Now that my classes have a one week homework turnaround, I’m a lot stricter on my grading. Last I gave out a very simple assignment. The students had a modeled example of a food chain. The example was “Fox -> Duck -> Fish”. The students had to then come up with their own three tiered food chain of a similar fashion.
Some students drew pictures instead of writing English. I told them, “Please write, as this is an English school, not an Art school.” They did the activity correctly, but didn’t grasp the point of practicing their English. I let them have time, as the directions we’re written in absolute terms on the paper, and corrected their spelling. They got full credit as long as their spelling and picture matched.
The next group of students wrote English words, but often didn’t have a logical connection between their words. Lions aren’t known for eating fish as far as I know, and fish don’t eat birds often. If I could correct their logic or substitute an animal that would have worked better, I gave them partial credit.
Then I got to the lazy students that got “socially promoted” into the class. A “social promotion” is when you bump a kid up into the next level because he is too big to study with the students in his last class due to age or size. This student got bumped up a level because he was studying with his younger brother in the same class and doing much WORSE. This caused problems, so we pushed the older boy ahead despite being very low level and out of his depth. If you imagine English as water, this boy is drowning out of his depth in a half filled spoonful.
This student handed me a nearly blank paper, devoid of anything except one or two words copied from the student in front of him. He had the exact same spelling problems, and had less completed. He HAD to think I was the dumbest person on earth not to realize everyone in the class didn’t mispell “frog” as “forgu” coincidentally.
I asked him why he didn’t just use a dictionary to look up the words in Korean, then copy them over into English. Students are supposed to have these at home, or failing that, use the Internet. There is no excuse that in a WEEK to do homework he couldn’t ask his parents for help.
He said he didn’t KNOW any animal names in English, or Korean, or how to use a dictionary. His excuse was “I don’t know any animal names. I can’t use a Korean dictionary.”
Seriously.
He might spend a LOT of time in class, but I THINK he’s been outside enough to have SEEN, or at least have HEARD of the concept of animals. Considering his parents are sending him to an English school, I really doubt they would have failed to see he was illiterate in Korean first. There are zoos, televisions, and ALL sorts of other things that lead me to believe this is probably NOT true, even if he is kept as a boy in a bubble at home.
If you are going to lie about your homework, pick something SLIGHTLY plausable. Worst excuse EVER.
