I doubt it.


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    Val Offline
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    Originally Posted by ColinsMum
    Oh, for goodness' sake. What the author of that article doesn't seem to realise is that the time a professor has available to spend on teaching or marking is limited. If I spend more of my limited time on teaching or criticising my students' writing, I will have to spend less of it on teaching and criticising other things, like, you know, the stuff the students have enrolled on my course to learn... Even if I had more time per student to spend, writing wouldn't be in the top three most valuable things I could spend it on. Perhaps the situation would be different if I taught in the humanities, but I doubt it.

    Writing is one of the two most important skills a student can learn. The other one is reading. Once someone gets both of these skills down, he can go a long way. Good writing is a sign of an organized mind. Bad writing is a sign of a disorganized mind. If students can't write, they can't make their points known, can't convince anyone of an idea they have, and generally will have trouble advancing in a job that requires anything beyond rudimentary communication skills.

    Teaching students how to write is the primary purview of English teachers and professors, but that doesn't mean that everyone else gets a pass (and you seem to have written that even the English profs don't need to teach writing because it's not important).

    If someone has to write prose for your class, you have a duty to make meaningful corrections. Otherwise, you're just assigning busy work. From what you've written here and what I've seen/read, no one wants to seem to teach anyone how to write because they're too busy teaching other "important" things. Seriously? Are the students just supposed to figure it out? And teachers wonder why they get criticized?

    Respectfully, your answer came across as a bit petulant and as excusing all teachers and professors who don't want to teach students how to write.


    Last edited by Val; 02/13/12 11:17 AM.
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    Originally Posted by Val
    Writing is one of the two most important skills a student can learn. The other one is reading.
    This in no way implies that everyone who teaches a student should be teaching those things.

    ETclarify:
    At university level (and at least in my country: yours is, as I understand it, a little more prescriptive, but not much) students, not professors, are responsible for the overall balance of what they learn. Universities, and professors in universities, are best regarded as resources that students can use to help them learn the things they've decided to learn. (Eventually, a student who has learned a given set of things to a reasonable standard will be awarded a degree certificate that summarises this and a transcript that gives more detail.) During their studies, students choose courses based partly on the published learning objectives of each course. The job of the person teaching a given course is to help students to achieve the learning objectives of that course - not to prioritise something else, however important, over those objectives that the student has chosen.

    As far as writing is concerned, students at my university are required to come in with writing skills good enough to make themselves understood. Some students may wish to improve their writing skills; they can choose courses that will help them do that. The majority of the students I meet already have, when they enter university, writing skills which are more than good enough to equip them for the careers that they wish to follow. For that reason, I would not myself be in favour of changing the regulations to force all our students to take writing courses, let alone changing the way we teach courses so that more effort is spent on writing at the expense of subject content. That's not to devalue the teaching of writing.

    Originally Posted by Val
    If someone has to write prose for your class, you have a duty to make meaningful corrections. Otherwise, you're just assigning busy work.
    (a) That's simply not true: students can learn a huge amount - both about how to wrote prose, and, often, about the subject they're writing about - from writing prose that isn't corrected by someone else. (b) One can make meaningful corrections to a student's work without correcting their writing, per se. One can correct the content, even!

    Originally Posted by Val
    From what you've written here and what I've seen/read, no one wants to seem to teach anyone how to write because they're too busy teaching other "important" things. Seriously? Are the students just supposed to figure it out? And teachers wonder why they get criticized?
    Do you criticise the English professor for not teaching arithmetic, too? Are that professor's students just supposed to figure it out?

    Originally Posted by Val
    Respectfully, your answer came across as a bit petulant and as excusing all teachers and professors who don't want to teach students how to write.
    Respectfully, your answer suggests a lack of understanding of the range of learning objectives of university courses.

    Last edited by ColinsMum; 02/13/12 01:00 PM.

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