What I'm learning: pronouns

We expect to see a lot of lower scores on the "distinct sentences" portion of the Microlab, but many students this semester lamented low scores in "misplaced modifiers" and "pronouns." Several students had already seen comments on their papers about "dangling" or misplaced modifiers, but there seems to be a general confusion about the pronouns category.

It makes sense for me, if the Microlab looks at relative pronouns. I've been expressing concern about that ;) for at least the last year. Purdue's Online Writing Center explains it fairly well, but I may prefer wikipedia - because the table on the OWL site may seem to imply that "that" can be used to refer to people. I have an issue with that. For example here's a quote from the 9/20/10 US magazine "Loose Talk" section - where they provide quotes from celebs.

It's nice to be one of the guys that can help sell a movie by taking his shirt off, [but] by no means do I want to be a piece of meat for the rest of my career (Lutz 34 - emphasis mine).

This is funny! The use of "that" rather than "who" as a relative pronoun choice denies himself the humanity he claims to eventually want. He treats himself as an inanimate object, implying linguistically that he is, after all, just "a piece of meat." Is there anything wrong with that?

Purdue would say he can to that he can do that (but not necessarily that he should) - but almost every other style book frowns seriously on using "that" when "who" traditionally would be called for. To me in this instance it seems imprecise and undercuts Kellan's argument that he should be eventually taken seriously. Unless one is referring to work as a meat puppet (Philip K. Dick reference - not necessarily the punk band) one should not use "that" to refer to a human.

Does anyone remember the trouble President Clinton got into for a reference to "that woman"?

Microlab Spring 2010

A student set a new high for my classes in the Microlab this semester: 86. Last year one person scored a 78. I've learned that the Writing Center tutors told us the scores average around 52%. Several students told me they thought the failed because they scored under 60% when they were actually above average.

I noticed too many people being really hard on themselves because of the score. It's just one assessment. Don't put too much stock in any one assessment, be it a computer test or a teacher. Listen to what they have to say and figure out what they mean. Pay attention to themes or recurring messages.

OR maybe people beat themselves up excessively in a sort of passive aggressive protest? If so, touche.

Several this time around pointed out issues with the font. That bothered a lot of people. Also that you can't go back and change things. Why might that be intentional?

This is meant to be a snapshot - one imperfect but relatively objective measure.

I wonder if in some ways it is like weighing one's self. Just because you weigh yourself more often doesn't make you lose weight faster. It doesn't work that way for me anyway - I tend to weigh myself multiple times a day. But owning a scale and checking does seem to help.

Can/ should I discuss results (ie performance of NNS/ by race/ gender/ origin?)

Responses to the MicroLab assessment

The numbers generated from the Microlab assessment should not be compared to grades. 76 was the high score in my combined comp 1 classes and that's the high score I've seen as a writing center tutor as well. That doesn't mean that person got or would get a C grammar grade.

• this is a writing class -
• grammar isn't graded separately -

The consistent confusion reveals how powerful grades are. No matter what instructors or the Writing Center tells us, we reduce all feedback to a letter grade. If we get a number we quickly convert it. Maybe the assessment shouldn't report % scores to students.

Haven't seen much specific reflection by students. I've given some specific feedback on grammar and mechanics (including: s-v agreement, sentence boundary issues, unclear antecedents (pronouns) and misplaced modifiers, word choice, style, etc.). The microlab gives similarly specific feedback, but I have seen little specific grammar discussion in the reflections so far. It's as though we aren't reading our instructor's comments or looking beyond an arbitrary number on the microlab assessment.

Many in our classes - myself included - have expressed concern that this assessment is not fair for non-native English speaking (NNS) students. 3 of the top 5 scores in our classes came from NNS.

Some note that the school and the teacher needs this assessment information. I'd been thinking it was to the students' benefit and I'd ignored the institutional role. The WC does collect a copy of the sheets tho don't they? And the information is reported to the instructor. The former is likely because student's lose things, and if the WC keeps a copy you won't have to retake the assessment. The latter is because if the info weren't reported to the instructor - no one would do it.

Parting thoughts...

1. Grammar can not be divorced from language and composition.
2. The institution doesn't care about your individual results - or shouldn't.
3. Teachers need to do a better job helping individual students need to learn better how to use the feedback. It's a tool - not a means of validation or personal criticism.