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[present_mirth]

I once got a paper about The Merchant of Venice that repeatedly referred to a character named "Skylork."  "Skylark" I could have understood as a spell-checker error.  But no, Skylork.

[fiona]

I once got a paper about The Merchant of Venice that repeatedly referred to a character named "Skylork."  "Skylark" I could have understood as a spell-checker error.  But no, Skylork.

For some reason, this strikes me as hilarious.

Kind of a hybrid between a money lender and a dork.

The Fiona

[dr_know]

I think LarryC and others have explained well why it's important, and in fact a teaching moment, to get students who have the book in front of them to follow directions. That's also true of students with disabilities, whose application letters are going to get the same rejections as anyone else.

If we don't teach students to follow directions and use the spell check, they really never will. This is often the last chance to tell them that such things matter.

The Fiona

My students couldn't get above a C (and they usually didn't earn that much) if they misspelled a major character's name or bungled the author's name.  I always told them that if they don't care enough to look at the book and check their facts before submitting a paper (I mean really, "William" Frost wrote "The Road Not Taken"?), then what else in their essays are flawed?

[femmawatts]

I think LarryC and others have explained well why it's important, and in fact a teaching moment, to get students who have the book in front of them to follow directions. That's also true of students with disabilities, whose application letters are going to get the same rejections as anyone else.

If we don't teach students to follow directions and use the spell check, they really never will. This is often the last chance to tell them that such things matter.

The Fiona

Spell check doesn't always work for dyslexic learners http://www.dyslexic.com/spell-checker-accuracy

Probably the best solution to this problem is for the ADA to make copy editors made available to dyslexic people, but it isn't very likely that anything of that sort will happen in the near future.  Also, you haven't said much about non-native speakers, what is the proper way to help these students become more proficient in English?  Why are your methods preferable, or the most helpful?

[fiona]

I think LarryC and others have explained well why it's important, and in fact a teaching moment, to get students who have the book in front of them to follow directions. That's also true of students with disabilities, whose application letters are going to get the same rejections as anyone else.

If we don't teach students to follow directions and use the spell check, they really never will. This is often the last chance to tell them that such things matter.

The Fiona

Spell check doesn't always work for dyslexic learners http://www.dyslexic.com/spell-checker-accuracy

Probably the best solution to this problem is for the ADA to make copy editors made available to dyslexic people, but it isn't very likely that anything of that sort will happen in the near future.  Also, you haven't said much about non-native speakers, what is the proper way to help these students become more proficient in English?  Why are your methods preferable, or the most helpful?

Non-native speakers, people with dyslexia, and other learning disabilities are nevertheless judged by their written materials, as is everyone else. I know this from serving on grant panels and search committees: all you have to do is misspell a word, and your application gets garbaged. I don't think it does students any good to be told that their mistakes are OK. In the real world, they're not.

If you want to discuss your teaching methods for ESL or dyslexic students, please start another thread. That's not what this thread is about.

The Fiona 

[mended_drum]

I have to admit that I'm a hard!ss about spelling the names of authors and characters correctly in papers.  One or two typos are just typos, but repeated misspellings mean that the student gets to correct them and turn in the paper again to receive a grade.  And that includes the accents, by the way.  Fortunately, our foreign language department pounds it into students that leaving out the accents counts as a misspelling, so only first semester freshmen claim not to know how to include accent marks at my institution.   

The only times I've seen it connected to plagiarism is when a student has been using something really out of date (like, say Masterplots) and the standard transliteration of foreign names has changed significantly.

[chromatic]

I've been thinking about this and I do not believe that paper-mills are attempting to betray students who are attempting to commit Esquivalience with regards to writing their essays for class.

But consider that perhaps paper mills would want to betray their competitors who would take their essays and post them onto their own websites without attribution. Map companies have been known to create fake streets and fake settlements in order to catch other map companies copying, and dictionary companies have been known to create artificial words.

