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#ok but fr marking undergrad essays is such a rollercoaster#i gave two very high marks today and was genuinely impressed and then the next three i marked were practically incoherent#one just copy and pasted their intro instead of writing a conclusion. like it's verbatim the same paragraph#i dont mark down for minor grammar and syntax errors because there's a high rate of ESL students...#... but some of the papers from native english speakers have me more concerned about functional illiteracy than I've ever been#these are 19-20yos in a humanities field at a top university! even the highest scoring essay had basic basic grammar errors and vocab misuse#at least i could tell what the student was trying to say there but some of the others...#if your punctuation and spelling and syntax are all so bad that i literally cant tell what you're trying to say there is a serious problem#even setting aside how many errors like these there were there's the flip side of the issue: actually writing an essay#the last one i marked yesterday had no structure or thesis or secondary sources#everything between the intro and conclusion was the same claim phrased in different ways with some irrelevant non sequitur quotes thrown in#no analysis other than the words 'analysis of this shows' which is *gasp* not a substitute for analysis#OH AND OMG#one made a direct claim about a figure's political stance and attached a footnote. i went to see what the student's source was.#the footnote literally said something like 'i know i should have a source here but it's only context and i don't want to waste my word count#like what???? do you think claims about relevant context don't need evidence??? and the audacity to not give a citation...#... and claim it's because it would take too many words away from your main argument??#just providing the actual citation for the claim would have been 3-5 words max but the footnote about not having room was 30 words#kid do you think i can't tell that you dont have that citation? do you think anyone's buying that you didn't include it to save space?#it's the very first footnote and most of the others are full-length bibliography entries jammed into the footnotes (which we don't require)#so either you were 'worried about space' at the first footnote then changed your mind as you wasted 250 words on unnecessary formatting#or you were over the word limit and were like 'gotta cut something!' and the only footnote you 'simplified for space' was a short basic one#^assuming i believed you. which i dont. because why would you think that would fool anyone.#i still have half the essays left. im tired and so disappointed in how little we're told we should expect from them
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