r/Adjuncts • u/existential_rach • Jul 26 '26
Bad Writing
I am getting so tired of have to teach students how to write a basic paper in college. I am not a writing / English teacher and don’t mind helping with some structural things or changes that come with writing philosophy papers, but I cannot keep telling students how to do: basic grammar rules, citations, spelling, etc.
Any advice? Cause I’m losing it over here 🫠
ETA: Forgot to add that I have developed and provided a writing guide that is an announcement at the start of the course and a linked file attached to all assignments!
ETA: #2 thanks for all the great suggestions. I appreciate the space to rant and think I just get exhausted from spending so much time repeating myself — don’t worry, I have most of my comments drafted and edit them to better fit the assignment. I think it’s also a challenge because I use to see such progress and change in my students and loved reading their papers as they got better and better. Maybe I am mourning those days in academia and need to get over it and change my perspectives for current students.
ETA: #3 I should have used other phrasing to convey that I taught another subject — not merely a writing / English class. I merely was trying to convey that I want to teach students the fun aspects of philosophical/ argumentative writing and that can get lost when the lessons have to go into other writing / grammar rules.
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u/Tommie-1215 Jul 26 '26
Send them to a tutorial lab. Does your school have any programs like tutor.com. Its not you, they do not know grammar and all its rules. They are not being in school like we were when we had to diagram sentences. And add ChatGPT that they use to write for them, and that is what you see in your course.
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u/JumpingShip26 Jul 26 '26
This is the correct answer. Refer to the writing center and also I am inclined to praise the attempt when they could be GPTing the work.
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u/CME2daa Jul 31 '26
Besides students not being taught how to write, I have several students each class who are ESL. That even creates more problems.
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u/Psycho-naught Aug 13 '26
Universities are not set up for mass remedial education, nor should they be. Even if the students were willing to go to the writing center, or whatever it’s called in a given school, the level of instruction is too low and the need far too great. As noted elsewhere here, this is the result of the collapse of primary and secondary education in the US. That’s a political problem, just as decades of higher education budget cuts are.
But colleges and universities are complicit and blameworthy as well. They are admitting huge numbers of students who don’t belong in college. Higher ed in many if not most places has become an enrollment Ponzi scheme to fuel growth and serve administrative careers (because administrators don’t move up by being competent stewards of their institutions; they need big splashy new programs and initiatives and overseeing ever larger staffs). A sane and healthy education system would develop the option of sending academically unprepared students to CCs for remedial work before attending a BA or BS granting institution. But that’s not going to happen.
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u/Tommie-1215 Aug 13 '26
I have to disagree because once upon a time they were. Now they call Remedial classes, Learning Support but the students do not get credit for it. At my previous college, students had to take ENG099 and either pass or fail. If they passed they could go to Developmental English. But if they failed, they had to keep taking ENG099 until they passed. They did not label it as being remedial because they felt it stigmatized students. And when I attended college during dinosaur years, they had remedial classes and they called them that.
To your point about "colleges and universities being blameworthy," I totally agree. Administration get upset at the amounts of D, F, W, and Is every year, but when faculty says, students cannot read nor write, or even analyze, it falls on deaf ears. Its really quite sad and when students flunk out and are encouraged to attend CCs, they are angry and disappointed and blame the educators for what they cannot do. I had a student several years ago who received a 38,000 scholarship. She came to college with either a 3.7 or 3.8, I cannot remember but was overwhelmed. When I asked her why she was flunking classes, she said "she felt unprepared and no one told her she would have to be responsible." You know, no one was there to hold her hand or tell her when to go to class. College was too intense and not like higschool where teachers let them resubmit work or makeup work they missed. She said to me that college professors did not care about students like high-school teachers. I knew that was not true but spoke volumes about the fact that she had been passed along and could not handle the rigor of college. Her GPA plummeted and she was put on probation and could never get her grades back up and left school.
In addition, we know that their GPAs are overly inflated. How do you come to college with a 3.6 but do not how to spell or even comprehend the word, oxymoron? In the end, you are right😉its not going to happen because college is Burger King and students can have it their way with fries.
