I Just Can't Contain It...
Okay, I'm sorry, I know that this is the result of grading 10 portfolios and 18 final exams from my class, but I can't stand it. I'm usually not one to rip on the students, but here's my list of uncontainable annoyances:
1) "Loose" instead of "lose." When did this start happening? As in "The character will loose her identity." I just keep getting this image of a floating identity, wandering around in the ether. Identity, thou art loosed.
2) Fully 68% of the class thinks, randomly, that you put an apostrophe in Americans. Now, if we were all thinking about Native Hawaiian languages, and they wanted to do something interesting with it, like put it after the A (A'mericans), forcing us to have a collective glottal stop, then that might be fun. However, I keep thinking they mean that it's possessive (American's go to war), and it's making me nuts.
3) There is rampant, rampant confusion of ethnicities. Craziness. As in, the author of a memoir about American internment camps is identified as Chinese. Dude.
4) The international student to whom I gave a big fat generous "do-over" to at the beginning of class [she plagiarized on an exam. seriously. but then Senor Fluff, who works with, and was an, international student(s) reminded me that this could conceivably be a significant cultural difference]. So let her rewrite an essay question I did. And now? Fabricating discussion posts!! As in "turn in the list of your comments" and she's made up 7 of 22! And I had to take the time to check! Dammit, I hate it when I get taken for a ride!!
5) Apparently, I wrote the monster final, as I have one student who scored a 98%, one with a 91%, and everyone else in the 70's and below----like they're spring temperatures or something. So do I curve? Do I even know how to curve? Do I just spot everyone some points? Do I not wimp out and have them suck it up?
That's all for now. In many ways, they've been a fine group. But damn, all of this is chapping my hide. As of tomorrow: one down, two to go.
1) "Loose" instead of "lose." When did this start happening? As in "The character will loose her identity." I just keep getting this image of a floating identity, wandering around in the ether. Identity, thou art loosed.
2) Fully 68% of the class thinks, randomly, that you put an apostrophe in Americans. Now, if we were all thinking about Native Hawaiian languages, and they wanted to do something interesting with it, like put it after the A (A'mericans), forcing us to have a collective glottal stop, then that might be fun. However, I keep thinking they mean that it's possessive (American's go to war), and it's making me nuts.
3) There is rampant, rampant confusion of ethnicities. Craziness. As in, the author of a memoir about American internment camps is identified as Chinese. Dude.
4) The international student to whom I gave a big fat generous "do-over" to at the beginning of class [she plagiarized on an exam. seriously. but then Senor Fluff, who works with, and was an, international student(s) reminded me that this could conceivably be a significant cultural difference]. So let her rewrite an essay question I did. And now? Fabricating discussion posts!! As in "turn in the list of your comments" and she's made up 7 of 22! And I had to take the time to check! Dammit, I hate it when I get taken for a ride!!
5) Apparently, I wrote the monster final, as I have one student who scored a 98%, one with a 91%, and everyone else in the 70's and below----like they're spring temperatures or something. So do I curve? Do I even know how to curve? Do I just spot everyone some points? Do I not wimp out and have them suck it up?
That's all for now. In many ways, they've been a fine group. But damn, all of this is chapping my hide. As of tomorrow: one down, two to go.
Labels: grading; peda-dema-goguery
posted by kfluff at 10:37 PM
1 Comments:
The phrase "collective glottal stop" made me laugh out loud. Doesn't GWB occasionally do that with a Texan twang?
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