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Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut



Glasgow

 Gordy2000 wrote:
Ugh. Entitled students looking for an excuse.

Trivial is a commonly used word - the worst part is that the education system is letting them get away with it.

Still, soon these students will be in the real, post-school world and will discover that it doesn’t care if you think something is upsetting or unfair.


They'll also be in a world where you are almost never in a position where you can't look something up.

Exams are a complete waste of time outside of fields where immediate recall is essential.
   
Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

 Yodhrin wrote:
I don't sit there wracking my brain trying to recall facts from twenty years ago in school, I open a fething web browser and google it.


Or you open a dictionary and find the word.
However at a certain level you have to rely upon a general background level of understanding, both in being able to interpret the answers you find and in being able to pick the right answer.

The internet is actually a fantastic example of a very odd research tool. See you can find fantastic accurate information on the net; and you can find totally bogus information. If you come from a position where you know very little to nothing of the subject, then the internet can fool you VERY easily. Google doesn't rank on accuracy, but on popularity and we've not even touched on situations where the information presented is not a solid fact, but is a viewpoint based on data (data that might or might not be accessible or easily found).

It highlights exactly what you mean about equipping people with self learning tools and skills and I agree this should start WAY before students hit University. In fact I'd say teaching it then is almost teaching it far too late, esp since its an optional layer of learning. Thing is whilst the school system remains based on a mark scheme based examination structure, we will continue to get heavy bias in favour of parrot based teaching.
Now that works for things like learning your times tables, don't get me wrong it works. But it should be going alongside research and self learning methods. Students who go the extra mile and who read outside of the core text book should be rewarded for that, not risk punishment that they learn facts that won't get them points (because its not in the mark scheme) or worse lose points because they state an accurate fact that is incorrect in the mark scheme (eg because the scheme was written 3 years ago and the new fact is from research published 1 year ago).


What also confuses me is that Universities are trusted to mark their own student papers. This baffles me because many lecturers are not teachers, in fact teaching is only a smaller portion of their time. Yet they are accorded a greater level of respect and trust when it comes to faithful marking of their students work; whilst at school teachers who spend every working hour teaching, are accorded far less trust. Student papers are farmed into central examination boards who then dish it out to random schools around the country to be marked (which necessitates the mark scheme).
It's odd because the school system has a heavy public bias in terms of the state run system; yet Universities are, by and large, all independent bodies who have to secure their own private funding. So a University has every reason and more to want higher scores, just like the school system wants them for the league tables (something that probably should go away, at least for the state system in terms of a published report - certainly schools should be monitored and kept up to a minimum standard, but it should be a more complex scoring than just who gets the highest grades).

A Blog in Miniature

3D Printing, hobbying and model fun! 
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut



Glasgow

 Overread wrote:


What also confuses me is that Universities are trusted to mark their own student papers. This baffles me because many lecturers are not teachers, in fact teaching is only a smaller portion of their time.


It's actually usually the bulk of their time, at least in the humanities. It's never contracted as the majority of their time, but it tends to be regardless. That doesn't make them teachers, of course, and few are every hired with their teaching abilities in mind. Universities do take student feedback on teaching very seriously, though.

Yet they are accorded a greater level of respect and trust when it comes to faithful marking of their students work; whilst at school teachers who spend every working hour teaching, are accorded far less trust. Student papers are farmed into central examination boards who then dish it out to random schools around the country to be marked (which necessitates the mark scheme). It's odd because the school system has a heavy public bias in terms of the state run system; yet Universities are, by and large, all independent bodies who have to secure their own private funding. So a University has every reason and more to want higher scores, just like the school system wants them for the league tables (something that probably should go away, at least for the state system in terms of a published report - certainly schools should be monitored and kept up to a minimum standard, but it should be a more complex scoring than just who gets the highest grades).



We have external examiners for exactly this reason. That said, how much notice the examined departments takes of their externals is variable, but most will get a pretty stern hammering from university administrations if reports are repeatedly negative. As a general rule however, a degree in the same field from any university should be a relatively consistent indicator of the work submitted. A bigger problem is the variability between fields. My girlfriend is an examiner for Oxford in one subject and teaches in a heavily overlapping but not identical subject at UCL (basically one department is older, consequently has a rather old fashioned name, and places its research emphasis in a slightly more traditional area) and some submissions that get a 1st at Oxford would struggled to obtain a 2:1 at UCL. Obviously this can be raised in her reports, but Oxford are free to state that dissertations of that field have X requirements and expectations, and those of hers are different, and that's that.

Similarly, over three degrees I've spent a lot of time in classics and religious studies as well as in archaeology. In all three of these I've always been working with similar sources from similar periods and the expectations are starkly different. I've written essays in my first couple years specifically on monumental architecture in ancient Greece that got As in classics but that I would give low Cs in archaeology if I marked them today. As such, there are people who could have done near-identical work for an entire degree and got a 1st or a 2:1 purely depending on which department of the same university they were in.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/11/19 12:11:16


 
   
Made in us
Humming Great Unclean One of Nurgle






messhallcook wrote:
Trivial is out... its all about QUADvial or PENTvial... more vials for all!

[Stupid Dad Joke Executed]
Exalted!

Road to Renown! It's like classic Path to Glory, but repaired, remastered, expanded! https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/778170.page

I chose an avatar I feel best represents the quality of my post history.

I try to view Warhammer as more of a toolbox with examples than fully complete games. 
   
Made in us
Omnipotent Necron Overlord






nfe wrote:
 Gordy2000 wrote:
Ugh. Entitled students looking for an excuse.

Trivial is a commonly used word - the worst part is that the education system is letting them get away with it.

Still, soon these students will be in the real, post-school world and will discover that it doesn’t care if you think something is upsetting or unfair.


They'll also be in a world where you are almost never in a position where you can't look something up.

Exams are a complete waste of time outside of fields where immediate recall is essential.

Exactly what I was going to say.

If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities, we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized or easily referenced.
- Fox Mulder 
   
Made in ca
Phanobi






Canada,Prince Edward Island

Spoiler:
nfe wrote:
 Overread wrote:


What also confuses me is that Universities are trusted to mark their own student papers. This baffles me because many lecturers are not teachers, in fact teaching is only a smaller portion of their time.


It's actually usually the bulk of their time, at least in the humanities. It's never contracted as the majority of their time, but it tends to be regardless. That doesn't make them teachers, of course, and few are every hired with their teaching abilities in mind. Universities do take student feedback on teaching very seriously, though.

Yet they are accorded a greater level of respect and trust when it comes to faithful marking of their students work; whilst at school teachers who spend every working hour teaching, are accorded far less trust. Student papers are farmed into central examination boards who then dish it out to random schools around the country to be marked (which necessitates the mark scheme). It's odd because the school system has a heavy public bias in terms of the state run system; yet Universities are, by and large, all independent bodies who have to secure their own private funding. So a University has every reason and more to want higher scores, just like the school system wants them for the league tables (something that probably should go away, at least for the state system in terms of a published report - certainly schools should be monitored and kept up to a minimum standard, but it should be a more complex scoring than just who gets the highest grades).



We have external examiners for exactly this reason. That said, how much notice the examined departments takes of their externals is variable, but most will get a pretty stern hammering from university administrations if reports are repeatedly negative. As a general rule however, a degree in the same field from any university should be a relatively consistent indicator of the work submitted. A bigger problem is the variability between fields. My girlfriend is an examiner for Oxford in one subject and teaches in a heavily overlapping but not identical subject at UCL (basically one department is older, consequently has a rather old fashioned name, and places its research emphasis in a slightly more traditional area) and some submissions that get a 1st at Oxford would struggled to obtain a 2:1 at UCL. Obviously this can be raised in her reports, but Oxford are free to state that dissertations of that field have X requirements and expectations, and those of hers are different, and that's that.

Similarly, over three degrees I've spent a lot of time in classics and religious studies as well as in archaeology. In all three of these I've always been working with similar sources from similar periods and the expectations are starkly different. I've written essays in my first couple years specifically on monumental architecture in ancient Greece that got As in classics but that I would give low Cs in archaeology if I marked them today. As such, there are people who could have done near-identical work for an entire degree and got a 1st or a 2:1 purely depending on which department of the same university they were in.


I found my high school teachers far better at marking than my university professors a great deal of the time. In fact most of my Arts profs often bragged about how they had never graded a paper above 85% (B+) as they believed we could always do better. While that may be true a lot of the time, there does come a point where a paper is truly as good as it is ever going to be.

I once wrote a research paper concerning piracy around Africa during the 1400's over the course of three months that was seriously awesome, it got published in the university book they put out each year, tweaked and improved by another professor, and I also presented it at three conferences across the country. My grade for all this? 82% Stuff like this may seem trivial (heh) but it killed my chances of getting any big scholarships that require 90% averages just because my prof felt it could still be improved. Short of digging up the corpse of Henry Avery and finding his lost treasure I am not sure what could have been added and they didn't indicate anything specific either.

   
Made in us
Humming Great Unclean One of Nurgle






Sounds like your paper was far from trivial.

Road to Renown! It's like classic Path to Glory, but repaired, remastered, expanded! https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/778170.page

I chose an avatar I feel best represents the quality of my post history.

I try to view Warhammer as more of a toolbox with examples than fully complete games. 
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut



Glasgow

 Commander Cain wrote:
Spoiler:
nfe wrote:
 Overread wrote:


What also confuses me is that Universities are trusted to mark their own student papers. This baffles me because many lecturers are not teachers, in fact teaching is only a smaller portion of their time.


It's actually usually the bulk of their time, at least in the humanities. It's never contracted as the majority of their time, but it tends to be regardless. That doesn't make them teachers, of course, and few are every hired with their teaching abilities in mind. Universities do take student feedback on teaching very seriously, though.

Yet they are accorded a greater level of respect and trust when it comes to faithful marking of their students work; whilst at school teachers who spend every working hour teaching, are accorded far less trust. Student papers are farmed into central examination boards who then dish it out to random schools around the country to be marked (which necessitates the mark scheme). It's odd because the school system has a heavy public bias in terms of the state run system; yet Universities are, by and large, all independent bodies who have to secure their own private funding. So a University has every reason and more to want higher scores, just like the school system wants them for the league tables (something that probably should go away, at least for the state system in terms of a published report - certainly schools should be monitored and kept up to a minimum standard, but it should be a more complex scoring than just who gets the highest grades).



We have external examiners for exactly this reason. That said, how much notice the examined departments takes of their externals is variable, but most will get a pretty stern hammering from university administrations if reports are repeatedly negative. As a general rule however, a degree in the same field from any university should be a relatively consistent indicator of the work submitted. A bigger problem is the variability between fields. My girlfriend is an examiner for Oxford in one subject and teaches in a heavily overlapping but not identical subject at UCL (basically one department is older, consequently has a rather old fashioned name, and places its research emphasis in a slightly more traditional area) and some submissions that get a 1st at Oxford would struggled to obtain a 2:1 at UCL. Obviously this can be raised in her reports, but Oxford are free to state that dissertations of that field have X requirements and expectations, and those of hers are different, and that's that.

Similarly, over three degrees I've spent a lot of time in classics and religious studies as well as in archaeology. In all three of these I've always been working with similar sources from similar periods and the expectations are starkly different. I've written essays in my first couple years specifically on monumental architecture in ancient Greece that got As in classics but that I would give low Cs in archaeology if I marked them today. As such, there are people who could have done near-identical work for an entire degree and got a 1st or a 2:1 purely depending on which department of the same university they were in.


I found my high school teachers far better at marking than my university professors a great deal of the time. In fact most of my Arts profs often bragged about how they had never graded a paper above 85% (B+) as they believed we could always do better. While that may be true a lot of the time, there does come a point where a paper is truly as good as it is ever going to be.

I once wrote a research paper concerning piracy around Africa during the 1400's over the course of three months that was seriously awesome, it got published in the university book they put out each year, tweaked and improved by another professor, and I also presented it at three conferences across the country. My grade for all this? 82% Stuff like this may seem trivial (heh) but it killed my chances of getting any big scholarships that require 90% averages just because my prof felt it could still be improved. Short of digging up the corpse of Henry Avery and finding his lost treasure I am not sure what could have been added and they didn't indicate anything specific either.


With all due respect, loads of students tell me that their essays are great when they really, really aren't and loads of people present terrible material at conferences because almost all (in the humanities, anyway) will auto-accept every abstract. It's difficult to have an opinion out of context, but I certainly mark plenty of papers that have obviously had vast amounts of work put into them by very capable students. In many cases they get low Cs but with minute tweaking would get high As. On the other hand, many that have seen little work from mediocre students get high As. Depends on the institution, but usually a comprehensive, but not rigid, marking scheme makes it very easy to achieve high grades. University papers are just box ticking exercises. Most people never realise how to tick the boxes. The ones that do get As consistently.

There can be markers who are awful and arbitrary, and some institutions have incredibly vague marking schemes that allow those terrible markers to get away with whatever they like - but again external marking should compensate for this to some degree. Of course, even this is contextually contingent, and is variable between nations.
   
Made in ca
Phanobi






Canada,Prince Edward Island

nfe wrote:
 Commander Cain wrote:
Spoiler:
nfe wrote:
 Overread wrote:


What also confuses me is that Universities are trusted to mark their own student papers. This baffles me because many lecturers are not teachers, in fact teaching is only a smaller portion of their time.


It's actually usually the bulk of their time, at least in the humanities. It's never contracted as the majority of their time, but it tends to be regardless. That doesn't make them teachers, of course, and few are every hired with their teaching abilities in mind. Universities do take student feedback on teaching very seriously, though.

Yet they are accorded a greater level of respect and trust when it comes to faithful marking of their students work; whilst at school teachers who spend every working hour teaching, are accorded far less trust. Student papers are farmed into central examination boards who then dish it out to random schools around the country to be marked (which necessitates the mark scheme). It's odd because the school system has a heavy public bias in terms of the state run system; yet Universities are, by and large, all independent bodies who have to secure their own private funding. So a University has every reason and more to want higher scores, just like the school system wants them for the league tables (something that probably should go away, at least for the state system in terms of a published report - certainly schools should be monitored and kept up to a minimum standard, but it should be a more complex scoring than just who gets the highest grades).



We have external examiners for exactly this reason. That said, how much notice the examined departments takes of their externals is variable, but most will get a pretty stern hammering from university administrations if reports are repeatedly negative. As a general rule however, a degree in the same field from any university should be a relatively consistent indicator of the work submitted. A bigger problem is the variability between fields. My girlfriend is an examiner for Oxford in one subject and teaches in a heavily overlapping but not identical subject at UCL (basically one department is older, consequently has a rather old fashioned name, and places its research emphasis in a slightly more traditional area) and some submissions that get a 1st at Oxford would struggled to obtain a 2:1 at UCL. Obviously this can be raised in her reports, but Oxford are free to state that dissertations of that field have X requirements and expectations, and those of hers are different, and that's that.

Similarly, over three degrees I've spent a lot of time in classics and religious studies as well as in archaeology. In all three of these I've always been working with similar sources from similar periods and the expectations are starkly different. I've written essays in my first couple years specifically on monumental architecture in ancient Greece that got As in classics but that I would give low Cs in archaeology if I marked them today. As such, there are people who could have done near-identical work for an entire degree and got a 1st or a 2:1 purely depending on which department of the same university they were in.


I found my high school teachers far better at marking than my university professors a great deal of the time. In fact most of my Arts profs often bragged about how they had never graded a paper above 85% (B+) as they believed we could always do better. While that may be true a lot of the time, there does come a point where a paper is truly as good as it is ever going to be.

I once wrote a research paper concerning piracy around Africa during the 1400's over the course of three months that was seriously awesome, it got published in the university book they put out each year, tweaked and improved by another professor, and I also presented it at three conferences across the country. My grade for all this? 82% Stuff like this may seem trivial (heh) but it killed my chances of getting any big scholarships that require 90% averages just because my prof felt it could still be improved. Short of digging up the corpse of Henry Avery and finding his lost treasure I am not sure what could have been added and they didn't indicate anything specific either.


With all due respect, loads of students tell me that their essays are great when they really, really aren't and loads of people present terrible material at conferences because almost all (in the humanities, anyway) will auto-accept every abstract. It's difficult to have an opinion out of context, but I certainly mark plenty of papers that have obviously had vast amounts of work put into them by very capable students. In many cases they get low Cs but with minute tweaking would get high As. On the other hand, many that have seen little work from mediocre students get high As. Depends on the institution, but usually a comprehensive, but not rigid, marking scheme makes it very easy to achieve high grades. University papers are just box ticking exercises. Most people never realise how to tick the boxes. The ones that do get As consistently.

