Giving Feedback on Bad Student Papers

[ciao_yall]

Yeah, I agree completely. Better put than what I wrote. When I was in grad school, a professor told me quite bluntly that turning in things with lots of grammatical errors and typos was just not acceptable. She said something along the lines of "people aren't going to take you seriously if you submit things like this. You have lots of interesting ideas, but that won't matter if you turn in sloppy work." It was a mortifying thing to hear, but I got the message and was much more careful about proofreading after that.

I don't think that feedback would have had the same positive effect if the professor hadn't positioned herself on my side.

^ This. I tell my students "You wouldn't show up to a hot date wearing a wrinkled shirt and smelly socks, right?"

[Anon1787]

^ This. I tell my students "You wouldn't show up to a hot date wearing a wrinkled shirt and smelly socks, right?"

For some students your class is the bad date that their parents set them up with and want to end as soon as possible.

[ergative]

^ This. I tell my students "You wouldn't show up to a hot date wearing a wrinkled shirt and smelly socks, right?"

For some students your class is the bad date that their parents set them up with and want to end as soon as possible.

Harsh but fair. But in that case, the D- is the equivalent of no second date.

[Charlotte]

Thank you, all. I've gotten some great suggestions and also some realizations of things I may need to change such as my emphasis on citations. As always, I appreciate the willingness of you all to share your ideas and wisdom! It has made my first semesters of teaching so much easier.

[Caracal]

Thank you, all. I've gotten some great suggestions and also some realizations of things I may need to change such as my emphasis on citations. As always, I appreciate the willingness of you all to share your ideas and wisdom! It has made my first semesters of teaching so much easier.

I have noticed that some of my colleagues seem concerned about citations to a level that I don't understand. Obviously, it is very important that students aren't lifting things, unattributed, from unknown sources. However, if they are actually using quotation marks and its clear where things they are quoting or paraphrasing are coming from, the mechanics of proper citation are way down my list of priorities on a paper.


It strikes me as a case where instructors sometimes lose track of priorities. If the paper is a car, citations are the license plate, the argument is the engine, evidence is the tires and the organization is what holds the car together. (Or something) If I'm giving grades/feedback on student cars (papers) and someone brings one up with a lawnmower engine missing two wheels and held together by duck tape, should I focus my comments on the license plate? Does it even matter if there is a perfectly good license plate hanging off the back of that car. (paper)

The argument that citations are important to focus on early is often that students need to learn how to do this correctly. True enough, but in a college class papers (or cars) aren't really going to got on the road in most cases. Its worth teaching students how to do it, but you can teach, and grade it more intensively when students actually write senior theses, or whatever.

[mamselle]

Sorry, but no.

That would be like me telling my music students they can hold off on learning scales until they come to the Mozart piano concertos and need to know, say, the A Major scale to play with the Berlin Symphony.

M.

[jerseyjay]

On the question of citations:

As a historian I do not teach composition courses, but judging from my students' papers in both general education courses for nonmajors and upper-level courses for history majors, it seems that students are obsessed on the form of citations without understanding the content.

For one of my general education classes, there is a significant end-of-term paper which is not a research paper but is based on interviewing somebody and writing up the interview. The students regularly ask me if it should be in MLA style, and I tell them it doesn't matter since they are not supposed to do any research besides the interview. The response I usually get is, okay, but do you want in MLA style.

For the upper-level courses, where they do need to research secondary literature (books or articles) on a topic and write a paper, I usually tell them I don't care what style they cite their sources in, so long as they do it correctly. (Because as a historian, I find that MLA and APA--the two big styles here--are equally (in)appropriate for historical papers.) But it is the conceptual things--like making sure to include all the relevant information, and evaluating the source based on this information--rather than the mechanics of citation that they seem to have trouble on. I regularly go over, WHEN it is necessary to cite something, and they often find this confusing.

