English 115 Woes (Mark II)

[Master Xaio]

Humour us poor australian country bumpkins, and just give me an idea of what you expect for A, B, C, D, etc.  /100 for xample.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

This applies to most places; many (like my high school and I *think* BYU) are a little bit more tough than this. think of 'em as 10% blocks. Below 60 is a fail. D is in the 60s (and will not count as credit toward your major), C is 70's, B is 80s, A is 90 or above. There's B+ and C- and stuff. They just reflect the top or bottom ends of those ranges. A grade of C is usually described as "average" but it terribly unimpressive. A GPA in the B range is usually not enough to get into the better grad schools.

As for what the class average should be:
It should be what they earn. I've never been a believer in grading on a curve (though I've accepted it when profs did so). If you clearly defined the criteria, then there's no cause for complaint.

[Master Xaio]

Well, judging from what I've seen of you EUOL, you seem to be pretty fair.  And if C is indeed the average, and a demonstration of the best the class can do... well, I pity you.  No offense meant, but thats pretty crap.

[EUOL]

Well, here's the thing.  You have to grade them on the level they're capable of.  These are non-English-major freshmen.  You just can't expect stellar papers from them--that's not generally their skillset.

Anyway, I finished.  (Whew!)  The average was a 79% on that paper, and I felt sorry for them.  So, I graded their other paper (worth forty points out of 1000) as a pass/fail, and almost all of them got forty out of forty on that one.   That's kind of like giving them all a handful of extra credit points, so hopefully it will balance out.

The class average overall is an 83.5%.  That's probably a bit lower than I should shoot for, but their final two assignments are pretty easy, so the average should come out at an 85, which I think is fair.

[Master Xaio]

Thats not too bad.  At UNE (University of New England) which I do externally, as I recall HD is 85+, Distinction is 75+, Credit is 65+ and Pass is 50+.

So 85 isn't too bad for over here.  then again, standards are different.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

well, not stellar but at least comprehensible. Not reading their papers (and I wouldn't, even if I were sitting in your office right now) I can't tell how good/bad they are relative to their skillset. I guess that's why you're the teacher. You're supposed to learn their capabilities and grade against that . I have enough confidence in your integrity that you've probably done so. I stick by my guns that they can potentially deserve an average of 79 or lower, however.

[EUOL]

This was the 'Big' paper of the year.  The other two papers had an 87 and an 85 average, respectively.  I told them I would be very hard on grading the research paper, and grammar was weighted very heavily in it.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

well, then they SHOULD be capable of an 80 or so, at least, I'd think.

[Master Xaio]

Ok, my original question was, what do you teach.  Then I looked at the title of the thread, hit myself several times, and edited this post.  

You say that you were hard on the grammar.  Surely if it is english class their grammar would be ok?

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

actually, the POINT of 115 is to teach them grammar and argument and fundamental research. Basically, how to string a sentence together without looking like a buffoon.

[Mistress of Darkness]

And America hasn't really decided what do with grammar. It hasn't been formally taught in grade school for several years now.

A "C" used to be average, but it think it's safe to say that a "B" is average now. I'm not really sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Sure it has. I learned how to form plurals, word order, even diagramming.

Wait, I graduated High school twelve years ago. Maybe it isn't taught anymore. But I don't believe that though.

[Mistress of Darkness]

I'm talking about punctuation, etc. The stuff you only learn if you take an editting class.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

see, i think you're wrong with that too. I had punctuation drilled into me. I was astonished in my freshmen English class that we spend more than 10 minutes on the apostrophe (we spent a week... c'mon people, there's only two uses, contractions and possessives, and a few special cases, like its).

[stacer]

I think it depends on the school. I wasn't taught how to form sentences correctly till I was a sophomore in high school. Comma splices were my biggest problem up to that point. I still have a problem with dangling modifiers, apparently, according to my teacher. But I think the biggest reason it's not taught is because most of the teachers I know that aren't high school English teachers (meaning elem & middle school teachers, whatever their specialty) don't understand grammar themselves. I've had a number of roommates who were El Ed majors whose papers I've looked over, and they just can't spell, can't construct a sentence, etc.