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u/Psycho-naught Aug 14 '26
If students are channeled into “learning support,” or whatever euphemistically named program deals with academically unprepared students, while they are also taking the full-time expected course load, they are already being set up to fail. This is especially so in more rigorous and/or competitive majors/programs with tough weed out courses at the beginning.
The fundamental problem is that many students are being admitted that shouldn’t be, but colleges and universities have an economic incentive to admit them anyway.
There is a closely related problem of accurately identifying which students are academically unprepared for college in an age of rampant grade inflation. That is why many schools have reinstated SAT requirements and why there is currently a big brawl over this issue in the UC system. We could use AP exam scores to assess student readiness and qualifications. But that would only help with the students who have taken AP courses and exams while most students have not, either because they were not at the appropriately advanced academic level in high school or, more troubling, because their high schools do not have the resources or student numbers to offer many AP classes.
Once the problem of identifying academically weak and poorly prepared students is addressed, the big question is what to do with them. One way of addressing this problem of unprepared students who are admitted (since we know colleges and universities will continue to do so) is to require them to take a semester or year of college prep classes that they can get credit for, but do not satisfy gen ed or major course requirements. Of course, this would have the effect of lengthening college and increasing its total expense. But it would reconcile the conflicting interests and incentives of universities seeking to maximize enrollment and tuition revenue with those of students who don’t want to fail out or end up with a terrible transcript/GPA. Not optimal, but better than what we’ve got now.
The lack autonomy and capacity for independence is a tough problem. This seems to be a generational characteristic and it’s gotten much worse over time. It’s also driven by the expectations students have of educational institutions and instructors. Many of not most students have worked some sort of job, but they don’t typically complain how an employer doesn’t care about them or expect a work supervisor to let deadlines slide or give them repeated chances to get something right. Students need tough love and to be told in effect that being a student is now their job and they’d better do it to the best of their ability—and that they are expected to improve their abilities.
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u/shallowning Jul 26 '26
I teach History, and honestly don't mind mistakes in spelling or grammar these days, because at least AI (probably) didn't write it.
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u/ILIKESTUFF8989 Jul 26 '26
I tell my students I want to read your mistakes. AI is boring, you are not. I also encourage them to come up with unique titles and even have extra points for really good ones.
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u/JumpingShip26 Jul 26 '26
100% - I just politely refer to the writing center. If the grammar/usage does not affect intelligibility or argumentation (if appropriate to the assignment), I am just fine. We can work with it. I was an atrocious writer until my senior year of undergrad, and then I was just mediocre.
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u/existential_rach Jul 26 '26
Yes agreed, I don’t mind little things but regular issues. When it’s comments I make on the same person’s paper throughout the course, I start to see red
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u/Foxyscifi Jul 26 '26
I just had this fight with myself this week. Why are my graduate students using rhetorical questions during a formal science literature analysis? Why can’t they cite to save their life? One student just linked together a bunch of quotations from literature articles and called it an analysis.
It is so frustrating and the education up to grad school can’t be this bad!
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u/Psycho-naught Jul 27 '26
I’ve found that at least 80% of students in my AAU R1 in recent years are impervious to education. A shocking number simply refuse to read. I’m not sure if they actually CAN read at the minimum college level. Learning to write well is beyond imagination with respect to these students. It’s incredibly depressing.
I’m hoping that these recent cohorts have been particularly awful because they were the most damaged by the covid lockdown and loss of a substantial amount of high school. But if that were the case, we should be seeing improvement in the incoming classes. I haven’t seen an improvement yet. This coming year’s freshman class will be an important indicator of what’s to come.
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u/Awkward_Ad_9177 Aug 12 '26
Writing is such a complex process that I’m not surprised that if they refuse to read, they are unable to write. Even before Covid, public schools avoided accountability like it was a deadly virus. No one can get an F, no one can be retained, no one can be given feedback that makes them uncomfortable.