Maybe the paper mills believe that students would be smart enough to change the name, having read the story, but other paper mill operators would not, since they just grabbed a paper that looked popular and placed it on their own site.

[fiona]

I've been thinking about this and I do not believe that paper-mills are attempting to betray students who are attempting to commit Esquivalience with regards to writing their essays for class.

But consider that perhaps paper mills would want to betray their competitors who would take their essays and post them onto their own websites without attribution. Map companies have been known to create fake streets and fake settlements in order to catch other map companies copying, and dictionary companies have been known to create artificial words.

Maybe the paper mills believe that students would be smart enough to change the name, having read the story, but other paper mill operators would not, since they just grabbed a paper that looked popular and placed it on their own site.

This is wonderfully convoluted and conspiratorial. I would love to believe that all these thieves and crooks are as smart as you say. It's ever so much better to believe it's a conspiracy rather than incompetence.

The Fiona

[big_giant_head]

I think LarryC and others have explained well why it's important, and in fact a teaching moment, to get students who have the book in front of them to follow directions. That's also true of students with disabilities, whose application letters are going to get the same rejections as anyone else.

If we don't teach students to follow directions and use the spell check, they really never will. This is often the last chance to tell them that such things matter.

The Fiona

Spell check doesn't always work for dyslexic learners http://www.dyslexic.com/spell-checker-accuracy

Probably the best solution to this problem is for the ADA to make copy editors made available to dyslexic people, but it isn't very likely that anything of that sort will happen in the near future.  Also, you haven't said much about non-native speakers, what is the proper way to help these students become more proficient in English?  Why are your methods preferable, or the most helpful?

Non-native speakers, people with dyslexia, and other learning disabilities are nevertheless judged by their written materials, as is everyone else. I know this from serving on grant panels and search committees: all you have to do is misspell a word, and your application gets garbaged. I don't think it does students any good to be told that their mistakes are OK. In the real world, they're not.

If you want to discuss your teaching methods for ESL or dyslexic students, please start another thread. That's not what this thread is about.

The Fiona 

In my experience, non-native speakers are actually a lot less likely to make these kinds of errors. They know they're at a disadvantage and they double- and triple-check their spelling before turning a paper in. Just my two cents.

[femmawatts]

I think LarryC and others have explained well why it's important, and in fact a teaching moment, to get students who have the book in front of them to follow directions. That's also true of students with disabilities, whose application letters are going to get the same rejections as anyone else.

If we don't teach students to follow directions and use the spell check, they really never will. This is often the last chance to tell them that such things matter.

The Fiona

Spell check doesn't always work for dyslexic learners http://www.dyslexic.com/spell-checker-accuracy

Probably the best solution to this problem is for the ADA to make copy editors made available to dyslexic people, but it isn't very likely that anything of that sort will happen in the near future.  Also, you haven't said much about non-native speakers, what is the proper way to help these students become more proficient in English?  Why are your methods preferable, or the most helpful?

Non-native speakers, people with dyslexia, and other learning disabilities are nevertheless judged by their written materials, as is everyone else. I know this from serving on grant panels and search committees: all you have to do is misspell a word, and your application gets garbaged. I don't think it does students any good to be told that their mistakes are OK. In the real world, they're not.

If you want to discuss your teaching methods for ESL or dyslexic students, please start another thread. That's not what this thread is about.

The Fiona 

In my experience, non-native speakers are actually a lot less likely to make these kinds of errors. They know they're at a disadvantage and they double- and triple-check their spelling before turning a paper in. Just my two cents.

That's interesting, I have never noticed that where I teach.  But have a lot of non-native speakers who are here on an exchange for about a year.  At any rate I've never thought that it would be beneficial to turn away papers of students for any sort of error.  I also wouldn't turn a students paper away because she had failed to write an arguable claim, or because her paper was badly organized.  To me refusing to look at student work for such reasons shuts downs potential conversations, but maybe there is something to Fiona's Method that I just don't understand.  I think Fiona is right, this topic does deserve it's own thread.