Giving Feedback on Bad Student Papers

[AvidReader]

But what is most important is not the mechanics of citation (which are important), but the concept of citation. I assume this is being taught in Composition courses, but the students do have trouble.

In terms of citation, here are the things I most often find students have trouble with:
-That everything in the work cited page actually needs to be cited (and vice versa);
-That it is important to include the author, name, date, and title of a web site and not just its URL;
-That the works cited page should be listed alphabetically by authors' last name
-That it is important to cite actual page number(s) if you are citing an actual quote or something taken from specific page(s);
-That the "internet" is no more a source than is "the library" or "a file cabinet" is, but that the specific source itself should be cited.

As someone who has taught the concept of citation extensively in Composition courses, I agree wholeheartedly with this list. I would add the following:
-That most scholarly fields refer to authors by their last names
-Consistency

When I teach citations, I notice that students have a real problem finding and classifying information about the sources they are trying to cite (exacerbated, in part, by the auto-generated citations library databases now offer for many sources). I've gotten hundreds of papers with reasonably accurate auto-generated works cited pages and in-text citations like (Geographic) --you know, by the famous author National Geographic-- because the student doesn't actually recognize that the article has an author, or doesn't know how to translate the information from the works cited entry into an in-text citation. I've watched dozens of students fail to use citation generators because they don't understand the basics (or don't have the attention to detail to notice that the default tab is "book" when they are trying to cite a journal article from a database, if they even know the difference). Showing students where to look for information on the front and back of a title page is easy and relatively formulaic. In contrast, databases sometimes put things in illogical places or format them oddly, and it can be really hard to figure out which pieces of information are essential and where they can be found. This is, I think, the real function of teaching citations: teaching students to interpret information and condense and/or format that information so it is useful for their readers.

AR.

[hungry_ghost]

I use rubrics. I show students a 4-step rubric early in the semester and I tell them:
The second step equals B-level work. If the second step is marked, your work is good, it is satisfactory, you didn't lose points nor did you get anything extra. The language in that step is all positive: "generally good" "basically correct" etc.
The first step equals A, and that A is Astonishingly excellent. The language in that step is excessive "exceeds standards" language. I tell them that they have achieved "extra" if they see marks in that section. That section only gets marked if the work is remarkable (oops, is that a pun?).
The third step includes negative language and room for improvement.
If I have to mark the fourth step, they are struggling to pass.

I started with someone else's rubric, but edited it to match my priorities. You will need to rework your rubric to match what you value and what you want students to learn.  It took me a few years to get a rubric I like.

I also think that scaffolding is extremely important.
For my low-level Gen Ed, I have started giving students worksheets for their essays, to be completed by hand. For example, imagine an assignment to write a 5-paragraph compare/contrast essay about 2 literary works.
Question 1: Give the title and author and publication information for each of the 2 literary works. (Parenthetical note on where to find this information)
Question 2: list 5 similarities (compare) Question 3: list 5 differences (contrast), both with specific "evidence" (paraphrases or quotations) [Questions 2 & 3 are their data or evidence]
Question 4: look at all this and generate a thesis statement.
Question 5: organize the "evidence" into 2-3 supporting paragraphs, each with a main point; discard the stuff that doesn't fit
Question 6: write your thesis again and see if it changed; if it did, use this one instead when you write your essay.

This is basically the "guts" of the essay. The quality of work I've received has improved tremendously since I started doing this. Also, the process of preparing a worksheet like this has also forced me to take a more careful look at my prompts, and I've realized that some were more confusing than I had realized.

Finally, I agree with someone upthread that for citations, the #1 point is the underlying principle: use quotation marks around words other than your own and identify the source for quoted and paraphrased material. I have had students freak out about placement periods and commas but be very unclear about the nature of the source (book or article? translated or originally in English? recent or 50 years ago?). They are missing the forest for the trees, not good.

[Wahoo Redux]

I also think that scaffolding is extremely important.
For my low-level Gen Ed, I have started giving students worksheets for their essays, to be completed by hand. For example, imagine an assignment to write a 5-paragraph compare/contrast essay about 2 literary works.
Question 1: Give the title and author and publication information for each of the 2 literary works. (Parenthetical note on where to find this information)
Question 2: list 5 similarities (compare) Question 3: list 5 differences (contrast), both with specific "evidence" (paraphrases or quotations) [Questions 2 & 3 are their data or evidence]
Question 4: look at all this and generate a thesis statement.
Question 5: organize the "evidence" into 2-3 supporting paragraphs, each with a main point; discard the stuff that doesn't fit
Question 6: write your thesis again and see if it changed; if it did, use this one instead when you write your essay.