The only course I insist on a particular style is the senior research seminar, when I require them to use Chicago-style footnotes. They generally find this requirement more daunting than the requirement that they research primary sources and write a substantial paper. If a student uses MLA in one of these papers, they will get a lower grade. But if they do not use the right type of sources, or interpret them in the way they are supposed to, or cite when they are supposed to, they will get a much lower grade. Yet it is the mechanics of citation that hangs them up the most.

So I wouldn't say that citation is a luxury good. It is essential. 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.

[Wahoo Redux]

I agree with Caracal----some instructors are anal-retentive about the mechanics of citation above more important concerns.  Part of this is we do want to standardize their assignments a bit to make our lives easier.  And it is an important exercise, I think, to get them to police formatting----this is a basic skill in the era of MSWord and just good for their brains.  But there are much more important aspects of precision and cogency to worry about.

I will say that when I started teaching business writing I began looking for actual business reports to show my students.  Many of these professional documents follow essentially APA style, both in-text and in their references.  So citations can actually be an important skillset once our students hit the professional world.

[mamselle]

I use the same five-finger method for citations in a text as I do for visual sources.

For artworks, the standard "five-point ID" is "Artist, Title, Date, Place, Style/Period" I have a 5-column-handout for courses listing this for each artwork they're responsible for learning in the term (80-100 is standard). I literally stand up in class several times the first couple weeks and spot-drill them on this until it sinks in and isn't a huge deal anymore.

You learn the 5-point ID or you don't have a place to begin to understand the picture/ sculpture/ building/ jewely/ whatever from.

I tell them I expect the same info for the captions on any visual source they include in their papers (min. 3 required). I actually wish all authors, editors and publishers would get on board with this, it's just as maddening to run across poorly-cited/captioned visual sources in a book or article as it is not to know where to find a textual source.

For textual citations, same thing. I waggle fingers for "Author, Title, Date, Publisher, City/St/Country" and then show them how those 5 basic pieces of info slip into different slots in various styles.

I have sometimes observed them quietly wiggling fingers and ticking off ID points in the middle of a test or quiz or in-class paper, too.

I figure that by physicalizing it, they internalize it more easily, and the style just organizes the info needed.

M.

[Caracal]

So I wouldn't say that citation is a luxury good. It is essential. But what is most important is not the mechanics of citation (which are important), but the concept of citation.

Yes, I agree. Citing sources is very important. However if I was going to rank what I care about with citation it would be:

1. Using quotations marks if you quote something directly
2. Having some sort of reference if you paraphrase something
3. Putting in identifying information for anything you quote or paraphrase that allows me to find it easily
4. Using a consistent style of citation
5. Doing the citations correctly in the format I specify

The first two are really important because failure to be careful about distinguishing your own ideas from those of others results in plagiarism and it can sometimes be hard to know if it was intentional or just the result of extreme carelessness. Three is sort of in the middle. I'm not saying I don't care about the rest, but I put them in the same category as issues of grammar. If grammar issues are bad enough it can make it difficult for a student to express and develop ideas and for me to understand them. In those cases, it can significantly effect the grade. If it is something fairly minor, like inconsistent capitalization, I point it out and it factors into the grade in a minor way.

[downer]

I used to put effort into teaching students correct citation format. But I found it was not a good use of my time. I still don't accept just URLs though. I just tell them what info they need to provide -- I don't care much about how they format it.

As with most things, a large part of it is whether students are detail-oriented and are capable of following instructions and looking up information. Generally, the ones with skills at other parts of thinking are the ones who are good at citations, and the ones who struggle with setting out their ideas clearly are the ones who can't do citations.

[Caracal]

I used to put effort into teaching students correct citation format. But I found it was not a good use of my time. I still don't accept just URLs though. I just tell them what info they need to provide -- I don't care much about how they format it.

As with most things, a large part of it is whether students are detail-oriented and are capable of following instructions and looking up information. Generally, the ones with skills at other parts of thinking are the ones who are good at citations, and the ones who struggle with setting out their ideas clearly are the ones who can't do citations.