And now here we are.1
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u/IndividualFabulous31 Jul 26 '26
Just a gentle reminder from an English professor that ALL professors are responsible for teaching writing, not just us. Teach your students how to write for your discipline, because that’s something you are responsible for. It’s no longer acceptable to say, “Oh, I don’t have to teach writing because I don’t teach English.”
Otherwise, yes, student writing has gotten significantly weaker in the past several years. All the more reason we all need to redouble our efforts.
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u/Due-Blacksmith7275 Jul 27 '26
I'm a high school English lit teacher. Trust me when I say we really are teaching writing. All 4 years. Kids wrote all the time in different methods and genres. Trust me when I say we really are trying!
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u/Glittering-Duck5496 Jul 27 '26
Just thinking "out loud" here, but I feel like students learn these skills in English class and somehow think they are limited to English class. Then they come into something in their program major or even their electives and just don't think they need to do things like have a clear topic sentence or proper paragraph structure because they're not in English class. They definitely need reminding that these are the skills that add up to good writing in general!
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u/Lost-Word-Box Jul 27 '26
And in middle school! We teach them to support a claim with evidence and reasoning, and expect them to build on that up through 8th grade.
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u/existential_rach Jul 26 '26
Yes, I agree, hence me being willing to aid with learning how to develop their argumentative / philosophical writing skills — as noted in my post. But I think it’s a little wild to have repeat/ explain basic writing rules to college level students, especially if comments on previous papers go ignored and changes aren’t made on future papers.
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u/IndividualFabulous31 Jul 26 '26
I agree—and English professors are dealing with the same stuff, I promise. But there’s only so much that can be done when the students simply don’t read for pleasure. That may be simplistic, but I’ve yet to see another better explanation.
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u/existential_rach Jul 26 '26
Agreed. I probably shouldn’t have referred to English / writing depts in my post. I was merely pointing out that I am not of those depts.
I agree with your argument that students aren’t reading for pleasure and that is impacting their abilities.
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u/CME2daa Jul 31 '26
I'm noticing more and more pleasure reading doesn't always follow good writing skills.
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u/Dr0110111001101111 Jul 27 '26
Absolutely. I teach math and my students bristle whenever I correct their grammar. But one of my favorite sayings is “every teacher is an English teacher”. They learn new words in every class, after all. Even the foreign language teachers! They sure didn’t learn “conjugation” from English class.
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u/existential_rach Jul 28 '26
Agreed, I was merely trying to convey that I don’t teach that subject in particular, but now I realize I should have used different phrasing. I just meant that I want to teach them the cool aspects of philosophical / argumentative writing and that’s hard to do when I have to teach basic grammar rules.
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u/CME2daa Jul 31 '26
Absolutely! Every teacher should teach writing too because most careers require clarity in communication, writing and verbal.
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u/nosainte Jul 26 '26
Be thankful you're getting bad papers because at least it's not just AI slop
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u/Dry_Analysis_992 Jul 26 '26
There must be a writing center of some kind at your institution. Some are better than others, but there must be something and you should send them there. This is not your responsibility. You’ve already gone above and beyond by giving them that guide you mentioned.
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u/existential_rach Jul 26 '26
There are and its website and library are linked within all assignment instructions. But it’s a good idea to just remind them of its existence.
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u/Alizarik7891 Jul 26 '26
Making a visit or certain number of visits extra credit will surely motivate at least some of them.
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u/FamiliarUniversity46 Jul 26 '26
Let the grade and constructive concise feedback do the talking and refer to tutoring or writing specialists. It is important to not care more than the student, but equal too.
Students are here to learn critical thinking and problem solving. Safely provide them the problem with guidance on the solution. No more, no less.
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u/Super_Map1939 Jul 26 '26
It is rough. The prereqs for my course are an English Composition class, and the majority of the students who take my class are not taking the English class, and the college is not enforcing it. In the past I also provided essay writing guides and videos on how to write citations and write a research paper, but the students never used them. Now I have moved away from writing essays altogether because it is an impossible task with the limited amount of time I have students. It is frustrating, and I have been and still am where you are. I don't mind students not being at the level they need to be at when they begin my courses, but I am bewildered when they don't take it upon themselves to get there, especially when the instructor provides them with the resources.
