• Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Good places to start

Memoirs of a SLACer

sociological views on life and the liberal arts

Feeds:
Posts
Comments
« Tenure denied (for Dr. Jones)
Sex-type-things sell? »

The language of learning

June 24, 2011 by John

Given my former statement that instructors are letting students off the hook for their failure to complete assigned readings, I have tried to hold students to higher standards when grading.  This is especially true for writing assignments.  This includes requiring students to have things like thesis statements that they support with relevant examples.  In one course, I required students to write brief summaries of some topic that had stood out to them during the previous section of the course, asking them to combine the information in their readings to look at something from a different perspective.  These papers were okay at best.

Although there was some improvement as the semester went on, students seemed nearly incapable of writing an original thesis statement and supporting that statement with data.  While I am not sure why this is the case, I was interested in on particular comment on a student’s course evaluation:  “Dr. Smith asked us to write summary papers after each unit.  When he graded the first papers, he graded them as persuasive essays, expecting an argument and support in the papers.  This made it difficult to write the papers.”  Based on this sentence, I’m not sure what exactly made the papers difficult to write (the combination of summary and argument? conflicting instructions and grading?) but I was struck by the use of the term “persuasive essays.”  To me, all essays should be persuasive.  This student, however, considers persuasive essays to be a particular type of writing that is separate from most writing.  In future classes I’m going to explore this language further to see if I can help students bridge the gap between persuasive essays and essays.

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
  • More
  • Email
  • Pinterest
  • Reddit

Like this:

Like Loading...

Related

Posted in Teaching Tricks | Tagged College Papers, College Students, Persuasive Essays, Student Evaluations, Student Writing, Thesis Statements |

  • Pages

    • About
    • Contact
    • Good places to start
  • Previous Posts

    June 2011
    M T W T F S S
     12345
    6789101112
    13141516171819
    20212223242526
    27282930  
    « May   Aug »
  • Categories

  • Blogs I Read

    • Conditionally Accepted
    • Crooked Timber
    • Female Science Professor
    • Historiann
    • orgtheory.net
    • scatterplot
    • Small Pond Science
    • Soc'ing Out Loud
    • Sociology in Focus
    • Sociology Source
    • Sociology Toolbox
    • Tenured Radical
    • The Society Pages
    • whatisthewhat
  • Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

  • Meta

    • Register
    • Log in
    • Entries feed
    • Comments feed
    • WordPress.com
  • Site Meter

    Site Meter

Blog at WordPress.com.

WPThemes.


Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Memoirs of a SLACer
    • Join 179 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Memoirs of a SLACer
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Copy shortlink
    • Report this content
    • View post in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
%d bloggers like this: