Ask me anything about college writing
 

Hi All,



I am a recent but regular 2p2 poster with about 250+ posts on another account. I am also a PhD student in English specializing in the relatively new discipline of writing studies. 2p2 has helped my poker game a great deal, and I know a number of people helping me are in college. I hope this thread works to give something back. I decided to create this account because if you look at my past posts under my regular SN, it would be easy to find out where I teach, and I would prefer that not be posted at the moment.

I have been teaching a number of different composition courses for the past five years. I have taught students at a community college and students at a top-notch research university. Many of the courses I teach are in the English department. However, I also work at a writing center where I help undergraduate and graduate students with writing from across the disciplines.

So fire away. I’ll respond as best as I can to any question. Some possible questions could be about grading, plagiarism, the role of writing in learning, writing for the SAT/GRE, why teachers have different standards for writing, etc. Keep in mind that compared to many English instructors, I don’t take myself incredibly seriously, so you won’t get much BS from me. Fire away if you please.

Re: Ask me anything about college writing
 

What is the biggest or most common error that students make when writing?

Re: Ask me anything about college writing
 

What high of variance is there with writing? Meaning what do you think is the largest possible range of grades one could be assigned for the same paper, simply because it is graded by different teachers? Do teachers ever let their personal opinion of the student affect their grading? When is the passive voice OK? Can you tell I've had a bad experience with a particular english teacher?

Re: Ask me anything about college writing
 

I think that writing is much harder to teach as opposed to a more concrete subject like calculus. Thoughts?

Re: Ask me anything about college writing
 

Hi, thanks for this, ITW.

How many 18-24year-olds write 150+ page books - novels, nonfiction, whatever - that do not get published? Or, more generally, any comments on the % of people who get published and maybe some distinguishing features between getting published and not getting published?

Any stories about your own experience in trying-to-get-published would be cool.

Any resources you know about re: what kind of books are being published nowadays and what's selling would also be awesome!

Re: Ask me anything about college writing
 

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What is the biggest or most common error that students make when writing?

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Not leaving enough time to proofread. This means you need to let the paper sit for 24 hours before you do the revision, which means you need to have it done a day in advance (who am I kidding??). When students meet with me in the writing center, I’ll have them read their paper aloud. Again and again, students are able to catch most of the errors by themselves, simply by reading the paper aloud. It helps.

What if you finish the paper and you only have an hour left before class? Spend all of the time working on the thesis statement (if it is a paper with a thesis). Make it longer; make it more complex; make it read smoother. I don’t care what you do as long as you put an hour into the thesis. Why? Because reading student papers is a very labor intensive process. And by the time an instructor gets to your paper, if he or she is overworked and tired of reading papers, he'll be on tilt and will have a good idea of what your grade will be after he gets through the thesis—I would say to within 10 points or so.

Re: Ask me anything about college writing
 

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What high of variance is there with writing? Meaning what do you think is the largest possible range of grades one could be assigned for the same paper, simply because it is graded by different teachers?

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There have been a number of studies done on this. For example, a group of instructors were all given the same papers and told to rank them. The results are usually laughable….meaning there is little consensus about which papers are the best.

That means the answer to your next questions is:

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Do teachers ever let their personal opinion of the student affect their grading?

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*Absolutely.* Instructors are human too. And it is possible an instructor will read your paper more “sympathetically” if you have come to all the classes and pretended to be interested, and if you have done all the work. But that doesn’t mean I assign grades based on how much I like students. I have given some terrible & obnoxious students As because they were great writers. And I have given some brown-nosers Cs because they thought good classroom behavior was going to make up for the lack of time they put into their papers.

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When is the passive voice OK?

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When is it ok to double-barrel if you have air and are OOP? The same idea in poker applies to English: it is situationally dependent. That being said: the passive voice in an English class is almost never good—it’s kind of like bluffing a calling station. The passive voice is more frequent in science writing. When in doubt, ask your professor—they’ll love it, trust me.

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Can you tell I've had a bad experience with a particular english teacher?

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We all have. I hated school when I was younger. My tenth grade French teacher told me I would never amount to anything.

Re: Ask me anything about college writing
 

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I think that writing is much harder to teach as opposed to a more concrete subject like calculus. Thoughts?

[/ QUOTE ]


I've got six years experience, teaching 1-3 sections of writing per semester, and I am still figuring out how to teach writing. Actually, conventional wisdom in my field says there is no way to "teach" writing. The best an instructor can do is create the conditions that will allow students to become better writers (give positive feedback, have high expectations for the students). That being said, and as I'm sure a bunch of 2p2 college students know, if an instructor can't get students fired up about a subject, it'll be painful semester.

Re: Ask me anything about college writing
 

[ QUOTE ]
Hi, thanks for this, ITW.

How many 18-24year-olds write 150+ page books - novels, nonfiction, whatever - that do not get published? Or, more generally, any comments on the % of people who get published and maybe some distinguishing features between getting published and not getting published?