There can be markers who are awful and arbitrary, and some institutions have incredibly vague marking schemes that allow those terrible markers to get away with whatever they like - but again external marking should compensate for this to some degree. Of course, even this is contextually contingent, and is variable between nations.


Oh yes I will be the first to admit that I was a perfectly average student for most of the time, it was just a shame to see that putting in way more effort than usual didn't result in any change in grade. Having gone to a small university, most of my stuff was graded by the prof in charge of the class which could be either good or bad. I once got bonus points for having a "musical" accent and got an 85% on a book report that I had only read the first and last pages of because the professor never had time to mark his papers.

I also know that if I were a teacher I would be giving out the same kind of marks. The education system in Canada is so much easier compared to what I was used to in England but that could also be down to the fact that we don't have standardised testing very much which is truly the worst thing to grace the school system.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/11/20 19:26:30


   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut



Glasgow

 Commander Cain wrote:
Spoiler:
nfe wrote:
 Commander Cain wrote:
nfe wrote:
 Overread wrote:


What also confuses me is that Universities are trusted to mark their own student papers. This baffles me because many lecturers are not teachers, in fact teaching is only a smaller portion of their time.


It's actually usually the bulk of their time, at least in the humanities. It's never contracted as the majority of their time, but it tends to be regardless. That doesn't make them teachers, of course, and few are every hired with their teaching abilities in mind. Universities do take student feedback on teaching very seriously, though.

Yet they are accorded a greater level of respect and trust when it comes to faithful marking of their students work; whilst at school teachers who spend every working hour teaching, are accorded far less trust. Student papers are farmed into central examination boards who then dish it out to random schools around the country to be marked (which necessitates the mark scheme). It's odd because the school system has a heavy public bias in terms of the state run system; yet Universities are, by and large, all independent bodies who have to secure their own private funding. So a University has every reason and more to want higher scores, just like the school system wants them for the league tables (something that probably should go away, at least for the state system in terms of a published report - certainly schools should be monitored and kept up to a minimum standard, but it should be a more complex scoring than just who gets the highest grades).


We have external examiners for exactly this reason. That said, how much notice the examined departments takes of their externals is variable, but most will get a pretty stern hammering from university administrations if reports are repeatedly negative. As a general rule however, a degree in the same field from any university should be a relatively consistent indicator of the work submitted. A bigger problem is the variability between fields. My girlfriend is an examiner for Oxford in one subject and teaches in a heavily overlapping but not identical subject at UCL (basically one department is older, consequently has a rather old fashioned name, and places its research emphasis in a slightly more traditional area) and some submissions that get a 1st at Oxford would struggled to obtain a 2:1 at UCL. Obviously this can be raised in her reports, but Oxford are free to state that dissertations of that field have X requirements and expectations, and those of hers are different, and that's that.

Similarly, over three degrees I've spent a lot of time in classics and religious studies as well as in archaeology. In all three of these I've always been working with similar sources from similar periods and the expectations are starkly different. I've written essays in my first couple years specifically on monumental architecture in ancient Greece that got As in classics but that I would give low Cs in archaeology if I marked them today. As such, there are people who could have done near-identical work for an entire degree and got a 1st or a 2:1 purely depending on which department of the same university they were in.


I found my high school teachers far better at marking than my university professors a great deal of the time. In fact most of my Arts profs often bragged about how they had never graded a paper above 85% (B+) as they believed we could always do better. While that may be true a lot of the time, there does come a point where a paper is truly as good as it is ever going to be.

I once wrote a research paper concerning piracy around Africa during the 1400's over the course of three months that was seriously awesome, it got published in the university book they put out each year, tweaked and improved by another professor, and I also presented it at three conferences across the country. My grade for all this? 82% Stuff like this may seem trivial (heh) but it killed my chances of getting any big scholarships that require 90% averages just because my prof felt it could still be improved. Short of digging up the corpse of Henry Avery and finding his lost treasure I am not sure what could have been added and they didn't indicate anything specific either.