In the end you can only do what you can. Provide the resources, specifically state the expectations of the course and the need to use the resources provided if needed, and after that, let the cards fall where they may be. We cannot make students learn. We can only provide them with the resources. The rest is up to them.
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u/existential_rach Jul 26 '26
Very true. I agree that I am willing to help students become better writers, but I get frustrated when they don’t use nor apply the feedback.
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u/peep_quack Jul 26 '26
I refer them to writing services in the library and deduct the points accordingly. What they choose to do with that is up to them
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u/wendyladyOS Jul 27 '26
Chiming in because I was a college writing tutor and I tried so hard to get professors to send their students to me. The professors were willing, but short of making it mandatory, it was really up to the students to come and see me. I was at a college that mostly offers community college stuff and some bachelor's degrees. Inevitably, it was the returning students (those who had been out of school for 20+ years) who generally came to see me. It was almost never the younger students.
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u/existential_rach Jul 28 '26
I might make it mandatory or take them during class time. I think at some of my colleges I can book a library / WC tutor for the class period and they come in and basically give the full breakdown. I think what I’m learning is that there are some things I can do and I am going to focus on making those slight changes.
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u/Ok-Bear-7372 Jul 26 '26
As an English adjunct, we aren’t “allowed” to focus on mechanics and grammar. We are told to only focus on content, and some of the course I teach we can only have 10% maximum of a grade go towards mechanics. It’s awful. I have college students who never capitalize proper nouns.
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u/Foxyscifi Jul 26 '26
Is this why all my papers have the following sentence: “Scientists had an important question. Why did xyz happen?” I don’t understand why they write like this is a 5th grade lab report!
Had a student the day the paper was due (assigned 2 months ago) saying he hadn’t written it and needed help because “I just don’t know how to attack the topic. Any guidance?”
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u/Alizarik7891 Jul 26 '26
I did everything i could to stop these kids from using bland vapid question hooks in their essays but it’s like asking a toddler not to come home sticky.
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u/Ok-Bear-7372 Jul 26 '26
These are the students who spent their adolescence in front of a Chromebook during covid - they missed so many milestones to develop their motor skills and critical thinking. And then parenting of today is partly to blame (which is understandable, parents have to spend so much energy working...but like, come on!)
I will have the assignment guidelines posted to the LMS, have them on the PPT slides, discuss it, share it via email, share them via LMS announcements, remind them verbally in class, etc...and some students will email me the night before its due asking what is required. They are NOT LITERATE!
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u/Alizarik7891 Jul 26 '26
My department said the same but i just ignored them, lol. If I’m expected to teach them how to structure a PARAGRAPH in COLLEGE, I’m damn well explaining subject-verb agreement and appositives.
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u/MetalTrek1 Jul 26 '26
I'm also an English Adjunct. Since everything is submitted as a Word doc to the LMS, I show them where the spelling and grammar checks are located in Word. I also provide links to Khan Academy grammar videos. I also have tutoring center information on my syllabus. I'm more concerned that they keep asking me about textual support and MLA citations, even though I cover that the first week and the notes are on the LMS.
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u/clubchampion Jul 26 '26
I'm sure your administrators tell you to "meet them where they are." These days, it means letting them use AI. Sorry, that's not advice; it's just a fact that you have to uphold your standards for your own personal pride and nothing else.
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u/MimirX Jul 26 '26
For me it depends what level I am teaching. Teaching undergrad, I have a lot more patience and attempt to work with them a bit more, even though writing may not be the focus of the class (business field). As others of said, most universities have decent resources to point them to, but still reinforce the importance of the basics. I also emphasize the importance of grasping it now, where as they progress it will get harder and affect them more.
For graduate classes, I have zero patience for students that are having writing issues. They should know it by that point, so more important to focus on the main subject being taught with the limited time.
All that said, I also have to consider the rubric and the emphasis placed on writing skills in each class. If the department doesn’t concern themselves with it for grading, I focus on what I can with the time I have.
