I sent out my first set of warning to a freshman today. His writing can't cut it because his grammar is just so weak. His word forms are all wrong and he can't translate his thoughts from Chinese to English.
I'm afraid I've not broken the news gently enough but something needs to be done and stat! The course is almost a quarter way through and if I can't get past the essay because things are lost in translation, then how does he expect to clear Freshman Writing?
5 comments:
by getting fresh with the lecturer?
"You will have to excuse me. If I can not understand what you are saying, I will mark accordingly. It matters not how good or how bad the writing or spelling or grammar. If you can not accurately convey the right idea clearly, then what you have written is a load of garbage."
Sunit, are you trying to get fresh with me?
Probligo, bingo. But many Singaporean educators are bilingual. So we can actually figure out what the student is writing even if it were ungrammatical (in English). Often, if we translate what we read using approximate terms into our other language, we see the student has a point. But still, the grammar mistakes make the writing entirely unacceptable. I wish I were an angmoh and I could simply go, "No, no, no! I can't understand you. I really don't know what you are writing about."
Surely if you are teaching academic writing, and the syllabus is in English (or French, or German, or Russian) then the skill and accuracy of the use of the language is as important as the accuracy of the ideas? So, why not read it as an angmoh?
I worked with a (fairly senior) executive whose attitude to spelling and grammar was "that is my secretary's job". Said secretary got her revenge by typing a major report to the Board exactly verbatim from his notes. She got her pay increase. The executive did not.
Probligo,
Hm... you contrarian. Ok, I can't resist doing that. I'm sorry.
I could do it like you've said - read it like an angmoh - and shoot it all down. I will do so when it comes to the second essay onwards.
But I think it is professionally courteous to let students know they are not up to scratch and see what they want to do about that. I don't think I need to kill them over an assignment of minor weightage since they will fail anyway if they don't find their footing fast.
I think higher education is about telling people that they are still short and then letting them make an informed decision what they want to do about it.
It is almost at the stage where there is no more to be taught though there are lots to be learnt.
Post a Comment