Any stories about your own experience in trying-to-get-published would be cool.

Any resources you know about re: what kind of books are being published nowadays and what's selling would also be awesome!

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm expected to write a "scholarly" book of nonfiction and have it published at an academic press, so I am not a fiction writer. However, I heard John Edgar Wideman read a few years ago (he's a legendary literary novelist), and he told the crowd that it's a lot easier to get bad writing published than it is to get good writing published. Why? There is a bigger market for bad writing.

If you want to make a career out of fiction, I would recommend you think about women. Something like 85% of fiction is bought by middle-aged women--so that's where the money is.

Re: Ask me anything about college writing
 

Pseudo hijack:

I have found the best way to avoid some of the grading variance is to go talk to your professor/TA with a draft of your paper. They can read it over and tell you what they think you should change.

I have had pretty good experiences, never really bombing a first paper (at least not yet).

Re: Ask me anything about college writing
 

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Pseudo hijack:

I have found the best way to avoid some of the grading variance is to go talk to your professor/TA with a draft of your paper. They can read it over and tell you what they think you should change.

I have had pretty good experiences, never really bombing a first paper (at least not yet).

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You would be surprised how much instructors like this. If students come to me with a draft it means:

1)they have finished a draft in time to actually revise it

2)they care enough about the class to come to office hours (I'm usually sitting there alone)

3)they are going to incorporate the feedback I give them into the paper

If a student comes to me for help with a paper, I don't know if he/she has ever received below a B. But this might be because it is the good students coming in for help to begin with....

Re: Ask me anything about college writing
 

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Pseudo hijack:

I have found the best way to avoid some of the grading variance is to go talk to your professor/TA with a draft of your paper. They can read it over and tell you what they think you should change.

I have had pretty good experiences, never really bombing a first paper (at least not yet).

[/ QUOTE ]

You would be surprised how much instructors like this. If students come to me with a draft it means:

1)they have finished a draft in time to actually revise it

2)they care enough about the class to come to office hours (I'm usually sitting there alone)

3)they are going to incorporate the feedback I give them into the paper

If a student comes to me for help with a paper, I don't know if he/she has ever received below a B. But this might be because it is the good students coming in for help to begin with....

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lol i wrote B papers all year for my anthroplogy prof first year, but got an A in the class cuz I went to all of his office hours (once a week) with questions on my rough drafts, solidifying concepts in class, etc. He loved me. I didn't participate much in class though.

Re: Ask me anything about college writing
 

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Pseudo hijack:

I have found the best way to avoid some of the grading variance is to go talk to your professor/TA with a draft of your paper. They can read it over and tell you what they think you should change.

I have had pretty good experiences, never really bombing a first paper (at least not yet).

[/ QUOTE ]

You would be surprised how much instructors like this. If students come to me with a draft it means:

1)they have finished a draft in time to actually revise it

2)they care enough about the class to come to office hours (I'm usually sitting there alone)

3)they are going to incorporate the feedback I give them into the paper

If a student comes to me for help with a paper, I don't know if he/she has ever received below a B. But this might be because it is the good students coming in for help to begin with....

[/ QUOTE ]

lol i wrote B papers all year for my anthroplogy prof first year, but got an A in the class cuz I went to all of his office hours (once a week) with questions on my rough drafts, solidifying concepts in class, etc. He loved me. I didn't participate much in class though.

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Meh, office hours seems like pushing it time commitment wise for me.

Im engineering, and its a lot harder to sway professors in technical courses.

Re: Ask me anything about college writing
 

when you write the first paper for a class and you end up getting a grade that you're not happy with, for example you get a B when you wanted the A, should you:

1. talk to the RA (who graded the paper) or the teacher (who didn't grade it) or both to discuss this?

2. how should you start the conversation? "Can you tell me what I should've done to get the A?" , "What did I do wrong?" or "How can I improve next time?" Basically I want them to know that I WANT the A. So how I approach this?

Is it worth it to talk to them about this?>

Thanks

Re: Ask me anything about college writing
 

your comments on the following ways to improve one's writing?

a) read many well written essays and books
b) freely write on any topic on regular basis (every week or so?)
c) read "how to write" type books

any recommendations/feedbacks would be appreciated

Re: Ask me anything about college writing
 

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your comments on the following ways to improve one's writing?

a) read many well written essays and books
b) freely write on any topic on regular basis (every week or so?)
c) read "how to write" type books

any recommendations/feedbacks would be appreciated

[/ QUOTE ]
You write as much as possible (literally about anything) and ask for people's opinions who are better at it than you, or in the case of a class you ask the teacher. Message boards are actually a great place to start if you are in a thread with any decent conversation. I don't put much effort into it here, but I post at other boards that generally care a whole lot more about the quality of posts and that has helped a lot.