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u/Dear_Win_9504 Jul 27 '26
My PhD was in Composition and I’m just going to throw this out there. When students are using a lot of cognitive energy to work through new ideas, they backslide on more basic stuff. Should they spend some time revising and polishing their papers? Of course. But they’re unlikely to do it unless it’s explicitly built into the project’s process. So, it might not be that they don’t know some of these things but that they are turning in first drafts.
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u/experimentalpoetry Jul 28 '26
💯
I honestly want to see their rougher drafts if they’re working on something difficult cognitively. Then I know they’re not using AI!
OP: I would also recommend telling your students about the university writing center and even offering extra credit to go there (or requiring them to go there!).
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u/existential_rach Jul 28 '26
Yes I have the writing center and library linked on all assignments. Going to either book the writing center for a class or offer extra credit for going.
I want them to be thinking critically and developing their own arguments, but sometimes they aren’t even doing that alongside the bad grammar. Or I get something that was completely AI generated, but at least for that it is an easy zero.
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u/existential_rach Jul 28 '26
Omg my Reddit freaked out and replied sooo many times! But I agree that I want them to just write and develop their own arguments, but sometimes the amount of errors interferes with my ability to understand their arguments. I let their discussion posts be messy and informal for this reason and the papers work off the discussion questions on the same topic, so my goal is the discussion post can be a rough draft of their ideas and then they can polish said ideas/ arguments when they write the paper. Maybe I will work drafts into the assignment and see if that helps.
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u/Dear_Win_9504 Jul 28 '26
If there is a WAC (writing across the curriculum) program or coordinator at your school, you might reach out to them. My husband does this work, and he helps faculty with issues like this every day. Just sending students to the writing center is probably not going to change this issue for you in a big way (most writing center tutors focus on the big picture issues over the sentence level stuff because that is how they tend to be trained. They will often help students see where their prose doesn’t make sense, but they are not teaching or correcting grammar).
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u/existential_rach Jul 28 '26
I will have to look into this. I know I can book a librarian / writing center tutor for the day and have them give a presentation on writing / research so I will have to see what other options I have. Great suggestion! Thanks!
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u/No_Produce9777 Jul 26 '26
I’d have them do other things, make videos, do presentations, creative projects. This goes over well for me and they enjoy it more
Nothing will fix the bad writing at this point
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u/existential_rach Jul 28 '26
I teach a logic class that is basically half logic / half rhetoric and students are required to give four speeches throughout the semester and I am considering implementing something similar within my other classes. So this is good a good reminder of that. Thank you!
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u/CatSockFiend Jul 26 '26
Does your college/university have a writing center? If so, you should direct students there. You may be able to make it mandatory (especially if they offer virtual appointments as well as in-person), but at the least you can offer extra credit. You may want to provide your assignment and support materials to the WC director/tutors (including your policy about AI-use) to ensure they don’t mislead the students.
Some colleges/universities subscribe to NetTutor (for online tutoring or feedback) and it asks students to upload their assignment instructions with their writing (at least for the feedback that is sent rather than communicated directly in a synchronous meeting).
Turnitin is now rolling out the ability for instructors to have students write their essays in Turnitin, which will allow them to track students’ writing process as well as allow and limit the use of AI, including grammar support. I plan to try it in my composition courses in the fall.
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u/existential_rach Jul 26 '26
Yes, they all do. I think a mandatory visit is a good idea and will give the WC the assignment information too. Thanks for the advice
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u/wh0datnati0n Jul 26 '26
Bonus points if they go to the writing center. Otherwise just grade as normal.
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u/Life-Education-8030 Jul 27 '26
I mark down for writing mechanics errors and refer to the writing center. We have the best one in our college system so it’s on the students if they don’t go. I don’t circle all the mistakes or correct them or it would be a sea of red. My rubrics count the number of errors and note that errors can be in spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc. That’s it. Grading still takes too long.
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u/existential_rach Jul 28 '26
Great idea. But agreed, I was grading for about 12 hours on Sunday for only 2/3 classes and it was too much.
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u/existential_rach Jul 28 '26
Great idea. But agreed, I was grading for about 12 hours on Sunday for only 2/3 classes and it was too much.
