Writing quality in college students

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Go_Fishy, Jul 19, 2009.

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  1. Go_Fishy

    Go_Fishy New Member

    The grade inflation thread has some interesting comments on the quality of student writing in universities. Since this issue is of immediate academic interest to me, I thought I'd open a thread.

    The research for my doctoral dissertation analyzes and compares academic writing in native-speaking US college students and ESL (English as a Second Language) learners. I'm not going to bore you with details, but essentially I'm comparing the two language groups' writing in terms of syntax, lexical choices, organization, argument progression etc. The field is linguistics/applied linguistics. The native-speaker essays I'm looking at were all written by freshmen to juniors in writing classes at major Midwestern universities. All essays are supposed to be argumentative in nature.

    Looking at these essays, I notice that many of them are...let's say in dire need of proofreading and revision. ;) Gross spelling/grammar problems are entertaining but not part of my research focus. Much more interesting is the lack of a clear structure, of genre conventions so to say.

    For learners of English, every textbook will tell you that an argumentative essay needs an introduction, a thesis statement, supporting paragraphs, and a graceful conclusion. The textbooks go on telling you about cohesion, paragraph structure, and all the things to students should do to get their point across. All very clear.

    Now, since there is such a lack of the things just mentioned in many native-speaker essays, I'm wondering how much attention is actually paid to the formal aspects of writing in high school and college. I'd be most grateful for your input on the following questions:

    1. Where did you learn how to write an essay?
    2. How much attention was paid to the formal aspects?
    3. Did the teachers focus on your ideas (contents) or on the form of your essays, or both?
    4. Did you use any textbooks on writing?
    5. If you are a writing instructor, what is your take on the situation I'm describing above?

    I appreciate all your comments. I'll also appreciate any other rants, raves, and stories you'd like to share about writing instruction or learning.
     
  2. cutedeedle

    cutedeedle I speak Geek. Will translate on request.

    Are you interested in comments from those whose native language is not English, or from everyone?

    Personally I'm shocked at how poorly many native English speakers write. My thought is the quality of education these days (I'm almost 60) is so bad that proper writing takes nearly last place to the "feel good" curriculum, sports, extra-curricular activities, in-class misbehavior that takes time from teaching, parental and student indifference to the written word, grade inflation, teachers who don't bother to focus on the correct written form -- the list is endless.

    I've taken many Liberal Arts and Liberal Studies classes at various distance-learning universities (undergrad and grad programs) and they all expect students to write well. If students fail at that, they must remediate their writing in some manner, at least that's been my experience. It makes sense because your work is determined solely by your written assignments.

    I found to always do a spell check and grammar check in my word processor. I also have learned a lot from using my thesaurus program -- it has helped my writing tremendously. You also learn to write to your audience. Undergrad course writing is much less demanding that writing for a graduate program. They're brutal in graduate school!

    Just my opinion. One of my favorite books is "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" by Lynne Truss. Hilarious, and I relate to her annoyance at poor grammar, punctuation and spelling. It's everywhere!
     
  3. soupbone

    soupbone Active Member

    My firm belief is that texting, email, social networking sites, etc. has lead to this idea among native English speakers that they do not need to attempt proper grammar and spelling. Punctuation is also not used properly. Sometimes I find myself doing it as well and I try to correct it if possible. There is another forum populated by people attempting to test out of credits and I see many people on there posting questions such as "wat clases shud i tak to pass chemistry?!?!?!?!? U all R grate!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Now I am not attacking this person's writing because I know I make mistakes as well, but I think this leads to people being more lax when they do need to write a proper paper. I believe the old saying is that practice makes perfect, but if your practice is typing "lik dis" you end up with a perfect mess.
     
  4. cutedeedle

    cutedeedle I speak Geek. Will translate on request.

    U R so rite. Nevr thot of that.
    :D
     
  5. bazonkers

    bazonkers New Member

    Huuked on fonix werked fer me.
     
  6. Ian Anderson

    Ian Anderson Active Member

    I think popular song and advertising heavily influence prose and vocabulary. Some examples:

    Lee Greenwood Song (Proud to be an American)
    Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land
    [So there is doubt?]