This is basically the "guts" of the essay. The quality of work I've received has improved tremendously since I started doing this. Also, the process of preparing a worksheet like this has also forced me to take a more careful look at my prompts, and I've realized that some were more confusing than I had realized.

This is great!

[bopper]

Non-professor here:

Re: Citations...I suspect that students don't really fully understand the purpose of citations...have you considered having them trace citations back through other students papers so they could find the source that was referenced and then perhaps in that paper to find a citation that refers back and maybe go back to an original source or something?

So if there is a bad citation they understand why it is not usable.

[mamselle]

+1

The reason for the citation is often unclear--if it's made to seem like a hoop to jump through without an underlying cause, people won't do it or try to figure out how to do it correctly.

When I fuss loudly and repeatedly in an art history class about the idiot who used a photo in an article that interests me greatly, but forgot to even mention the artist, date, museum, or anything else that might help me find it for use as comparanda for something I'm working on, I'm doing the same thing (but I like the idea of making them track backwards).

We used to be taught to look up every single citation in an article if it was germane to the topic we were writing on., as a way of building a bibliography and lit review. I'd guess that doesn't happen much anymore, but that is another 'learn by doing' approach, too.

M.

[the_geneticist]

Non-professor here:

Re: Citations...I suspect that students don't really fully understand the purpose of citations...have you considered having them trace citations back through other students papers so they could find the source that was referenced and then perhaps in that paper to find a citation that refers back and maybe go back to an original source or something?

So if there is a bad citation they understand why it is not usable.

That's a great idea! I know my introduction to citations was in a writing class and we were told it was so it didn't look like we were claiming the ideas of the author as our own. Basically, as no citation = you are cheating.  If the instructor has said, "here's an example where the writer is discussing an idea from [cited book & page] are they misinterpreting the original?" I would have understood the real purpose. 
I hate playing the "find the original publication game" for lab protocols. A lot of the time it's "adapted from [paper 1]".  You find paper 1 and they say "see [paper 2]".  You figure out how to get the full text of paper 2 and it's "based on [paper 3]". . . .

[Caracal]

Non-professor here:

Re: Citations...I suspect that students don't really fully understand the purpose of citations...have you considered having them trace citations back through other students papers so they could find the source that was referenced and then perhaps in that paper to find a citation that refers back and maybe go back to an original source or something?

So if there is a bad citation they understand why it is not usable.

That's a great idea! I know my introduction to citations was in a writing class and we were told it was so it didn't look like we were claiming the ideas of the author as our own. Basically, as no citation = you are cheating.  If the instructor has said, "here's an example where the writer is discussing an idea from [cited book & page] are they misinterpreting the original?" I would have understood the real purpose. 
I hate playing the "find the original publication game" for lab protocols. A lot of the time it's "adapted from [paper 1]".  You find paper 1 and they say "see [paper 2]".  You figure out how to get the full text of paper 2 and it's "based on [paper 3]". . . .

It happens in the humanities too. I once saw something in a book I wanted to verify, and traced it back through three books. The trail ended with a book written in the 1950s where the author just asserted that it was true with no supporting evidence. Not really how it is supposed to work....

Teaching is always an artificial exercise and the artificiality can sometimes make it hard for students to grasp important concepts. You don't have to persuade grad students about the importance of citations-but that's because grad students learn really quickly that other people's references are really useful, often more useful than the actual text. That happens, however, because you get really immersed in research and when someone cites something you weren't aware existed, you want to go track the thing down.

It is tough to recreate that for an undergrad class where the students are usually just trying to write a paper and move on. I think it is a good suggestion to have exercises that show students why citations matter, but they still aren't likely to really internalize it.

[onthefringe]

Non-professor here:

Re: Citations...I suspect that students don't really fully understand the purpose of citations...have you considered having them trace citations back through other students papers so they could find the source that was referenced and then perhaps in that paper to find a citation that refers back and maybe go back to an original source or something?

So if there is a bad citation they understand why it is not usable.

That's a great idea! I know my introduction to citations was in a writing class and we were told it was so it didn't look like we were claiming the ideas of the author as our own. Basically, as no citation = you are cheating.  If the instructor has said, "here's an example where the writer is discussing an idea from [cited book & page] are they misinterpreting the original?" I would have understood the real purpose. 
I hate playing the "find the original publication game" for lab protocols. A lot of the time it's "adapted from [paper 1]".  You find paper 1 and they say "see [paper 2]".  You figure out how to get the full text of paper 2 and it's "based on [paper 3]". . . .

And eventually either there's a mis-citation to a closely related, but not quite the same protocol, or paper 8 turns out to be in German...