I'm neck-deep in marking essays for a second-year botany course here, and the most recent travesty against literacy damaged my brain.
It was like a bomb had gone off on the page, shattering sentences into bleeding fragments, wrenching plurals and singlulars from their homes and slamming them together, and scrambling citations up and down the page.
I also suspect that some perverted little impulse came along after and placed the corpses into explicit poses.
I feel stupider for having read it.
I have 27 more to go... hopefully this one stands as the very worst.
4 comments:
I just marked 2 very good papers, that scored quite high marks. There is hope the damage inflicted can be repaired.
I'm somewhat astounded by the inadequacy of people's ability to construct coherent sentences despite having been raised in the presence of a single language for all of their lives. Reading undergraduate essays is one of the most painful things that I can think of. I'm still rooting for the day when scientific communication courses begin IN FIRST YEAR and do not stop... EVER.
I'm still rooting for the day when scientific communication courses begin IN FIRST YEAR and do not stop... EVER.
To me, the most painful errors in these essays are the basic grammar and spelling errors that should have been corrected in junior high school or even earlier.
I've actually had about three cases of their-they're-there confusion. I think that was taught to me in Grade 4.
Update February 19, 1:30pm
I've just finished marking a highly woo-ish paper. Given the topic (Herbal remedies for insomnia), I'm actually surprised that I'm 3/4 of the way through the pile and this is the first one to ramble on about "natural is better" and other such drivel.
This doesn't hurt my brain the way that other paper, with its broken and bleeding grammar, did. This one is just depressing.
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