TIPSters-- Thanks for your advice and support. It is a painful situation.
In the case of the ESL student, I did, early on, tell her that there were a lot of problems with her writing and very strongly recommended that she go to the writing center. This suggestion was met with little enthusiasm on her part. There were also issues with her paper that were not ESL-specific; the title page and references weren't in APA style or anything close to it, one of her hypotheses was repeated twice, and various other problems. Because this was a discussion/lab class, 15% of the grade was participation, and she never raised her hand in class, or sent along an interesting article, or did any of the many things I told students would help make the entire class a valuable and collaborative experience (and raise their grade). I don't feel that the grade I gave her is unfair at all; what does bother me is that, if her work in other classes has been on the level of her work in mine, that she has been passed through the system without getting the help she needs. I am an adjunct and this is a large and bureaucratic university, so there is not much I can do about that. Regarding the other student, I don't think, as many have reasonably suggested, that she was gaming the system. I had a few students who did poorly and clearly hadn't put in the work, and they took their poor grades with reasonably good spirit. This girl really had worked hard and I think she had issues with assessing the quality of her work. She also thought she had done well on the final, which she hadn't. I think the Dunning and Kruger report on difficulties recognizing one's own incompetence play a role here. (David Dunning and Justin Kruger, "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 77, no. 6, December 1999, pp. 1121-34. Sorry for lack of APA style; I just cut and pasted this from my husband's Ig Nobel website.) Anyway, I do thank you for the support, and good luck with any final grade drama of your own. Robin Notices at the bottom of this e-mail do not reflect the opinions of the sender. I do not "yahoo" that I am aware of. --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
