I don’t know what kind of essays you are thinking of. But I learned the basic type of dialectic essay (arguing both sides, drawing a conclusion and adding your own opinion seperatly at the end) in 9th grade. When I approached my Abitur (= ready for university exam) in 12th and 13th grade, I had to write a Facharbeit (exhaustive essay) in one of my two major courses. I choose English and could choose one of about 30 topics. (Although I was lazy and got by on my good English language and less on content; but I know that was not okay at University level).
Once people know the basics, which they should prove to get into University the first place (which is why good entrance exams have essay tests), you don’t have to learn a new skill set, which you seem to imply. You simply broaden your approach - instead of 10 pages, you write 20, instead of 2 months time, you have 4, instead of 5 books, you read 20 books - and develop your own ideas deeper.
I really don’t see how you try to defend the very idea that somebody who’s not got a cultural excuse (as mentioned, Asians put a very different idea on the process of learning by book vs. developing own ideas) and who’s learned how to write a correct essay in High School by not cheating, looking up sources and developing their own ideas, suddenly doesn’t know at all what to do in University and can only think of copy-paste. No, I don’t see the connection at all.
What I see as explanation is the contiuation of behaviour: people who copied from their friends in High School because “it’s no big deal” - that is, they were to lazy to do the work themselves (or unable) and didn’t understand the value of actually learning things, just cared about the grade - and are now continuing that behaviour at university. They certainly should be flunked, because that’s not what academics is about.
And crying about simply needing a BA degree for the job world doesn’t impress me, either: are you going to steel from your colleagues once you have a job, because you didn’t learn how to do the work, or learned the knowledge?
well huh. This has been a really eye opening thread for me, because I honestly don’t remember ANY of my high school english teachers being this careful about teaching the actual “how to” of writing a good essay, I had to learn it on my own.
Now, I don’t think I’ve ever received anything but an A on an essay at the college level, but I worked hard to gather the skills to be able to write well enough for that to be true.
And maybe there is a chip on my shoulder, but mostly because the classes get dumbed down as a result of so many students having no idea how to write a paper at all, much less a good one. In a recent conversation with classmates while waiting for an essay to be handed back I mentioned that I felt iffy about whether the topic of my paper was a good one, but felt I’d made a good argument so I was probably ok…and they all looked at me like I had four heads…argument?
And I guess I was assuming that these poor kids had the same California public school experience that I did, and that they’d just had sucky teachers like I had…
But ok, maybe they are just lazy cheaters, well, that sucks even more.
Thanks for the patience everyone here has shown while I climbed out from under my rock :o
constanze and others have answered the questions quite well, so I don’t have much to add, except to reiterate that I do all that I can to help students succeed. They, of course, have to be willing to do some of the work. I have one who was writing horribly until I convinced him to get help at the writing center. Now he’s more competent. I had others that I referred many times but who did not go, and they are still not doing well.
Out of the 60 that I had this semester, five plagiarized–and two of them actually apologized; one admitted procrastination and laziness; the other was simply sorry. The vast majority sank or swam on their own without cheating.
I absolutely agree that college students ought to know the basics of writing. They should know basic math, too, and how to read…but some don’t, so we have remedial classes for them.
And everyone is told from the get-go NOT to cheat and plagiarize. It’s in the syllabus, it’s in the catalog, it’s on the big screen on the wall of the assessment center. It’s not as if they were never warned.
My experience, at a good Jesuit university, was that in practically all of my fucking classes, everybody was trying to teach me how to write, because none of the professors felt like they could count on us to have learned it anywhere else. So I had a lot of my time wasted in non-English classes (and English Lit was my major), whereas I didn’t have a Biology prof teaching me Calc or a CompSci prof throwing in some Japanese.
Would you expect a professor in a calculus class to teach their students algebra or trig? There’s a certain basic level of knowledge and capability that’s to be expected when taking a given course. If you don’t meet that level, it’s a waste of everyone else’s time for you to be in that course. Get your pre-reqs in order yourself–you’re a grownup now. (This is the general “you,” by the way, not directed at you specifically.)
It should also be understood that a teacher is merely one link in a chain in the educational system. We can hire the best teachers, pay them a ton of money, and we still can’t guarantee that the students will absorb or apply what is taught.
If that’s the case, it’s a really sad commentary on the edcuation system you had in high school. Like constanze, starting about the 9th grade we were given pretty thorough guidance on basic essay writing. I think we started with persuasive essays that basically went: introduction with thesis, three arguments to support thesis, conclusion. That was the bare-bones version we started with.
We were taught how to properly cite our sources and make footnotes and bibliographies etc. Every year of high school English, we had an essay project to iron out our skills, specifically with the goal of learning how to structure an essay properly. By the time I went to college, I was ready to apply those skills.
It is not my history professor’s responsibility to teach me how to write an essay. My history professor was there to teach me history. If I didn’t have the skills required to meet the academic requirements and write an essay for my history class, then it was up to me to go get remedial help or withdraw from that class. I could either get a “How to Write and Essay” book, or I go take advantage of the student resource center.
