D'Angelo and Shaughnessy

After reading D'Angelo and Shaughnessy's articles this week, I was most interested in how experience affects one's writing and the teacher's grading. For example, Shaughnessy discusses that in 1970, due to NYU's open admission policy, students of a different kind entered college for the first time. Shaughnessy states that these students were "strangers in academia, unacquainted with the rules and rituals of college life, unprepared for the sorts of tasks their teachers were about to assign them" (388). In addition, many of these students spoke English as their second language and were from poor areas of town that unsatisfactorily equipped them in education. Personally, I believe these facts should be taken into account by a teacher when both teaching and grading. For me, one of the most frustrating aspects of being a grader for 1301 is that I do not know any of the students, but I am expected to grade their work anyway. I am not arguing that a teacher should lower their expectations for their students or teach easier material. However, like Shaugnessy aruges, I believe the teacher should look at a student's work holistically instead of focusing on every single grammatical error. In addition, I believe it is important to not only show them what they need to work on in their writing, but praise them for the improvements they make over the semester, however small. We discussed in class the idea of who gets a better grade - the student that submits "A" quality work the entire semester but does not improve or the student that starts out with poor quality work but makes great improvement? The first student obviously deserves an "A" for meeting the standards; however, I would not give them a higher "A," such as a 98, because one can always improve one's writing and this student did not. As for the second student, I would not automatically give them an "A" because they have made great improvement over the semester; however, I do believe that effort and improvement are important. Therefore, if the student had a 78 or 79, I would round it up to an "B." Obviously, a teacher needs to be careful of being too subjective when grading (such as grading underprivileged students easier); however, I think we must remember that students are not just a piece of writing but people with varied experiences.