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On July 01 2010 06:08 lac29 wrote:
Have you ever privately tutored English/writing? What kind of assignments did you give? How much did you charge?
i did tutoring through a university writing center, so i'm not sure that qualifies as private tutoring. if i had to do private tutoring, i'd probably just focus on getting my student to write a lot--like anything, skill follows repetition (starcraft!). no idea what i would charge..
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what books are you making your students read? out of curiosity...
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How do you quantitatively grade an essay? A lot of english professors I knew refused to give back grades on paper till the final grade, usually only writing in comments. Why is that?
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On July 01 2010 06:02 benjammin wrote:if a professor can't spot a plagiarized section instantly, they either aren't paying very strong attention to what they are reading or they are a fool i am completely opposed to those online plagiarism tools and will do anything i can to circumvent them if the school wants my students to use them. do your job, profs
That's the right opinion imo. Shame i never had a prof pay any attention in high school because i didn't make a single book report myself and they never noticed it lol.
Edit: Gues it's weird to say that is is a shame :p
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On July 01 2010 06:11 hp.Methos wrote:
what books are you making your students read? out of curiosity...
unfortunately i have very little control over the curriculum, so i'm figuring the book list will be given to me by the program. still haven't heard what it'll be, i'm guessing that isn't decided yet.
some tips though: if you see a copy of "the elements of style", set it on fire. "they say/i say" is definitely worth reading, maybe one of the best and most approachable books on academic writing in a long time. i'm also a fan of "keys for writers" as just generic reference, but OWL has pretty much replaced that by now
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United States24772 Posts
On July 01 2010 06:02 benjammin wrote:if a professor can't spot a plagiarized section instantly, they either aren't paying very strong attention to what they are reading or they are a fool i am completely opposed to those online plagiarism tools and will do anything i can to circumvent them if the school wants my students to use them. do your job, profs
Where is your confidence coming from? Obviously you can often catch plagiarism by just doing a good job but... I'd think it's extremely difficult to always spot it.
Plagiarism is something I have to worry about when teaching physics. It's pretty easy to copy someone's physics and modify it slightly to make it really tough to spot. Also, there's absolutely no way to prove someone copied unlike a direct copy of an English passage.
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On July 01 2010 06:12 chaoser wrote:
How do you quantitatively grade an essay? A lot of english professors I knew refused to give back grades on paper till the final grade, usually only writing in comments. Why is that?
were they allowing you to revise all of your essays until your final portfolio or were you just never being given grades until your final grade? if it's the latter, that sucks.
at my level there are grading rubrics we can follow, but honestly... there's really no completely quantitative way to evaluate a grade. at some level, a student has to respect that the work their professor has done has put them in a position of authority on evaluating a student's performance. as far as i go, i'm looking for clarity in an essay more so than originality/brilliance/anything like that. but, as it is unavoidable, a lot of times you are scaling grades based on the performance of the rest of the class. professors, especially ones on the lowest rung like yours truly, can't get away with giving nothing higher than a B-. also, if it's apparent to the professor that you are putting a lot of effort into the class, you'll likely be rewarded.
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On July 01 2010 06:21 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2010 06:02 benjammin wrote:On July 01 2010 05:54 Baksteen wrote:
Do you cross check essays? :p if a professor can't spot a plagiarized section instantly, they either aren't paying very strong attention to what they are reading or they are a fool i am completely opposed to those online plagiarism tools and will do anything i can to circumvent them if the school wants my students to use them. do your job, profs Where is your confidence coming from? Obviously you can often catch plagiarism by just doing a good job but... I'd think it's extremely difficult to always spot it. Plagiarism is something I have to worry about when teaching physics. It's pretty easy to copy someone's physics and modify it slightly to make it really tough to spot. Also, there's absolutely no way to prove someone copied unlike a direct copy of an English passage.
ah yes, i was only really talking about english classes here. i can't imagine trying to spot it in physics :O
it's just really, really obvious when a C level student suddenly lifts a long passage from a published academic (or sparknotes).
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On July 01 2010 06:24 benjammin wrote:it's just really, really obvious when a C level student suddenly lifts a long passage from a published academic (or sparknotes).
What if you have a student who plagiarizes from the very beginning?
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On July 01 2010 06:26 kzn wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2010 06:24 benjammin wrote:it's just really, really obvious when a C level student suddenly lifts a long passage from a published academic (or sparknotes). What if you have a student who plagiarizes from the very beginning?
honestly those kinds of concerns are very limited. a lot of classes have assignments designed to make plagiarism near impossible (writing a persuasive letter or other crap), so i think these things would become apparent. i'm not saying a professor's judgment will be perfect all the time and probably thousands of essays squeak through with some form of verifiable plagiarism. simple answer--don't do it. you won't get knocked for quoting other people (except for wikipedia and sparknotes/etc, don't think your professors don't read those in advance).
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On July 01 2010 06:08 benjammin wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2010 06:02 Piy wrote:
Do you not agree that English degree's are the most ridiculously easy *real* qualification there is.
