A query from one of my honored students:
I am wondering why the rough draft for the proposals are being graded on grammar content. I was always under the impression rough drafts do not worry about grammar content and areforgathering your thoughts together for the final draft.
Nowhere in the course materials does the slightest suggestion appear that any of the six writing assignments are “rough drafts.” Could there be a reason that I wrote and posted not one, not two, not three, but four reviews of basic grammar and style matters, and that I gave not one, not two, but three exams on that material? Might there be some reason that I posted rubrics explaining how papers would be graded on basic grammar and style, among several standards? Could there be a reason that I posted an example of copy graded in that way and told students to look at it so they would know what was expected? And might I have had some motive for putting this passage into the syllabus?
For writing assignments, writers start with 100 points; points are subtracted for various crimes and misdemeanors. For example, each Basics Review error, redundancy, or verbosity costs 2 points; logical lapses and organizational flaws, 4 points; citation errors, 6 points; and so forth. See the document titled “Essay Scoring List,” posted in Course Documents on our BlackBoard site, for a full description of deductible errors.
Or this, in the assignments handout?
Writing projects start at 100 points and challenge writers to maintain the highest possible score by creating papers that are well written, logically argued, and free of basic grammar, punctuation, and style errors. Points are deducted for specific kinds of errors, described in the Essay Scoring List, posted in “Course Information.”
Naaaahhhh. I must’ve done that just to hear my brains rattle.
“. . . the rough draft are being graded . . .”
“grammar content”
“. . . drafts do not worry about . . .”
What? Me, worry?
Stand by, all you entrepreneurs! This young fellow will soon graduate and show up at your door asking for a job. Awe-inspiring, isn’t it?
Comments from iWeb site:
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Dear student: Why are you turning in rough drafts?
Micah sometimes runs into that when he assigns a paper and then an expanded version of the same paper. He does it so they will have a better chance of learning from their mistakes…but yeah.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008 – 09:15 AM