"Mark It Up, Write It Down..."
Thoughts while grading:

*I actually had to refer to the grammar handbook I keep by my desk to make sure that, when referring to people, one should write "who" and not "that." I see more and more sentences like, "people don't like those that are different from them." The thing is, I've started to see this mistake in published texts more and more often, so I'm not surprised anymore to see it in student writing, but I'm seeing it more and more often from my best students, and I will continue to mark it each time. I just had to make sure things hadn't changed since my years as an editor when I had all of this ingrained in my head.

*It's a lost cause that I will get students to recognize the difference between "that" and "which" when it comes to restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses. Again, I see it wrong in published texts so often, how can I expect students to get it?

*Why do so many students put commas before verbs? For example, "Situations such as this crime, lead people to believe it's okay to discriminate."

*I swear I read a study once that said that student grades on writing do not necessarily increase throughout the semester. In other words, if a student writes three essays for a course, the odds are that the second essay will have the highest grade. It should be the last essays, but the semester gets rushed at the end when students have graded work in all classes, so they are not necessarily that their best. I'm seeing that right now in action. For example, students are making insane typos and getting the wrong forms of words down several times per page, clearly not doing that last read through.

*At the same time, some students who seemed to blow off the last essay are really shining on this one. I think some didn't work as hard as they could have and got caught, so they worked on this one. Some grades have fallen a bit, but a few have also jumped a lot. That's a good thing.

*When Da Man teaches, he tells people to avoid semicolons because the odds are they are not using them correctly. He has a point, and it's most annoying when I've pointed out specific cases where it should not be used, but they use it there anyway!

*It's a personal gripe, and I don't know how to talk about it with students, really. But I'm not thrilled when they write about "homosexuals." I think many do it because "gay" can sound pejorative (these are essays about Matthew Shepard, so lesbians and other queers are not in the equation in this context), but "homosexual" has such a clinical and religious tone. Still, that's minor, and I do let it go in essays. Still, I wonder how/when to talk about it.

*Yes, I am looking forward to teaching Professional and Technical Editing next spring. I get to be as anal as I want about these things!
- posted by Nels @ 3:44 PM | | | Link |