Normally, my Writing Experience II class is set up so that when we begin to post our papers we're in our own small writer groups and are unable to view the papers posted in other groups. This time, however, I can view all the groups, but I can't comment on them. I'm not sure if it's a mistake or not, but I've been reading everything everyone posts. There are times when I want so badly to comment, but I can't. For instance, right now a person posted a paper on the subject of arranged marriages within the "Punjabi religion." There are many things I'd like to say about this paper, the first being that there is NO "punjabi religion." It's a region, it's a people, and they all practice different religions. But that's besides the point.
The point is that English 132 with Kristine Pursell is a course I've considered probably the most effective at laying out material, utilizing technology, and creating a dialogue that is sustained throughout our units. So it was very surprising to me when I noticed that a few of the papers aren't what we were assigned. We were assigned to create a rhetorical analysis of an article, with the article informing our research for our next paper: the argument essay.
Instead of providing analysis of an article, these few papers are informative or argumentative, and they don't even begin to analyze another author's work.
In this unit we were provided instructions, power point presentations, information in our coursebook, and we read an example of a rhetorical analysis which we discussed and analyzed in assignments. These students participated in that, and it would have been impossible for them to come up with their assignments without having read the sample essay.
So . . . how does this happen? Okay, so I've read The Chronicle articles about the students that bullshit their assignments, turning in papers on Madonna rather than Napoleon, and I've seen similar things happen in my Creative Writing class. But I don't think these are papers of students who decided they were going to bullshit or do whatever unique project came to mind. I'm pretty sure these are serious papers, and so I can't figure out where the confusion could be coming from.
I would like to know how this happens. How can students who are capable of putting together a paper at all, completely misunderstand the assignment? Now, I have been confused by professor's poor instructions before, but that isn't the case here.
I'm not someone who believes in the myth of the perfect teacher being able to reach every one of their students. When I was in high school, I had a pretty good science teacher who couldn't get me to perform in his class or turn in my assignments, and it wasn't his fault. But, I always understood the directions of the assignments, I just slacked off and didn't do it. So, it's still disconcerting when I can't come up with an explanation for how and why someone's understanding of an assignment could be so completely off. In a lot of my classes I can think up ways in which a professor could have done things differently, or explained something more effectively, but in this case I can't come up with any solutions.
It's not just a matter of misunderstanding one assignment, but how can a student be taught to comprehend their assigned tasks so that they don't make the same mistake in future courses? Is such a thing possible?
I started doing a little Google research on the topic, but I for now I can't find anything that answers my questions.
For now I remain. . .
baffled.
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