First task today: reading a student essay called “The Evolution of Social Sites.”  I’m glad I waited until morning to assess this one.  If I had tried to do it at the end of the day yesterday, I don’t know how I would have reacted to all of the inconsistencies in voice and style that often come when students are learning to integrate source material and accidentally plagiarizing all over the place.

I used to give papers with plagiarism an F on principle, even when it clearly wasn’t intentional, like in this case.  I also worked with them to revise the F into a passing grade paper.  I wanted them to see that a paper with plagiarism should never earn a passing grade.  (Sometimes I still give the F, if I don’t see enough effort in the work overall.)  But now, my revised belief is that I don’t think students have the same principles as I do, so it probably doesn’t make sense to them when I give them a failing grade on principle.

This student is in first semester Composition, and this is her first formal essay in the class using MLA for source documentation.  Her work meets the word length requirement for the assignment, and although the sentence level writing struggles with inconsistent voice and awkward phrasing where she is attempting to integrate source material with less-than-stellar signal phrases, I can see she put in a lot of good work overall.  The writing has a unified main idea from start to finish, the paragraphs are well-focused, and the writing fairly clearly organized.  Most importantly, this essay has a strong sense of purpose that responds appropriately to the assignment.  This student paid attention to the assignment instructions and fulfilled its requirements.  Giving her an F on principle for accidental plagiarism would be like punishing my 3 year old for not keeping all the pancake batter in the bowl when she helps to mix it.

So the essay earns a C, for “okay.”  The ducks are all in a row, although the row forms a sort of wobbly line.  My goal now is to figure out how to motivate the student to learn from today’s C, as opposed to pigeonholing herself from now on as a “C” writer.  It’s all in the feedback.  Back to the grind.