I’m horrified that your school didn’t teach essay writing. What do kids learn in school these day? How to Google?
Now that would be an interesting experiment to try!
Here in Minnesota, the Republican governor has cut funding for schools for about 8 years now. They are starting to go to 4-day weeks, because they don’t have the money to even heat the school buildings!
it is very sad. I graduated way before Google came around, but what I remember from English class was a lot of diagramming sentences, quite a bit of Hemingway, and my mom teaching me how to put an essay together.
Yeah, none of that stuff is nearly as important as learning how to write properly. I was in advanced English, and did fine in literature, but once I had to start writing stuff, I got bumped down to the regular class, and actually got a lot of one-on-one time with my actual teacher, who showed me how to write. And then in 12th grade, that’s all English was about. The teacher forced you to have rough drafts, and really, really helped. I almost always got an A in that class, because I’m a quick study. A lot of my fellow students did not do so well. A few I think had something like dyslexia, as they made perfect sense when talking, but not when writing. (My mom seems to have this, too.)
Still, even before I knew how to write well, the idea of plagiarism never crossed my mind. It totally shocked me when I found a friend who used copy and paste, and I had no idea why he thought it made a coherent paper. At the very least you’d think they’d try to follow the basic format laid out in the syllabus. It was pretty much a cookie cutter outline.
keep in mind that I was in advanced english classes as well, and got As on all my papers…and yet I really never did get instruction on how to write a proper essay. So I guess that means either my essays sucked and the teacher wasn’t actually reading them or that these skills were expected to be self taught at my high school.
It never occurred to me to plagiarize either, but obviously many students do this. I would prefer to think they do it because they don’t have the skills needed to manage without cheating, but according to the teachers in this thread it’s mostly because they’re too lazy to write original essays.
I still fail to see how “I wasn’t adequately prepared” somehow becomes a valid excuse for “I need to cheat” instead of “I need to go figure out how to prepare myself” or “I need to ask for more help.” :rolleyes:
My kids are in fourth and fifth grade and started getting taught essay writing in third grade. Fact essays, book reports, persuasive essays, personal essays. With citations. And the no plagiarism rule (my son doesn’t ‘get’ that - my daughter does).
They also, and this is apparently common now, start getting algebra young. I was pulling out my college algebra textbook because I’d forgotten how to do intercepts.
I’d contend they’re too lazy to even cheat well. Unlike the student who fabricated a whole suite of transcripts and letters of reference on perfect letterheads from the proper authorities… now, THERE’S some research!
I don’t even have students that’d take the time to cheat convincingly.
What I dislike about University is that it forces the student to take classes and electives outside the major of study that the student is in. The Uni’s call it, “a well rounded education”, where personally I consider it a way for them to make money on classes no one would take unless they are forced to.
For instance, business and prelaw majors in my Uni had to take a class called “Art History”. This class was somewhat difficult, as the student had to memorize who painted it, when, where, the name of the artwork and the artist. Students had to sit and study that, which personally I found asinine. 99% of the students did not care about the class, but were forced to take it, when they could be focusing on their core subjects.
It seems like the OP is an English, and/or a Literature teacher. I have always found Literature to be a waste of time. I have always enjoyed reading, mainly about history, people, nations of the World, maps, biographies etc. I really did not want to have to read something that I had no interest in, and having to memorize it. i remember having to memorize Shakespeare and Old English. Why? How can knowing these things get me a job in the future?
I think a lot of plagarism happens because the student does not care about the course material and does not want to spend an inordinate time learning something that is bull cookies to them. I am sure that a lot of these students are studying their core courses. For example, if I am in pre-law, I want to study and do well in classes concerning laws and contracts, not literature.
My mother told me recently that a neighbor of ours was in nursing school and was required to take a music class for her degree. The woman did not know anything about music and asked my mother for help. The woman did not care about the course and probably passed with a C. Colleges make a lot of extra bucks with these worthless courses, but the students have no recourse. I wish colleges were ran like businesses and students with real student government with teeth and balls fight their administrations about fees, classes and micellaneous crap classes. it would be a start.
Then don’t go to Uni - go to trade school. Universities have a 600 year long History (maybe longer depending on how you define Universities) of providing a “well rounded education.” Its unlikely to change.
ETA: If you are a business major and you cheat to get through Art History, how in the hell is anyone supposed to trust you to make ethical decisions regarding conflict on interest when you have a job? Not only is being well rounded not a bad idea, but being able to do things you aren’t comfortable with, master subjects you don’t know well, and act ethically are all CRITICAL to a business or law career.
While you might feel classes such as literature or composition are worthless, your writing suggests that they would be of some considerable use to you.
And if you think literature is about memorizing Shakespeare, either you had a really poor teacher (a possibility), or you were too dumb to understand what you were actually supposed to be learning (much more likely).
Not to be a downer, here, but this is pretty much exactly why we don’t sleep through history class. The entire POINT of a university is exactly that–learning something about everything.
It still stands, though.