Pro Blog post 5 - Writing

I think most students want to to know why they got a certain grade they did, or for them to clearly see where points were taken off, and I think a lot of students tend or start to cater their writing styles to what their teachers are looking for, so they do not have their own voice; they are just simply following the prompt and the rubric, and I think teachers need to be a bit more open minded about what the students write, as well as specific to the students. Yes, most teachers will give the rubric to the students prior to the paper submission so the students know what the teacher is looking for, but rubric's can be confusing. I know when I am given a prompt and rubric to work off of, I am confused because it does not explicitly say what the teacher is looking for and I have had other classes just give the assignment, prompt, and in detail what they are looking for with no rubric, which makes more sense to me. As a whole for the student base though, I think students also want consistency with their assignments and that they do not want to write about the same topic multiple times. Students want a range of freedom within a topics and a variety of assignments, but the grading would need to be consistent.

I have had classes where I would have the prompt, discussion, etc (stated above), no rubric, and it would be on a topic I did not necessarily care about, so I would not give that paper or assignment the time it deserved, but I would somehow get an A (perfect score; 100), but there would be no comments. In my Egyptian mythology class I took a semester ago, I got a ... I think 99.5 or 98.5 out of 100, but I did not know why my paper was docked (and I never asked the professor), so there is still that psychological component of: "where did I go wrong? What didn't I do that needed to be done?" Teachers need to give feedback and a why they gave the grade they did, and if the student has a lot of corrections they could make, the teacher should allow the student to edit to increase their grade.

From peers, it is hard to say what students need from them because they may want their friends to read their papers in order for them to get affirmation that their paper is good and makes sense. However, some students do not take constructive criticism well and if a peer makes a comment or suggestion and the teacher takes off for that suggestion or comment, then that could cause conflict between students, and not all students want their paper read by their peers, as often times, students will have the same questions and not necessarily know what to look for. A writing coach on the other hand, is someone a student may not necessarily know and a writing coach is there to help improve the student's writing and there are some students who may not want the help or take the writing coach's comments seriously and I was blessed that the students I worked with took my comments to heart and thanked me for my help and I enjoyed reading their papers and I got to learn some information I had not previously known before.

For my link this week, it took me a little bit to find one as I did not necessarily know what to search for, but ironically enough, I came across two blogs:

https://writingcooperative.com/how-to-just-write-c1e613f48171

https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/08/07/improve-writing-skills 

The first blog just talks about how to write and not necessarily focusing on any grammar or spelling, but to just write and the author goes through some steps on how to make this happen. One of the steps requires finding the courage to allow others to read what you have written, which can help alleviate some anxiousness for submitting assignments or allowing peers to read the writing. The second blog (again, kind of ironic) I connected with immediately due to: "Nothing strikes fear into the heart of a marketer quite like being asked to write a blog post". While I am not a marketer, when I saw the syllabus and that we had to write blogs for this class, my anxiety and stress started to soar and my brain immediately began to overthink because I had never done a blog before (which apparently I had in French class in high school, but I blocked those assignments out of my brain). The author then describes a variety of ways to improve the writing, including but not limited to: brushing up on the basics, dissect readings that you admire, and accept that first drafts are never perfect.