This is something I see regularly in student writing, mostly in the 3rd-5th grade responses. (ftr, I work for an educational testing firm, so we see the work, not kids to ask questions of)
Instead of merely skipping every other line, kids will put an X on the otherwise blank line.
So it looks something like this:
X
Instead of merely skipping every other line,
X
kids will put an X on the otherwise blank line.
X
This happens too often to be some sort of idiosyncrasy the occasional writer picked up along the way, so I assume someone taught them to do this. To what purpose? It’s more distracting than leaving the line completely blank…
WAG: it could be to remind themselves to skip the line. I remember many times in grade school forgetting to skip a line and continuing to write single-spaced, then having to go back and erase and rewrite because double-spacing was required. Having the kids put an X on unused lines might be a good way to keep them from forgetting to double space.
Sugestion, for kids that normally don’t skip lines, they were instructed my the teacher to put X’s on every other line before you start this test so you don’t forget.
Well maybe, but they’re not really supposed to be skipping lines anyway. There’s nothing in the instructions that says that they can’t skip lines, but it’s not encouraged given they’ve got a finite space to write their essay within.
Okay, but this is a standardized test, so there are no comments or corrections on it. Well, there are some general comments, but they’re typed and not attached to their actual work.
Do people think perhaps the kids are doing this since: a. some teachers encourage it for classroom assignments. b. they aren’t old enough not to realize what’s required for a classroom assignment isn’t neccessarily required for other situations?