With all due respect, loads of students tell me that their essays are great when they really, really aren't and loads of people present terrible material at conferences because almost all (in the humanities, anyway) will auto-accept every abstract. It's difficult to have an opinion out of context, but I certainly mark plenty of papers that have obviously had vast amounts of work put into them by very capable students. In many cases they get low Cs but with minute tweaking would get high As. On the other hand, many that have seen little work from mediocre students get high As. Depends on the institution, but usually a comprehensive, but not rigid, marking scheme makes it very easy to achieve high grades. University papers are just box ticking exercises. Most people never realise how to tick the boxes. The ones that do get As consistently.

There can be markers who are awful and arbitrary, and some institutions have incredibly vague marking schemes that allow those terrible markers to get away with whatever they like - but again external marking should compensate for this to some degree. Of course, even this is contextually contingent, and is variable between nations.


Oh yes I will be the first to admit that I was a perfectly average student for most of the time, it was just a shame to see that putting in way more effort than usual didn't result in any change in grade. Having gone to a small university, most of my stuff was graded by the prof in charge of the class which could be either good or bad. I once got bonus points for having a "musical" accent and got an 85% on a book report that I had only read the first and last pages of because the professor never had time to mark his papers. [/spoiler]

I also know that if I were a teacher I would be giving out the same kind of marks. The education system in Canada is so much easier compared to what I was used to in England but that could also be down to the fact that we don't have standardised testing very much which is truly the worst thing to grace the school system.




The variation between the average student from different countries can be quite astounding. And the further variation between those of different even more so. For example, amongst undergrads, you tend to find that those who arrive in the UK from the US are leagues ahead of British students in essay writing, but by the time of postgraduate studies, the students who did undergrads in the UK tend to outstrip those who did them in the US by a distance. I'm not entirely sure why that should be the case, I have lots of colleagues from the US and we talk about this experience often because it's such a common theme, but we're mostly flummoxed.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/11/20 20:45:49


 
   
Made in gb
Lord Commander in a Plush Chair





Beijing

I was told my essay writing was good at Uni, and I could do very well at science pieces when I put my mind to it. When I had to write things more humanities styled for my teaching degree I struggled somewhat, I’d never written anything first person before. I score 55% when I mailed my first couple of essays in, but when I pulled out all the stops and did a well researched piece I got 65%. Maybe I’m just not familiar with that kind of writing.

What I’ve noticed, having checked many pupils UCAS personal statements for university, is the poor quality writing of students. I’m at a good school, their English GCSEs are top results, but some can’t write for toffee. There’s no flow to their writing, their vocabulary is generally poor or they just use words incorrectly. It’s a bit of a concern the amount of work I’ve had to put into some to make them presentable. I don’t know what to think to be honest, but I’m not hugely impressed if it’s standard of 18 year olds going to Uni.
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut



Glasgow

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I was told my essay writing was good at Uni, and I could do very well at science pieces when I put my mind to it. When I had to write things more humanities styled for my teaching degree I struggled somewhat, I’d never written anything first person before. I score 55% when I mailed my first couple of essays in, but when I pulled out all the stops and did a well researched piece I got 65%. Maybe I’m just not familiar with that kind of writing.

What I’ve noticed, having checked many pupils UCAS personal statements for university, is the poor quality writing of students. I’m at a good school, their English GCSEs are top results, but some can’t write for toffee. There’s no flow to their writing, their vocabulary is generally poor or they just use words incorrectly. It’s a bit of a concern the amount of work I’ve had to put into some to make them presentable. I don’t know what to think to be honest, but I’m not hugely impressed if it’s standard of 18 year olds going to Uni.


Amongst British students arriving from school the quality of writing is shocking. That said, at undergraduate level, no British university marks down for clunky writing, and not many, if any, mark down for grammatical and spelling issues. So that's where we are...


As a general rule, British school leavers are also usually poor at communicating verbally in an academic context. Not because they're incapable, but because they're too shy or nervous. Almost across the board.

