I teach two really good groups of students this semester. They are active, engaged, do the readings, and we have really great discussions in class.
Today, though, I sat down to grade the first mini-essay (1-2 pages long) one of the groups handed in this week. And I realized that I wouldn’t be able to give a single one of these students a grade. The essays are all abysmally poor in quality. Endless, confusing sentences, sentences with no verbs, countless “they” and “them” that refer to completely different things, wild generalizations, boring repetitions, the words “interesting” and “important” in every other line, a passive construction in almost every single sentence, vague disquisitions apropos of nothing in particular, apostrophes appearing where they have absolutely no place, etc.
Incas suddenly become a “Spanish culture.” Jews practice Islam. Jarchas are people. Columbus single-handedly wipes out the entire indigenous population of the Americas. Ferdinand and Isabella help the Visigoths to destroy the Roman Empire. And it isn’t that the students don’t know these things. I have no doubt that if I asked them questions about these subjects in class, they would answer correctly. The problem is this horrible carelessness that pervades every instance of written communication.
This will be a very long semester.
Clarissa's Blog 
I’m a bit puzzled by this.
In an earlier post I commented that the Spanish destruction of Inca culture indicated that Hispanic civilization was a bit of an oxymoron, and you assured me that the Incas are now part of Hispanic civilization. Yet in this post you give ‘Incas suddenly become a “Spanish culture”’ as an example of bad student writing.
Are you using the words in Samuel Huntington’s sense, where he says that a civilization is a composite of many related cultures, so that each civilization is composed of many cultures? Yet his grouping was larger, and he regarded Spanish culture as part of Western civilization, while Inca Culture would be part of his Latin American civilization.
Or are you distinguishing between “Spanish” and “Hispanic”, in a way similar to the distinction between Greek and Hellenic, or Roman and Latin, so that one could speak of “The Greek East and the Latin West”, but “Greek” would have a far wider connotation than “Hellenic”, and today “Hellenism” is to Greeks as “Zionism” is to Jews?
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“Or are you distinguishing between “Spanish” and “Hispanic””
-Of course. There is a huge difference. “Spanish” means from Spain. Hispanic is a much wider term.
“and you assured me that the Incas are now part of Hispanic civilization”
-The students’ essays didn’t talk about nowadays. They discussed Incas before Columbus even arrived. Obviously, at that time, the Inca people didn’t even know about Spain and had nothing to do with either Spanish or Hispanic cultures. 🙂
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I feel like Pollyanna saying this, but it seems like a good thing that you can’t give any of them a grade. That means the whole class is on the same page, and when you give these papers back ungraded and explain what the students need to do, you won’t be talking over the heads of half the class and boring the other half.
But at the same time, I’m sorry they’re all so bad.
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Yes, you are right. This is a very positive aspect. Tomorrow, we will be able to spend the entire class meeting working on this and nobody will feel singled out.
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Each year my wife and I provide a college scholarship for local high school students planning a career in a science or math oriented field. We require the applicants to write an essay explaining how their plans are consistent with our stated goals. We then interview each applicant. Most essays are poorly organized and the grammar of the sentences (or fragments) is poor. But, as Diego says to David in “Fresa y chocolate”, “hay pepitas de oro.” I don’t think my writing began to improve until college and then continued to improved afterwards as I wrote professionally. As much as you might not like it, you are “la maestra indicada”.
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I am fully prepared to spend as much time as I need in class taking every student through the process of writing at least one good sentence. You are right, somebody has got to do it.
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