I mean I'm 3 years in and holy shit it's easy. Most UK uni's = Most US uni's according to most studies for the record.
Also, can you read Middle English? any degree is easy if you let it be, i'm sure there are plenty of engineers who would struggle with the work i've done the same way i would struggle with quantum mechanics. i don't think there's really any objective way you can evaluate the difficulty of one degree, it probably has more to do with your proficiency at what you're doing/your passion for doing it. if you don't feel like you're being challenged, that might have more to do with other factors. i had to read/speak middle-english for my chaucer class i took years ago, and i purged all that stuff from my brain ASAP. my main focus/interest is on post-wwii american literature, so the medieval works were a real bore for me. no offense to chaucer, a lot of the canterbury tales are awesome. the wife of bath got me through so many classes
Yeah, I loved the Canterbury Tales.
No joke.
What is the average proficiency of your students then? I don't know, it just feels as if I'm able to coast through with above average marks on 10ish hours a week including lectures.
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On July 01 2010 06:32 Piy wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2010 06:08 benjammin wrote:On July 01 2010 06:02 Piy wrote:
Do you not agree that English degree's are the most ridiculously easy *real* qualification there is.
I mean I'm 3 years in and holy shit it's easy. Most UK uni's = Most US uni's according to most studies for the record.
Also, can you read Middle English? any degree is easy if you let it be, i'm sure there are plenty of engineers who would struggle with the work i've done the same way i would struggle with quantum mechanics. i don't think there's really any objective way you can evaluate the difficulty of one degree, it probably has more to do with your proficiency at what you're doing/your passion for doing it. if you don't feel like you're being challenged, that might have more to do with other factors. i had to read/speak middle-english for my chaucer class i took years ago, and i purged all that stuff from my brain ASAP. my main focus/interest is on post-wwii american literature, so the medieval works were a real bore for me. no offense to chaucer, a lot of the canterbury tales are awesome. the wife of bath got me through so many classes Yeah, I loved the Canterbury Tales. No joke. What is the average proficiency of your students then? I don't know, it just feels as if I'm able to coast through with above average marks on 10ish hours a week including lectures.
oh, i'm only teaching freshmen english, nothing beyond 100-level english classes. i get all kinds of levels of proficiency. to be honest, it's a lot of athletes and ESL students.
10ish hours a week? you must be a fast reader.  if you feel bored, just try to make it harder on yourself. aim for perfect marks instead of above average, that GPA matters a LOT if you want to do a graduate program.
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On July 01 2010 06:26 kzn wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2010 06:24 benjammin wrote:it's just really, really obvious when a C level student suddenly lifts a long passage from a published academic (or sparknotes). What if you have a student who plagiarizes from the very beginning?
lol, that's what I was thinking. Also, college professors don't get to know all their students extremely well.
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benjammin, how old are you? I'm just curious what age someone can be teaching english at a university there?
Also, the title says 'professor'. I haven't yet bothered to ask an american friend, but are all teachers within american universities referred to as professor? Here we have Professors, Associate Professors, Senior Lecturers, Lecturers and finally Tutors.
So I guess a third question is are you lecturing then or doing tutorials?
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If i got a B in composition in english high school, would it be lower in college or would it be similar? for a pharmacy major student.
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i'm pretty young, most colleges will offer teaching positions to their graduate students, so in theory you can be as young as like, 22 or 23 and be teaching a freshmen english class.
professor might be overstating it, haha. i'm a professor in the extent that i'm teaching a course on my own and preparing my own lectures and all of that, but i'm not on the same level as a regular professor at the university and did not go through the same vetting/hiring process. to get funding as a grad student here, you have to do their dirty work...
i will be doing lectures from my own experiences/opinions, but for freshmen english you are teaching a curriculum that is mostly not your own.
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On July 01 2010 06:51 YPang wrote:
If i got a B in composition in english high school, would it be lower in college or would it be similar? for a pharmacy major student.
i can't really speculate whether it will improve or not, but the college level course will be more challenging. even if you don't think you'll be using it a lot as a pharmacy major, improving writing/communication will always, always, always pay off. maybe it's possible to just audit the class?
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Make sure you teach your students the difference between their/there/they're, tell them that it's "would've" and not "would of" (at least in most cases  ), and that there's a difference between progamers and programmers...
I am honestly amazed that these kinds of mistakes are made so often on TL, especially by US Americans. Makes me wonder if kids from the US read more than 2 books with less than 50% pictures before they turn 18...
EDIT: Horrible timing for a typo...
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On July 01 2010 05:47 number1gog wrote:
English questions huh....
Why does my word processor always give me shit when I try to type "it's." As in, "The cookerchiller 5000's ability to cook a steak while chilling my beer is it's best selling point."
I'm trying to show that "it" possesses whatever it is that it possesses, but my word processor tries to tell me the correct spelling is without the apostrophe.
What's up with that?
it's is a contraction of "it is", and not the possessive form of it. The possessive form if it is "its".
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United States24772 Posts
Undergrads can sometimes teach college classes too... when I was 20 I was a grader and 21 I taught a physics lab class.
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EPT