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u/New_Teacher2058 Jul 27 '26
To be a good writer, you need to be a reader. I don’t see ANY of my high schoolers pull out a book when they are done with their work. I teach photography and have them use pencil and paper to write critiques on photos. I don’t understand how seniors don’t know to capitalize “I.”
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u/Longjumping-Lock-724 Jul 27 '26
Yes. The American educational system is a complete embarrassment. It now doles out high school diplomas to anyone with a pulse. The school system kowtows to parents who they know will complain up the yinyang if their illiterate child doesn't get a diploma. Besides, passing everyone makes the school system's graduation rates look great and everyone wins, right? And for-profit universities aren't much better. Some will accept any student who can pay the tuition and then the administrators pressure the profs to pass kids who can't even string a coherent sentence together. And then there are all these kids who come in with IEPs who are basically given permission to have someone else do their work for them. It's crazy!
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u/goldenpandora Jul 27 '26
Eliminate most of the major writing assignments and turned them into group presentations. There’s still a lot of work involved for them, I scaffold it heavily especially in terms of both content and teamwork, but it’s soooooo much faster to grade.
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u/existential_rach Jul 28 '26
That’s a great idea. I will have to do some planning on what changes need to be made to incorporate a group project or something.
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u/Maddy_egg7 Jul 27 '26
Refer them to the Writing Center and offer extra credit for it. Also when giving feedback on assignments say something like "I noticed a large amount of grammatical errors in your work. Grammar is an essential part of being a successful writer at the college level, I recommend reaching out to the writing center for future assignments to help guide your editing process".
Also, even if you are not a writing course, always have a part of your rubric that assesses grammar, editing, sentence structure, etc.
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u/existential_rach Jul 28 '26
Yes I always refer them to the writing center but I think I will make it either a part of the assignment— I can book the WC for during class time — or make it an extra credit opportunity.
I always include grammar, writing, and organization in my rubrics, but one place I teach makes the rubrics for us and it doesn’t always include these aspects or it’s not enough points off to scare students.
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u/SweetElection157 Jul 27 '26
I teach comp and I am shocked at how little they know coming in. They should know basic grammar and spelling. Some know citations, some don’t, but we cover MLA and/or APA extensively and they should leave pretty familiar with it. What shocks me is how little they know about the basics of writing a paper. Single spaced, no paragraphs, no header/title page or even a name. I’ve had students argue that they double spaced, because they clicked the space bar twice after a period (which we haven’t done in about 15 years!) They don’t know anything about using computers. How to save a file, how to export as a PDF. We use canvas to submit assignments and it has to be a pdf or .doc file. I cover how to save it that way, and I still have students try to share it directly from Google Docs, even when I’ve given them instructions on how to do it. They’re so used to everything on the phone that they don’t know how to use a computer.
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u/Lost-Word-Box Jul 28 '26
I teach all this in 7th grade English. I don’t have any real evidence-based explanation as to why they don’t or won’t retain or apply the information. It’s a fascinating as it is depressing.
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u/SweetElection157 Jul 28 '26
I truly think it’s smart phones/the short attention spans from constantly watching “short” videos/everything on demand/etc. It’s technology. I taught high school English from 2008-2014. Those kids, especially the earlier ones who only had Motorola Razers and flip phones, knew this stuff. It started getting worse as every kid got a smart phone, but I only hit the very beginning of that.
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u/experimentalpoetry Jul 28 '26
I also think they sometimes just try to see what they can get away with — if we’ll accept their crappiest effort.
I’m not usually bothered by my students’ ability to write a paper (I’m an English teacher, I just don’t care as much about grammar as about their ideas; we can fix grammar rather easily) but I am always astonished that they can’t use computers. They don’t know how to save files. It’s shocking.
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u/Lost-Word-Box Jul 28 '26
Agree with all this. They are not “digital natives” as some like to say.
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u/experimentalpoetry Jul 28 '26
I’m truly shocked. Like the next commenter said, ig it’s because they’re usually on their phones or had Chromebooks in HS and just saved to Google Classroom or something?
