We’ve all heard of those sites that supposedly produce essays or term papers etc for cash. Out of curiosity I was looking at a couple of these sites and noticed how badly their web pages are written - seemingly by someone for whom English is a third language, or by a text-generating bot. Surely the “product” they churn out couldn’t be as bad as that, could it?
It could. This page has a selection of sample papers, or, as the site says: “Checking everything is the right thing to do, so we’ve decided to make it easy of our customers. Here you can find samples of our works, written exclusively for this page. With their help you’ll get a good insight into our research papers quality, see a variety of formats and styles.”
I clicked on the first one, and WTF? This has supposedly been written specifically to promote their services:
Is that even English? How could anyone even consider paying anyone for anything like that? Or would the sort of person who would consider paying for a term paper think that’s pretty good writing?
This, probably. I mean, if you wanted quality writing (and could identify quality writing) you’d at least try to do it yourself, wouldn’t you?
I sort of imagine their customers as those college students content to skate by with C- grades so they don’t have to miss the frat parties because they were kicked out of school.
It does express a coherent thought. The grammar could use some polishing and it’s not exactly reader-friendly, but it is essentially correct. It reminds me of that episode where Joey uses the thesaurus on every single word in an effort to make himself sound smart.
Not just someone who’d consider paying for an essay, but someone taking business courses who’d consider paying for an essay. Good enough for that market, I’m sure.
Indeed. I got shades of Feynman deconstructing “The individual member of the social community often receives his information via visual, symbolic channels.” to get “People read.”
Compared to a lot of college-level papers, that quote isn’t so bad. Assuming that it’s on topic and has the right content later on, that paper might get a B from a very forgiving instructor. It’s inelegant, but with a bit of effort the reader can figure out what is being communicated.
I’m guessing many people who choose to use these services have enough trouble with English that the quoted essay would be an improvement over what they could produce. Weaker students, students for whom English is a second or third language, and lazy bastards with spare cash.
I thought college was supposed to prepare you to conduct reasonable professional communication in the future.
If I received this kind of “communication” in a professional environment from someone, he’d be fired (if he was an underling) or wouldn’t get the job/contract (if it was someone from the outside). And if this was from a boss, any respect for him would go out of the window.
The problem is that a four-year degree isn’t, and has never been, a Smart Person Certificate. It used to be a Rich Person Certificate, but now it isn’t even that; it might be a Massive Debt Load Certificate, which is useful to know in some cases, none of them pleasant for the person holding said certificate. But that’s a different rant.
Point being, a four-year degree is expected of a huge percentage of the workforce, far larger than could ever be realistically granted a Smart Person Certificate. So we have a lot of non-smart people with four-year degrees, and this is how some of the most-non-smart of them try to achieve that, simply so they can have a job that’s the intellectual equivalent of an old-fashioned assembly line job, only with a healthcare plan and the possibility of a paycheck that won’t bounce.
Actually, I think it sounds like it was written by someone for whom English was a second language, so it might work out better for those people.
While I never went to any mill, and did not make a regular practice of this, I did once have someone else write an essay for me. It wasn’t good, but it was better than this, and it barely got a C-, in art history of all classes.
(If you really want to know, the assignment required us to go see a piece of art in person, and I had no transportation while in college. So I kept putting it off until I was so swamped with work from other finals that I didn’t think I’d have time. I talked to my friend about it, and he couldn’t understand why I was worried at all, as he told me that he was good enough to BS his way to a C paper, which was all I needed to get an A in class. So I told him to prove it. He did, so I let him write my paper.)
In my book, “inelegant, but with a bit of effort the reader can figure out what is being communicated” is not B material. It might make the difference between F and Ungraded (where, even with effort, the reader can’t figure it out).
B implies “only one level below the top grade” (ignoring pluses and minuses), and there’s considerably more than one level between that garbage and top-grade work.
The people who have the kind of money to pay these essay mills for all of their papers and assignments aren’t the people who have to worry about getting fired because of their work ethic, or really of ever being an “underling” at all.
I didn’t go to university THAT long ago, and it wasn’t like I went to Harvard, and if I handed in a paper that was written like that I would have failed. It is grammatically horrible and it isn’t coherent to me; I don’t understand how those thoughts are logically connected. The last sentence doesn’t follow from the previous ones.
I’ve got to say (as an instructor in American literature at a university in a non-English speaking country): this is by far not the worst sentence I’ve read, and I might consider giving this paper (which I’ve skimmed through…all fifteen pages…) a passing grade. There are some serious grammar problems (such as the definite article before the different leadership styles), and from my own position the most serious problem is that it doesn’t have anything like a thesis-driven scholarly argument, but there are, of course, more descriptively-writing disciplines than mine.
And also from the vantage point of an instructor: this paper would ring no bells with me. I’d be perfectly content with letting it pass as a middling-low grade (perhaps better, if I cared to actually READ it; I mean, this one, I DO read the papers I’m given), which might be all the clever-but-lazy-or-incapable-of-writing student might want. It’s not a half-bad idea to write moderately badly if the guys you’re writing for are likely to be moderately bad…
I just finished a graduate degree in a business program that’s heavy on the international students.
Based on what I read of the output produced by my fellow students for group essay work, the OP’s sample would probably get a solid B.
Keep in mind that nobody expects business school students to have anything better than a C in Freshman Comp or a barely passing score on the TOEFL, and that the instructors are likely themselves non-native English speakers.
I feel like my writing abilities actually decreased from having participated in that program.
Right. And you’re teaching literature, which means you’re more interested than most about actual writing quality. Outside the humanities, a lot of instructors are going to shake their heads, sigh heavily, and be happy when a paper demonstrates some basic understanding of the material.
I had a few music history classes where it was obvious that the professor didn’t give a fuck, so I adjusted my effort accordingly. I ended up with an A; each paper was a handful of paragraphs that I tossed off 30 minutes before class. When I reached upper-level science courses that had a fair amount of writing assignments, most professors would demand better writing, but it wasn’t their job to teach basic composition.
The language on the home page is similar. It seems oddly familar, too - I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the style of language seems to be the same as that seen in that the vast majority of spam comments on blogs, link farms etc. Where does it come from, I wonder?