Re: Ask me anything about college writing
 

[ QUOTE ]
when you write the first paper for a class and you end up getting a grade that you're not happy with, for example you get a B when you wanted the A, should you:

1. talk to the RA (who graded the paper) or the teacher (who didn't grade it) or both to discuss this?

2. how should you start the conversation? "Can you tell me what I should've done to get the A?" , "What did I do wrong?" or "How can I improve next time?" Basically I want them to know that I WANT the A. So how I approach this?

Is it worth it to talk to them about this?>

Thanks

[/ QUOTE ]

In my experience the best way to go about this is to go the RA/TA who graded the paper. Tell him/her that you appreciated the feedback she/he gave you and you would like to talk about how your writing and the paper can be improved.

In other words, go see the instructor and say you want to improve your *writing* or you want to improve your *paper*; don't show up asking what you can do for an A. The distinction may be minor, but I am more interested in helping students if they want to improve their writing and not their grade. If you do the revisions and they don't bump your grade--that sucks, but it would likely be unusual. And if that happens, next time take a draft of the paper in before it is due to get feedback in advance.

Also, sometimes there are no quick fixes for an A. I'll have students with a B paper who ask what they can do for an A, and I'll tell them to re-write two thirds of the paper.

Re: Ask me anything about college writing
 

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[ QUOTE ]
when you write the first paper for a class and you end up getting a grade that you're not happy with, for example you get a B when you wanted the A, should you:

1. talk to the RA (who graded the paper) or the teacher (who didn't grade it) or both to discuss this?

2. how should you start the conversation? "Can you tell me what I should've done to get the A?" , "What did I do wrong?" or "How can I improve next time?" Basically I want them to know that I WANT the A. So how I approach this?

Is it worth it to talk to them about this?>

Thanks

[/ QUOTE ]

In my experience the best way to go about this is to go the RA/TA who graded the paper. Tell him/her that you appreciated the feedback she/he gave you and you would like to talk about how your writing and the paper can be improved.

In other words, go see the instructor and say you want to improve your *writing* or you want to improve your *paper*; don't show up asking what you can do for an A. The distinction may be minor, but I am more interested in helping students if they want to improve their writing and not their grade. If you do the revisions and they don't bump your grade--that sucks, but it would likely be unusual. And if that happens, next time take a draft of the paper in before it is due to get feedback in advance.

Also, sometimes there are no quick fixes for an A. I'll have students with a B paper who ask what they can do for an A, and I'll tell them to re-write two thirds of the paper.

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It is much, much easier to ask for feedback before turning in the paper, rather than getting a B then going into the teacher.

Also, I agree that asking what to do for a specific grade is terrible.

The only time I brought a paper to a prof after it was graded was when I had already asked for his comments. I made the changes, changed nothing else, and he still gave me a C-. I brught the final version, as well as the graded version in, and my grade was bumped to a B+ or A- (dont remember which).

Seriously, talking to profs before papers are due is the nutsssssssssss

Re: Ask me anything about college writing
 

how should you approach the professor/TA with your rough draft? Are they really going to be willing to read your entire paper? If not, is there a way you can get them to read most of it?

Re: Ask me anything about college writing
 

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how should you approach the professor/TA with your rough draft? Are they really going to be willing to read your entire paper? If not, is there a way you can get them to read most of it?

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Go to office hours/ask them after class when a good time to discuss a draft is.

Depends how long the paper is, probably wont read it all but most if it anyway.

Re: Ask me anything about college writing
 

At the beginning of a lot of courses I have taken, teachers will assign a small writing assignment to "see how I write". How much do you think teachers really read those to see how I write and use that information to grade future assignments later in the course?

Re: Ask me anything about college writing
 

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At the beginning of a lot of courses I have taken, teachers will assign a small writing assignment to "see how I write". How much do you think teachers really read those to see how I write and use that information to grade future assignments later in the course?

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I find this type of activity useful for two reasons. The first is to see if a student has any *serious* problems with writing, to see if the class is appropriate for the student's ability with writing. I don't want a student to waste time if he/she needs to drop down to an easier class.

The second reason I give these assignments is that it helps me catch plagiarism later. If students do a short piece of writing on the first day, it's kind of like a fingerprint of the way in which a student writes, the "voice" of a student. Two points:

1) most plagiarism is laughably easy to identify if the instructor is a decent reader

2)I think plagiarism is a much more complex issue than most instructors realize, especially in the age of information and the internet. I don't consider it a "moral issue"; it just pisses me off when I waste my time reading something a student plagiarized.

Overall, these types of assignments have little to do with future grades.

Re: Ask me anything about college writing
 

i teach writing, i sent you a PM but you told me to post it here. I am trying to write a college essay about surfing but other ppl have told me it might be a bad idea since some ppl will see me as a surfer bro or w.e. Anyways, I planned on talking about how it has made me realize a lot about my life because surf trips have brought me to Costa Rica where everyone is so humble etc. It has also helped me face my fears by charging bigger waves and so on... the thing about this topic it probably isnt [censored] and really has taught me a lot