North Americans and Europeans tend to be far better, even those battling language barriers. I presume we don't put a lot of effort into teaching it. Cultural factors certainly also play into it, though: successful British academics still usually struggle to get across their research concisely in informal or surprise contexts, where North Americans can usually deliver a punchy synopsis. I guess it's about talking yourself up and we frequently find that uncomfortable or uncouth. I'm dreadful at it. Interestingly, my girlfriend, who is Turkish but did her MPhil and PhD at Cambridge, is also rubbish at it but most of her uni friends who stayed in Turkey or went to the US for postgrads find it much easier. Loads of British universities run courses nd competitions on 'elevator duration' theses because we're so bad at it and loads of people meet folks at conferences and get stumped when they ask what they do

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/11/20 21:23:06


 
   
Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

I think one problem is that most schools and universities, esp in the sciences, grade based on tickbox content rather than writing structure or language. As a result students generally aim to cram as much "content" into word limits and page limits and cut out any waffling or flowery or flow of the language.

I know I often felt like I was more writing bullet points than actual articles or written work. And that's because I knew that the majority of the score wasn't in writing quality, but in conveying as much information as possible, both to show depth and breadth of reading and research and understanding of the subject.


Result being that actual writing language structure drops away significantly. Spelling and other aspects are often ok so long as word-checker hasn't underlined anything and that's enough to get you the tiny faction of points that those things have on the mark scheme.

And I agree that it produces people who can't write and it seriously harms their ability to convey information to others. Heck many journal articles and text books can be very hard to read not because of the content itself, but because of the skill of the writer

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 Overread wrote:
Heck many journal articles and text books can be very hard to read not because of the content itself, but because of the skill of the writer


Indeed. It is also often quite clear that many journalists don't even use spell-check programs at all, given that obvious misspellings and bad grammar that even a basic program will catch get missed.

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You'd be surprised. I'm about 105k into a fiction story, and I spend 3-4 hours editing each chapter for grammar. 5-6 mistakes always make it through and get pointed out by a reader. Spellcheckers only catch obvious errors. A 30,000 word article is going to have a fair number of obscure ones.

   
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 LordofHats wrote:
You'd be surprised. I'm about 105k into a fiction story, and I spend 3-4 hours editing each chapter for grammar. 5-6 mistakes always make it through and get pointed out by a reader. Spellcheckers only catch obvious errors. A 30,000 word article is going to have a fair number of obscure ones.


Sure, I was referring more to articles in journals and newspapers though. Stuff that if you copy and pasted the article into word it would have a lot of red underlines in it, coming from people whose main job is writing...

This is on top of poor sentence structure that makes it awkward to read. Stuff that anybody should be capable of reading their work once and thinking its not right.

If writing is your profession, or close enough to it, you should be able to at least pass spellcheck and not let really bad sentences get past.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/11/21 00:50:27


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 Grey Templar wrote:
Stuff that if you copy and pasted the article into word it would have a lot of red underlines in it, coming from people whose main job is writing...


That's not really that surprising either. Depending on the spellcheck some words just come up as "wrong" even though they're not. "Espresso" is not a recognized word in my spellchecker, which constantly things (<- oh hey there's a error right there!) I'm trying to spell "express." This is especially problematic in Word, where the Grammar Nazi's have literally taken over Microsoft's spellcheck and will mark any number of regional quirks or terms as grammatical and spelling errors. Newspapers and journals operate on tight deadlines. You don't always get all the time you might want to write something between research, editing, and fact checking. It's the nature of the beast.

EDIT: I'm also continually baffled that "taser" (and related forms) isn't recognized as a word. It's flagged as an error in all three programs I make use of.

Stuff that anybody should be capable of reading their work once and thinking its not right.


Again, you'd be surprised. The writer usually knows what it's supposed to say and will overlook common errors. This is part of why editors exist, but even the editor eventually grows accustomed to the writers voice and starts missing things because they know inherently what the writer wants to say. Very few people are so meticulous as to break every project down to the individual word and make sure they didn't mix up "their" and "they're" somewhere in that paper, or flipping an i and an e in the any number of words where "i before e except after c" is only right 50% of the time.

If writing is your profession, or close enough to it, you should be able to at least pass spellcheck and not let really bad sentences get past.


My profession basically is writing (and reading), and I can assure you it's really just not that simple. I can also say that a lot of writers generally respond to these kind of criticisms with "if all I fethed up is some spelling and grammar I did a pretty good job." It's kind of like criticizing the soft drinks at a five star restaurant. Sure we care, but it's hardly the thing we care most about.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/11/21 01:38:03


   
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 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Wow this got intense.


Language isn't a trivial affair sir and/or madam

   
 
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