Yes, good point. And if you're trying to help struggling students improve, citation formatting should be pretty low on the list of things to address. There's only so much feedback students can take on, and the danger is that if you spend a lot of time critiquing details of citation format, they come away thinking they did badly on the paper because their professor is persnickety about citations.

[Mobius]

I wanted to get some advice from some more experienced professors on how they give feedback on bad student papers. I try to soften the blow with some general positive comment, but it's difficult to not pile on all the negative comments afterwards.

If I focus on just one issue, they complain that I took too many points off for that issue and then I have to say, well this was also wrong, this, this, and that.

If I give all the negative criticisms, they complain that I am rude.

If I don't give any feedback, they complain I took off points for nothing and wouldn't explain why.

Whatever feedback I give, they come back and argue with me about it.

I'm about to tear my hair out with frustration over feedback. Is this a situation where I just cannot win?

Lastly, how common is grading for completion? I have so many students who complain that they submitted the assignment on time, why didn't they get a perfect grade?

This may be the topic of another thread, but I also get the feeling that I am harder on students than other teachers at my school. Not by much, but I think I'm getting the reputation of being a difficult teacher because I do stress things such as using peer reviewed sources and citing them correctly. I don't think I'm asking too much to back up their claims with sources and use the correct citation style for the field, but with all my students getting it wrong I suspect I am the only one.

Should I keep on or should I try to adjust to more closely reflect the other teachers here?

Don't engage in arguments, especially over e-mail.

[Caracal]

I wanted to get some advice from some more experienced professors on how they give feedback on bad student papers. I try to soften the blow with some general positive comment, but it's difficult to not pile on all the negative comments afterwards.

If I focus on just one issue, they complain that I took too many points off for that issue and then I have to say, well this was also wrong, this, this, and that.

If I give all the negative criticisms, they complain that I am rude.

If I don't give any feedback, they complain I took off points for nothing and wouldn't explain why.

Whatever feedback I give, they come back and argue with me about it.

I'm about to tear my hair out with frustration over feedback. Is this a situation where I just cannot win?

Lastly, how common is grading for completion? I have so many students who complain that they submitted the assignment on time, why didn't they get a perfect grade?

This may be the topic of another thread, but I also get the feeling that I am harder on students than other teachers at my school. Not by much, but I think I'm getting the reputation of being a difficult teacher because I do stress things such as using peer reviewed sources and citing them correctly. I don't think I'm asking too much to back up their claims with sources and use the correct citation style for the field, but with all my students getting it wrong I suspect I am the only one.

Should I keep on or should I try to adjust to more closely reflect the other teachers here?

Don't engage in arguments, especially over e-mail.

+1
Instead, tell students that if they aren't sure why they got the grade they did, they should come and talk to you. I always tell students that if they don't understand what went wrong, it is important that they meet with me, so they can get a clear sense of what the problems were and we can discuss ways to improve for the next assignment. The reframing really helps. When I meet with students, I'm explaining why their grade wasn't as good as they hoped it would be-not trying to justify the grade I gave them. If you try to get a sense of the student's process and make helpful suggestions for what might work better in the future-all while reassuring them that this one grade doesn't doom them in the class-you can usually have perfectly pleasant useful meetings.

[jimbogumbo]

Students just need To get a few experiences with things other than the "traditional" US scale. Personally, if I got an essay or paper back with a grade like 79 I completely didn't pay attention, as even then without any really study of psychometrics or statistics I knew that art wasn't possible to grade on that scale. I paid attention to comments.

True story: first course in grad school Analysis I received an exam back (with comments). There were four questions, total possible point score of 40. I got a 26, which was two essentially correct (10 each), one sorta correct (4), and one nowheresville (2). That was an A, btw.

A guy on my hallway got an 8 (so all four were nowheresville). He switched to IE for his degree.