    Rolling Stones Song
    I can't get no satisfaction
    [I'm glad he gets satisfaction]

    McDonalds Slogan
    I'm lovin it
    [I hate it]

    Pink Floyd Song
    We don't need no education
    [I agree – we all need education]
     
  7. mattbrent

    mattbrent Well-Known Member

    One of the "problems" with the field of education is that education itself is an art and not a science. As a result, there's not specific way to teach anything. The bigwigs in power (who, as an aside, are usually not educators) decide from time to time that the methods of teaching need to change. This constant changing results in a pendulum effect which swings back and forth. A perfect example of this effect is the No Child Left Behind Act's focus on achievement testing.

    These state tests have changed the way teachers work with their students. I describe situations from my own school, and I could probably share experiences that some of my colleagues across Virginia have described. The shift, unfortunately, has moved from teaching students to understand to teaching students to pass a test. While at first thought that doesn't seem like a bad thing, but the problem is that the tests are not very applicable to "real life".

    Furthermore, almost all of these tests in Virginia, with exception of the writing tests, are done via multiple-choice. Because the state has chosen this method, we have to mirror it in our classes. We have to shove multiple-choice down our students' throats. The overabundance of multiple-choice has resulted in a decrease in writing. I've been highly discouraged from assigning writing assignments to my students. I'm told "Only the English teachers should give essays." I think that's hogwash.

    I'm not that old, as I only graduated high school 9 years ago. However, during my time in school, we wrote all the time. We had to do reports and such for all of my classes. I know I had multiple-choice tests, but I also had short answer and essays to write. Those have all gone to the wayside now, and student writing ability is suffering from lack of practice.

    Aside from my dislike of educational policy, something else I've observed is the ability for students to communicate orally. If their oral skills are lacking, I've noticed their writing ability is also lacking. I suppose one way to explain this is that some students grow up in homes with parents who can't speak English properly, and so the student picks this up when he or she learns to speak. When the time comes to write, the student writes like he or she speaks, and so the writing is poor. This situation, however, focuses more on grammar and spelling rather than logic or argumentation.

    I still believe, however, that poor performance on writing assignments in the result of a lack of practice. One of my colleagues, whose mother was a teacher, explained her mom's theory. She called it the "Potty Theory". Essentially it states that when kids are little and they are going through potty training, the parents clap for the kids when they go to the bathroom in the potty and because of that they grow up thinking they should be applauded for every piece of crap they produce. I thought that was rather humorous, and somewhat realistic. I've had students do an assignment just to say they did it. They never put much effort into it, but did it so they could just get a grade and move on.

    While I'm no expert, I would definitely argue that student writing ability suffers due to lack of practice.

    -Matt
     
  8. me again

    me again Well-Known Member

    C'mon guyz, thiz iz seriuzs stuff. :rolleyes:
     
  9. AV8R

    AV8R Active Member

    Bad spellers of the world untie!
     
  10. David H

    David H Member

    Love the humor. I want to offer few perspectives.

    1) The educational systems is not teaching the difference between writing events (formal, informal, casual, etc.). We need to teach the individual the difference in writing events as we do dressing styles for events. You do not show up to a "formal" event in cut-offs. You don't use LOL in a college paper unless its in quotations.

    2) We do not hold students accountable for implementing feedback. When feedback is given, if it is not implemented, we should hold the student accountable.

    3) Parents of students need to demand more at the lower level. My wife was an elementary school teacher for many years. Parents of students seemingly sided with the "little Johnny" on issues of content, context, and style. She had to defend her grades.

    4) Expectations, Expectations, Expectations. We need set them as the standard, communicate them, and live by our decisions (grade accordingly).

    If the goal of make people better, we must motivate them.

    Thx 4 da thred!
     
  11. me again

    me again Well-Known Member

    About 80% of my students have an excellent content analysis of the subject material that they write about, but what impedes many of them are grammatical errors and APA issues. The other 20% provide "filler" for their content analysis, in addition to grammatical errors and APA formatting errors. These percentages seem to change too. In the past, I've had classes where over 95% of the students were outstanding, but so far this year, the students being allowed into the program seem to be substandard in grammatical and APA issues. It's extremely time-consuming to point out all of their errors (so that they can improve); it's frustrating when about 5% of them don't heed the academic advice -- and then turn in subsequent papers with the EXACT same errors -- those students are guaranteed a C. I don't spend hours and hours finding their errors just to criticize them; I do it to help them -- and I expect them to appreciate it by doing it right in subsequent papers. Finding errors and correcting them is time-consuming WORK! We're doing it to HELP deficient students -- and for no other reason!

