Tag Archives: evaluating essays

Is the Hokey Pokey Really What It’s All About?  No, Subordination Is. (Part 1)

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College

Dependent and Independent Clause

My students are always quite surprised when I tell them this true story about subordination*.  Several years ago, I taught Academic ESL at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point (UWSP).  I had discussions with the chair of the English Dept. about how they determine which students (American and International) are qualified to take English 101 Composition.  Not surprisingly, he said all new students write a placement essay.  But this is the surprising part: the readers/evaluators do NOT consider the idea-development, nor the paragraph organization, nor the grammar.   Instead they looked for only one aspect: whether or not the writer could use subordination (dependent and independent clauses) correctly.   Their research found that that one aspect was the most reliable predictor about which students would be successful in English Comp.

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Writing class: Dealing with plagiarism (Don’t take it personally)

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A learning opportunity

A learning opportunity

In October 2016, Tiffany Martínez, a Latina student at Suffolk University in Boston, was accused of plagiarism by her sociology professor in front of the entire class. Huffington Post plagiarism story   What caused him to be suspicious?  The word “hence.”  On her paper, he circled the place where she had written the word “hence” and wrote in the margin, “This is not your word.”

In my many years as an ESL instructor, I’ve witnessed instructors over-reacting in suspected plagiarism situations.  It seems as if those instructors were taking it personally, feeling like they were being disrespected.  Too often instructors seem to see it as a “gotcha” opportunity.

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Writing class: Easy, focused, POSITVE feedback on essays.

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victory

“Good style!”

Many instructors want to not only point out errors on students’ papers but also encourage them with positive comments about what they did well.  Unfortunately, it can take a lot of time writing out these comments with clear handwriting, and it involves mental energy trying to formulate what to say in a way that students can understand.

There is a method for indicating specifically what the student did well on any writing task, which takes little time on the part of the instructor and results in improved writing in the future.

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Writing class: How many drafts should ESL students write? Three!

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Writing three drafts

Writing three drafts

An academic ESL writing instructor whom I was mentoring recently asked me how I dealt with the different drafts of essays.  She was sure that students needed to write at least four or fives drafts, but she wasn’t sure how she should respond to each draft.

At some point in the writing process, the amount of time and energy that the students and instructor put into an essay outweighs the benefits.  If our goal is to help students develop writing skills and to develop writing techniques, writing more than three drafts can be overkill.  And “marking” more than one draft, can be a less-than-optimal use of time and energy by the instructor.

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