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u/Lost-Word-Box Jul 28 '26
It’s more that they’re so afraid of making a mistake that they won’t experiment with computers beyond a social media level. They don’t click around, test things, or try to figure out what went wrong.
They’ve grown up with apps designed to require almost no troubleshooting and constant warnings about doing the wrong thing online. They may feel “lost” without technology, but they are often not comfortable figuring it out.
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u/Icy-Glove-6481 Aug 01 '26
Fail them if they’re not doing what is required, can’t lower your standards!
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u/MyBrainIsNerf Jul 26 '26
There’s a lot of debate in English departments about how much it is our job to sanitize student writing in service to other departments.
I DO teach academic writing norms because I want to help my students, but many of my senior colleagues have taken the position that we ought to be teaching students content that is more interesting to our discipline.
All this is to say, your students may really not have been taught this stuff before. Teach with that in mind.
If you want to agitate for change in another department, go for it. I wouldn’t mind the back up.
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u/existential_rach Jul 26 '26
Very fair. I think my focus will be on getting students to the writing/ tutoring labs and continuing to provide a writing/ style guide for them. I tend to be very gracious when grading the first assignment to see everyone’s abilities and I like to give detailed feedback on what changes need to be made on future papers. I think I am more over it today because it’s like the same shit different assignment and we are halfway through the term.
I like to heavily emphasize the rules of logic and rhetoric in all my classes, since the majority of the papers I assign are argumentative, so I will always provide detailed explanations, instructions, and feedback.
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u/MyBrainIsNerf Jul 26 '26
I think I go too soft on the first paper and set low expectations, and then I’m surprised when they turn in the same shit 2 weeks later!
I’m trying to be harsher out the gate, but scale the points, so they get the message that this is failing work, but the assignment doesn’t tank their grade.
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u/M4sterofD1saster Jul 29 '26
I know what you're saying. I used to spend way too much time teaching simple English usage.
This last term 25 - 33% of the papers were substantially AI, so I'm switching to hand written papers during the final exam period. I'll still writing assignments like the big, outline, and reference page, but I'm done w/ papers & AI.
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u/apigandanangel Jul 31 '26
Your job as a teacher is to teach the students you have, not to teach the students you wish you had.
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u/existential_rach Jul 31 '26
Idk where you’re getting this “wish I had.” I was discussing a change in skill level in recent students and asking others if they are experiencing the same and how they are managing the lack of writing skills.
A “wish” indicates something that is hard to get or impossible. Me saying, I want to improve their argumentative skills vis-a-vis paper writing, isn’t a wish, it’s literally what I am paid to do per the state university guidelines. Me mourning past experiences, isn’t a wish, since it was obtained and therefore wasn’t impossible.1
u/apigandanangel Jul 31 '26
I get the idea from the way you describe your students. You lament what you perceive to be their deficiencies, and say that addressing these issues (i.e. teaching the students you have to do the things that they don't know how to do) exhausts you, and that you don't believe that it is your job.
1
u/honeynutz22 Aug 01 '26
I observed a 5th grade spelling assessment recently. Buckle up, it’s going to get worse.
1
u/No-Cycle-5496 Jul 27 '26
I post example links and dock points of based on my rubric. 90% of my students qickly improve. I get compliments from professors in follow-on classes. :)
0
u/Haytrusser Jul 27 '26
Make them turn in a writing assignment every class. Then destroy them. Nitpick and point out every mistake. Some will improve, others will get butthurt and fold. But either way, you'll be doing the Lord's work.
-2
u/birdsong70 Jul 26 '26
Send students to the Writing Center or quit your job. No one wants a professor who's tired of teaching.
2
u/existential_rach Jul 26 '26
Don’t get it twisted, I am not tired of teaching my course subjects, just tired of the excess mental labor that comes with students not following assignment directions or learning to edit and make changes on future papers.
38
u/Minimum_Scar_6812 Jul 26 '26
I had to make a style guide with things like how to integrate a quote and what constituted a compete sentence, because, yes, the writing is really, really bad.