The first one is just a generalization, in time he may discover there’s more colors to the world than black and white. The second one tho, ouch!
This is why I explicitly tell my students that I will not read papers on abortion (or the death penalty). They can write them if they really want to, but I won’t read them or grade them. Some of them grouse a bit, but honestly, there are so many topics they could write their research papers on and I’m the boss of the class. I’ve never had a student try to write one anyway, but I expect it’s just a matter of time before somebody does.
I know that’s meant as a joke, but there are quite a few people who actually believe that sex with a virgin cures AIDS. Which is how you end up with small children being raped by men with AIDS in South Africa.
I just hand the papers back at the next meeting after turning in the copies and the report to the student life office.
I do wish I could see the look on his face when he gets the official letter in the mail from said office telling him that they’ve put a hold on all his college records/transactions until he comes in to face up to what he did.
I did, in fact, warn everyone during the first week about plagiarism–what it is, how not to do it, why they shouldn’t do it, how good I am at catching it, etc.
And still I get a few numbskulls who try it anyway–every semester (this has happened at both CCs and universities). They must think I don’t use the same internet that they do. :dubious:
Can you stand one more jewel? It’s about teh ghey, again:
If people keep being gay and gays get married, soon the whole human race will go extinct because people won’t have babies anymore.
I paraphrased from memory; she wasn’t actually that articulate, but that was the gist. She used to traipse in late, slouching, staring ahead, no books or supplies, never knew what was going on. The above gem came from her “research” paper.
I bet you can guess what grade she got. Hint: It started with an F. 
Full credit?
According to some study that came out a couple days ago, I go to the 19th best university in the world. Last year (when it was the 18th best university in the world…oh, the shame in losing a spot) my friend TAed for a freshman-level class and spent a lot of the time falcepalming. Hoo boy, she got some doozies in her papers. The most memorable statement came from a student who claimed that “unfortunately, it is no longer socially acceptable for men to beat their wives”.
I see that they recently changed the RateYourStudents page–the top used to say “margaritas” but now it says “absinthe”: http://www.rateyourstudents.blogspot.com/
Absinthe makes a person forget, doesn’t it? I think I get the point.
I, for one, am on the edge of my seat awaiting fresh deliveries of snarky comments from the crack instructor’s of the United States most exclusive community colleges about the obvious decline of the American republic as evidenced by the entirely unexpected poor writing skills of the bottom quartile of their freshman composition courses!
No, but it does make the heart grow fonder.
d&r
I can’t believe kids still do this! I mean, I don’t condone cheating, but get a little creative. Jeesh.
Yeah…like, change it up a bit more!
Actually, one fellow did that earlier this year, but he only changed every third word or so, and the words he substituted made no sense, so all that extra work didn’t help.
True on all counts.
I’m teaching a couple of history classes in the California State University system this semester. I’m also in the same half of California as vivalostwages, so we are probably drawing from a similar pool of applicants.
I have two classes of 50 students, and they recently submitted their first piece of written work for the semester. From 100 students, i received about 90 papers (10 percent deadbeat rate is pretty typical). Of those 90, i gave out 13 F’s, and the main reason for most of them was a complete inability to construct a coherent sentence.
Here are two sentences lifted straight from a paper about the treatment of slaves in colonial Virginia and Maryland:
“At that time colonist forced punishments against laborers than white descent servants. There were laws very limited to protect any Negro slave but was required.”
This helps explain why I was at the top of my community college class. The other students started hating me after the 2nd exam.
But you were their best friend when there was a group project, because YOU could write a coherent sentence.
My favorite group project was four of us. One young man who was busy pickling his liver and two immigrants who did TRY very hard, but with English not their first language, most of their “help” meant more work for me.
Not quite as pleasant was the two women who earned me an A- for the course. I researched the paper, I wrote the paper, I gave it to them and said “make it pretty, proof it for me, add a table of contents and an index per the syllabus and turn it in.” Yeah, that was too much for them to do. They turned it in without the required contents or index. They did, however, turn it in on time, exactly in the format I gave them.
What mhendo cited is quite typical. I can’t help wondering if a steady diet of sodas and snack chips has done some irreversible brain damage in at least some of these folks.
mhendo, are you finding that the problems we’re discussing have been getting worse over the past several years, or do you think it’s the same as it’s ever been? I’m asking because we profs who also work on assessment essays have seen a dramatic increase, over the past five years, in the number of students having to be placed in the remedial course.
Oh, dear God. :eek: :eek: :eek: :mad: 
WTF does it mean? (and at least s/he didn’t make the “there, their, they’re” mistake"!)
That’s the question we ask ourselves with every other paper. The worst part is that the students don’t see anything wrong with it and are rather stunned by their low grades: “But…my ideas are good!”
Oh, for a RED pen and time…
This thread fills me with so much pride. For all my faults at English composition, I’m never close to this bad.
Thank you, thank you all for the new found confidence.
I can’t really answer that from my own experience, because we only moved to SoCal last year, and this semester is my first teaching in the Cal State system (and probably last, given the budget situation; all adjuncts are likely to be gone next semester). My wife is in her second year (she’s tenure track) and she says it’s about as bad this year as last.
I have, however, heard some of my colleagues say that this sort of thing has been getting worse over the past few years, and one theory is that college and university intakes are starting to be dominated by the No Child Left Behind generation. We have a generation of students that can pass standardized testing, but that can’t construct a coherent sentence. I’m not sure if this is the only explanation, or even the main one, but it’s certainly pretty bad.
Before we moved out west, we were living in Baltimore, and i taught some courses at Johns Hopkins University, and at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Hopkins is obviously an elite school, and MICA, although an art college, is an expensive one that tends to draw its students from well-to-do families that value education, and that can afford to live in areas with good public schools, or send their kids to private schools. Both Hopkins and MICA had some below-average academic students, but i never saw the sheer level of writing incompetence that i’ve seen at Cal State, except for a few exchange students from Asia.
While i think that a few of my Cal State students have English as a second language, they all speak it fine, and most of them with an American accent, suggesting they’ve been here long enough to be familiar with it. I’ve spoken with a few students who failed the paper, and their spoken English was very good. Also, not all of my F’s went to students who might be ESL; far from it. Quite a few native speakers were just as bad, and even among those who passed, the writing still needed considerable improvement.
I should add, by the way, that both classes have some very good students. I got a few papers that would have comfortably earned A’s at Johns Hopkins or any other Tier 1 school.