I think I need to grade grammar more harshly

[Aster]

In today's modern era of automatic spell-checking, I am not finding nearly so many spelling errors on written assignments that I did 10-15 years ago.

But what I *am* finding more and more every year, is bad grammar. Sentences that make no sense. The wrong words put into sentences.

I understand that grammar checkers are part of most writing software packages. I also understand that grammar software still requires a human operator to proofread whatever nonsense statements that a grammar checker creates.

After reading a batch of truly awful papers this week where students over-relied on grammar checkers to fix their sloppiness for them, I am going to change my grading rubric.

Double points off for grammar now.

[Hegemony]

I don't think it's an over-reliance on grammar checkers; I think it's just worse writing skills.  These come from worse reading skills (our students don't seem to read for pleasure at all, ever) and worse training.  I agree that action is needed.

[Parasaurolophus]

Most of my students are non-native English speakers, so I don't feel especially justified in dinging too harshly for illegibility. That said, even my native English speakers have poor spelling and worse grammar.

I should point out, however, that I see zero evidence that they use a spellchecker, let alone grammar checking software. The kinds of mistakes they make are the kinds which even basic software would catch.

[lillipat]

I agree that poor grammar is just the easily-quantifiable part of the problem.  So many are simply incoherent writers - what they put down on paper simply makes no sense!

[Aster]

What I'm seeing more and more are papers with...

- perfect or near-perfect spelling (although the words are often the *wrong* words that the spellchecker selected)
- good punctuation
- correct tenses
* sentences where the spellchecker and grammar checker had a baby together, creating nonsense-sounding sentences

It's like the students orally transcribed their writing to a computer, and then had the software create whatever it could think of to string everything together properly.

[Wahoo Redux]

I frequently give my students a short writing assignment (400 words approx.) and tell them they can redo it as many times as they need to, but that bit of writing must be made *perfect* by the end of the semester or it is a letter grade.  I tell them they can use any resource available to them (writing center, each other, etc.) except for me.  This is not a sure-fire method but it is a good exercise for teaching proofing skills.

And I just routinely teach a grammar lesson at the start of most classes, one issue at a time (comma splices, semicolons, active / passive voice, etc.), and then ask them to do exercises later that put those grammar lessons into action.

Also, you can turn on a number of proofing features in word, essentially what Grammerly does (or exactly what Grammerly does if you can believe what you read online),

Personally, the grammar issues have gotten better where I teach; this may be the quality of students we have been able to recruit in the last couple of years, however, or it may be online grammar engines.

[spork]

My wife and I are noticing that students are increasingly using invented, morphologically incorrect words and phrases, I suppose in an attempt to seem literate and thereby earn a higher grade. Words like "truthified" and "honestful." And obviously these students are not using spelling or grammar checkers.

[downer]

There is also the chance that they are using paraphrasing software or webpages. They input a sentence or paragraph from somewhere else and it is automatically paraphrased into some bizarre assemblage that makes little sense. But it has the same structure as the formerly grammatical work.

[mamselle]

Translation software produces those little monsters, too.

M.

[ergative]

My wife and I are noticing that students are increasingly using invented, morphologically incorrect words and phrases, I suppose in an attempt to seem literate and thereby earn a higher grade. Words like "truthified" and "honestful." And obviously these students are not using spelling or grammar checkers.

[linguist hat on]

Truthified is a beautiful example of cutting-edge morphological productivity. You take the recently coined word truthy---i.e., something that sounds pretty good and scientific and so on but is actually bs---and add the -ify suffix on to it to make it into a causative verb. In the same way that solidify means `to make solid', truthify means `to make truthy.' A good example of this is the dihydrogen monoxide gag: you take something that is actually true (that we need H20 to live and it's everywhere and also we can drown in it) and turn it into one of those truthy `dihydrogen monoxide kills you!'

[linguist hat off]

[polly_mer]

I don't think it's an over-reliance on grammar checkers; I think it's just worse writing skills.  These come from worse reading skills (our students don't seem to read for pleasure at all, ever) and worse training.  I agree that action is needed.

The rise of online outlets where anyone can write means even people who do a lot of reading may be reading a ton of poorly written things.  That wasn't true when most of us heavy readers were reading a combination of good journalism in newspapers/magazines and published books.  Some of that greater exposure to "everyone" is bringing to light how poorly educated some folks are. 

However, based on some of my recent experiences reading these fora on a tablet and then attempting to write very short posts on that tablet, the unanticipated side effects of better technology could be a large contributing factor, especially for nonsense sentences.

Composing a post on my desktop computer brings up a wiggly red line indicating a misspelled word with perhaps a suggestion if I pause to think.  A name or an acronym is sometimes replaced for me and I have to change it back.

Composing a post on my tablet is an exercise in frustration as nearly every word is replaced as I type by some random guess, even when I am using extremely common words.  I don't know how many times I've abandoned a post on the tablet to go into my office to type on the desktop because after all the pain of creating a whole three sentences, some of the words I changed back to correct multiple times are wrong again. 

I'm not claiming to have perfect grammar or even perfect spelling, but it gets old to hunt and peck out:

We're discussing that issue in <address>.  Join us there!

to read

Were discus the issue in <address>.  Joint us there!

No, I had an apostrophe and I really, truly, no foolin' meant "discussing" the first 8 times I corrected it.

While wearing my hat as director of online education, I told students repeatedly to visit a library to use a real computer to compose their work and yet the stream of complaints indicating they were using phones/tablets without external keyboards grew every term.  Based on my Sunday experiences setting up my new tablet for which I bought an external keyboard, I can believe that overly helpful autocorrect can be turned on even more devices now.

[mamselle]

Yes, and it's even worse when the stupid auto-correct on my phone tries to "fix" Every.Single. Word. when I type in French!

I can't get it to do two languages at once, and forget diacriticals. It sweetly, smilingly, oh-so-persistently makes hash out of anything I try to say and as you note, slips backs in and wrongly "fixes" them again, so I have to re-read it several times before sending to be sure no inanities have crept in...

"Computer make our lives easier!"

Hah.

M.

[Aster]

Composing a post on my desktop computer brings up a wiggly red line indicating a misspelled word with perhaps a suggestion if I pause to think.  A name or an acronym is sometimes replaced for me and I have to change it back.

Composing a post on my tablet is an exercise in frustration as nearly every word is replaced as I type by some random guess, even when I am using extremely common words.  I don't know how many times I've abandoned a post on the tablet to go into my office to type on the desktop because after all the pain of creating a whole three sentences, some of the words I changed back to correct multiple times are wrong again. 

Yes! This is EXACTLY what I'm seeing on so many student reports.

[bopper]

Yes, and it's even worse when the stupid auto-correct on my phone tries to "fix" Every.Single. Word. when I type in French!

I can't get it to do two languages at once, and forget diacriticals. It sweetly, smilingly, oh-so-persistently makes hash out of anything I try to say and as you note, slips backs in and wrongly "fixes" them again, so I have to re-read it several times before sending to be sure no inanities have crept in...

"Computer make our lives easier!"

Hah.

M.

On an iphone, you can add a "keyboard" for another language...just switch to that keyboard and it won't mark the words as "wrong".

[mamselle]

Hmmm....interesting, not sure my phone has that, but I'll check it out.

(Except it's going to go away from the QWERTY keyboard, right? I have to be really in the groove to use that keyboard....!)

But--Thanks!

M.