Random Fail: First World Problems

[Aksannyi]

Essay testing is bullshit because its subject to the teachers bias of the student.

In grade 11 chemistry, we had to write a 10 page essay on something, cant remember what. There were 30 or so students in the class, and the teacher somehow read and graded all 30 assignments in about half hour while she had us work on some other assignment. So after we all slaved on that shit for a week, she spent literally a minute on it to grade it. All the "good students" got good grades, and all the "bad students" got bad grades. Even the good students were baffled at how she was marking it.


Scantron tests (or anything else of that matter) arent subjected to any bias from the teacher, you either know the answer or you dont.

Okay that's just a bad teacher. You're going to let one anecdotal experience turn you off from essay/short answer testing? No problems with multiple choice for vocab (though I feel bad for those kids, memorizing vocab is the fucking worst shit) but there are so many things that multiple choice does not work for.

The reason I don't like multiple choice testing is because it isn't actually so cut and dried as "you know it or you don't." The kids who know how to take tests - and in this day in age, that's like 95% of them - know how to eliminate possible incorrect answers and reduce their chance of getting the incorrect one. That doesn't tell me that they know the material, it tells me that they know how to take tests and make educated guesses. This is especially the case when I see dozens of students falling for the "close" answer over and over again - it tells me the students don't know the material at all, they've just hedged their bets with a guess. It's not an accurate gauge of what they've learned.

[FNH]

Students that aren't given essay tests in high school are usually not prepared for college.

[Boyiee]

Essay and short answers are pretty much the worst.

[Zetanio]

Students that aren't given essay tests in high school are usually not prepared for college.

Yep.

People who fail to write coherently and cogently should NOT be allowed to go to college.

[Rooney]

I would agree, but the writing requirements in college really aren't all that high. I passed my graduation writing competency exam as a freshman... my prompt was how specifically my senior level classes/professors and my internship had prepared me for joining the work force. A decent vocabulary and grasp of grammar is more than enough to get you through college.

Also, essays/writing in high school (at least mine) were exactly what the college professors did not want. I can't tell you how many of my friends had issues writing papers that weren't full of fluff and bullshit. High school papers were all about meeting the length requirements no matter how little content you actually had. College was far stricter on content and much more lenient on length.

[Zetanio]

I guess it's more about your high school. I had no issues with writing in college. We were taught the difference between a standard essay, creative writing, and professional writing.

[Lyall]

As someone who has to regularly communicate via email with people who clearly have never written anything longer than a tweet, I'm agreeing that learning how to write better than we did in third grade is a pretty important life skill.

[Rooney]

It was probably just the poor english/LA teachers at the school. We learned far more about English (structure, grammar, etc) in Spanish class than we ever did in actual LA. My first year Spanish teacher had to stop what she was doing and spend several class periods teaching us (in English!) about sentence structure and parts of speech.

Edit: @Lyall It is astounding how many emails I get at work that have smiley faces in them. It's either that or the grammar is so poor that you have no idea what the email is even talking about. My former boss once sent me an email telling me to "login to the project folder and pdf the files." I did that. What he meant was to take a zip file (that wasn't attached to the original email) and add those files to the project folder. This is from a guy who has spoken English his entire life and is the department manager at an engineering firm. I just don't even.

[Zetanio]

I don't know how people hold professional jobs when they can't articulate properly. It's fucking infuriating. We've closed relationships with companies because of it. It's a liability for any company.

[Churchill]

When texting, the only people I give a pass to are other vets. Anyone else, if I see some shit like "meet me @ my place 2nite bby" I get soft as fuck.

[Zetanio]

When texting, the only people I give a pass to are other vets. Anyone else, if I see some shit like "meet me @ my place 2nite bby" I get soft as fuck.

Omgzzzzz what ru doin 2nte?

I just delete em.

[Boyiee]

Our supervisor/dept chief has all kinds of spelling grammar and just egregious errors in his emails and unit updates. It got to the point where if I was on duty he would call me into his office to proof read anything he was putting out to us.

Now, most of it only goes out to our unit of 20-30 people so it's not like it's going to the police chief or mayor, or public lol, but you should see his powerpoints fucking lol.

[Tokitoki]

My coworkers make me read their letters before sending them out. The most common mistakes are randomly capitalizing words and just generally poor sentence structure.

[tyven]

i am opposite and often have to dumb down leg & issue briefs that are too technical for joe financial advisor. IT SSO DOPE

[Zetanio]

i am opposite and often have to dumb down leg & issue briefs that are too technical for joe financial advisor. IT SSO DOPE

If they can't understand it, they should not be your financial advisor.

[Ksandra]

I found out with my 9th graders that they had shitty shitty foundational skills for writing. This is what happens when K-8 you don't give grades and just keep passing kids along whether they learn or not. They generate a terrible work ethic of, "I'll learn w/e I feel like, and I don't feel like learning much." I almost died when they expect every paragraph to be 3-5 sentences long. I mean...sure in 5th grade. I had to restructure my lessons to building on creating a solid 10+ sentence paragraph first. The 10th grade teacher is going to expand on that later.


With that being said, we are doing a lot of freehand writing. I went to a lecture with Kelly Gallagher, who is pretty huge in the English teaching world for teaching theories, and he said something that really resonated with me. Writing is like learning music, you have to play other people's music terribly for awhile before you get any good at your own. So now we're plagiarizing the shit out of good writing to practice what good writing really is. I definitely see an improvements in the amount of writing my students are doing, and their interest as well in writing. I think that will help transition into more formal writing once they get comfortable with their style.


Next year I may go even farther with what he did and do only one book and one academic writing assignment per semester. The rest of the time is book club reading (compounded with journal writing, grammar, and vocabulary). I've gotten a pass to fund ReadingCounts through Scholastic for the 9th grade next year. It feels like a step back in what I imagine a 9th grader should be able to do, but I think the foundation will be more solid for what they should be able to do in 10th grade and on.

[tyven]

If they can't understand it, they should not be your financial advisor.

They are not my financial advisors. I am their lobbyist

[Zetanio]

They are not my financial advisors. I am their lobbyist

Oh, carry on.

[Anoat]

I accidentally the whole bottle and I literally can't even

[Zetanio]

Of what?