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Obivously, your teacher thought that the content of his work and his meaning was absolutely correct and overrode the fact that his grammar sucked.

For God's sake, why can't teachers understand that English class includes GRAMMAR and SPELLING? scream In my English class, that paper would FAIL. FAIL, I TELL YOU! scream *Takes deep, calming breaths* Forgive me, but I cannot stand the unfairness of it. mad

The horror...

It's English and spelling / grammar doesn't count at all? eek I have to write a report for computer engineering, and even for that there's specifically a mark (out of five) for spelling and presentation (according to the marking scheme). rolleyes

If your classmate's writing is really as bad as your example, I'd expect the teacher to mark it down for unreadability. Then again, teachers are usually good at reading bad writing because they have to read students' writing which can include a lot of bad writing.

I wrote a poem aboout the holocaust for my english class and I gto an 85 I had prefect grammar the teacher went ove rthem all and corrected them and had us retype them and then this other kid got a 100 and his poem wasn't even on topic I might post them poem on here.

Well, I guess SOMEONE better defend this kid...

Look: I too am a bit disgusted, but from what I've learnt from school... if anything sweatdrop ... teachers will be impressed more by improvement than high quality work.
Now, I don't fully know the facts about the situation, but maybe this kid was even worse before, so the teacher rewarded them for putting more effort in and improving. I've been in this situation before, and at the time, I was horrified. But looking back, I realised that the teacher was right: the other kid had really tried to come to terms with their difficulties.
But, like I said, I don't know the details, so really, it's all just opinion, I'm afraid.

Honestly, it's a disservice to the kid. What job will look favourably on someone who doesn't know how to use proper spelling or grammar in their resume? Or someone who comes in using slang because "that was ok in High School"?

Honestly, schools should be about preparing kids for post-graduation life, not just babysitting them until they are legally accountable for their own actions...

As for the "improvement" argument, I've heard that before. I really don't agree, though. If you are doing B work, you should be getting a B. If you are used to getting Cs, that reflects the change in your abilities or efforts and should be a reward in itself. But to give A work a B and then C work an A just makes a mockery of the marking system and does nothing but discourage the people who consistently try hard and get As.

This is indeed a disservice, as Kukushka said earlier, because only the worst college professor would tolerate that, and most won't even care about the student's self-esteem. Some students have come to our English tutoring crying because they are failing the class, and when I look at their papers, I sometimes can swear the professor dipped it in their blood; it has that much red ink. Most of these students, in high school, were given A's and B's for flawed papers, and now they're failing, because the reality is, no professor will tolerate any misspellings or grammar errors.

In college, no professor has the time to care if you do know, nor teach you if you don't, proper grammar. They want to see your writing, and they expect for you to already know what a semi-colon is, and how to spell, and how to write properly.

I'm sorry if that sounded arrogant or something, but I have had the privilege to talk to professors who grade papers and come train our tutors. They themselves tell us that they "don't have time to be babysitting students who don't know how to write [correctly]." One even said: "I'm sorry, but some students whose papers I've read didn't even deserve to pass high school."

That just shows that in college, they expect you to be able to write and spell correctly. That's why high schools should teach that, not pity. This is not to say to put a student down until they feel suicidal, but this does not mean giving an A to a paper that clearly doesn't deserve it.

-End of rant-