    Other professors at my online university have also noted the recent influx of students with substandard writing skills, so it's NOT my imagination. I will never fail anyone, as long as they attempt to do the work i.e. they'll always pass with a minimum of a C.

    I've also had students argue with me about errors that are pointed out in their papers, but once they go to the APA manual and look it up for themselves, it quiets them down. As a professor, you have to be correct 100% of the time -- and if you're not, then the student will focus on your one error -- and that's ALL they'll focus on, as if that's all there is! :rolleyes: Ahhhhhh yesssss... ;)
     
  12. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    Truth be told, I don't know. I graduated from a pretty good high-school back in the 1960's, but don't recall writing a lot of essays. (I must have.)

    My undergraduate major was philosophy and religion, which was very writing intensive. I suppose that I learned something while I was writing hundreds of those essays.

    Focus was almost 100% on content. But it was philosophy, remember. In philosophy it's kind of difficult to separate content and form, since one's work product consists of convincing and persuasive arguments. That requires both familiarity with the philosophical issues and the ability to creatively shape them into new coherent arguments of one's own. Logic is a branch of philosophy. Rhetoric used to be.

    So my professors did comment on the structure of my arguments, but they usually did that in a philosophical context, in terms of the strengths and weaknesses of the case that I was trying to make. I did get a few professors from time to time who marked spelling and grammar. A few of my papers came back with lots of red ink on them. (I was very fond of run-on sentences for a while there, as I recall.) I found that kind of feedback helpful.

    Never.
     
  13. lawrenceq

    lawrenceq Member

    Sum of my fav bloggers can't right. lol

    I am currently taking English Comp II, and I know some of my papers need serious work. In due time, I will get it down.
     
  14. ProfTim

    ProfTim Member

    I have been very concerned with the quality of education that our young people are receiving in the high schools. We've seen huge influx of students who can't pass the entrance exams and are enrolled in remedial classes. I'm pasting in this post, part of a paper that one of my students wrote. I had saved this portion and shared it with some of my fellow faculty members. I think it's appropriate to share here:

    "I feel that if i was to keep track of my business records then i wuld make sur that all trasaction is put in poper place so that bot account match up at the end. I would want to make sure that all my money is coming in and when it goes out, what itb goes out to pay, such as bills and any other personal need. If to much is going out on personal use then some changes need to be made cut backs on personal use til the money start puring in again."

    Unfortunately, this student took a remedial grammar class and both English Composition I & II.

    Someone mentioned the whole texting language. I agree that this has created a big problem with writing. I would also say that the advent of e-mail has lead to poor writing, particularly in the business world.

    Somedays I think I'm getting too old to teach!
     
  15. retake

    retake New Member

    Wow. Is that real?

    In another thread, I mentioned that I was worried about my writing skills. After seeing that portion, I suppose there's nothing to worry about.
     
  16. mattbrent

    mattbrent Well-Known Member

    You know, I had to chuckle because I thought back to a graduate history course I took. We were reading some primary source stuff from the time before standardized spelling. I remember coming across the word "dowtre" and thinking "What the hell is that?" Then I figured out it was supposed to be "daughter". Wow.

    Perhaps we're just reverting back a few hundred years.

    -Matt
     
  17. Ian Anderson

    Ian Anderson Active Member

    In general, I believe that the majority of the postings to degreeinfo are well written. A few exceptions include those from posters where English is not their primary language.
     
  18. HikaruBr

    HikaruBr Member

    Just something that I've noticed here in the USA: advanced ESL speakers tend to have less spelling errors than native speakers. Even than teachers.

    Why? Probably because we learn to read and write before we master the conversation skills in english.

    Of course we also do a lot of other mistakes that a native would never do.
     
  19. cutedeedle

    cutedeedle I speak Geek. Will translate on request.

    Yu b fooling us, rite? Its to funy! Me to, sher want that money puring in.
     
  20. japhy4529

    japhy4529 House Bassist

    Uh, well you certainly wouldn't be fooling a 14 year old! :) I was thinking about how funny the above post would look to a teenager. In their parlance "U are frontin', holmes!" (I am too, just as an FYI).

    The truth of the matter is that we don't understand how high school and college students communicate any better than many of them know how to craft a well written sentence in standard English.
     

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