I am teaching again this semester. This week my students turned in their first reports. I try to keep the class pretty informal and don't expect much. I gave them all a list of what was required in each report, you know- use spell check, don't triple space, use appropriate margins, tell me the name of the person you are writing about. Nothing too hard.
Here is a little excerpt from the email I had to send to my class now that I have read all their reports.
"Also, please remember
• These words have very different meanings and are NOT interchangeable:
Our-are
Their-there-they’re
Course-coarse
Then-than
–y’s and –ies a the end of a word (as in country’s and countries)
s and ‘s (as in dogs and dog’s)
• A paragraph has more than one sentence.
• Put your name on each report, even if you submit it as an attachment in an email.
• It is not acceptable to use text message abbreviations in college level work.
• Do not change fonts in the middle of your work."
Just in case you think I'm kind of hard on the kids, none of them are fresh out of high school and most of them are between 25 and 30.
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7 comments:
I promise that teachers do teach those things correctly. But we can't guarantee that the students were paying attention. It makes grading interesting
He he he...I think that changing fonts in the middle of a paper is a great idea! I'm going to start to do that for all of my papers...I think my professors will love that!
I've noticed the same thing. I frequently have to edit emails before they go to clients for these same types of problems. It's really sad because they think it doesn't matter but people are definitely judging their intelligence.
I hate it when I read blog posts or Freecycle offers/requests that are full of those kids of problems. When I Freecycle something I look for someone that has used complete sentences and punctuation.
FYI: Changing fonts in the middle of a paper can be a sign of plagiarism. This happens when people copy and paste from other people. I'm sure it isn't true 100% of the time, but...
Yikes. 25-30-year-olds? That's really sad.
Double yikes. Sorry you have to deal with it :)
I am a teaching assistant for some online psych courses, and I wrote that EXACT email just a few months ago. I had one student get particularly upset that I told her not to use text message abbreviations-she later complained to the department head. Oh brother.
Some people just don't get that there is a time and place for everything and that some things aren't appropriate for most times or places. In the case of my students, I think some were just being careless, two were trying to put one past me and one didn't know any better.
Being able to communicate clearly and appropriately is so important if you need to get something from the person you are communicating with.
I was talking to someone just the other day about how you need to adjust your dress and grooming for the circumstances. They just didn't agree, and didn't see how their appearance should matter to their boss. Go figure.
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