 Wysłany: Wto 21:27, 10 Gru 2013 Temat postu: The Rhetoric of the |
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| The Rhetoric of the
Occasionally, these letters can take on the tone of the lofty, condescending professor of old, talking down to a population that may or may not be paying attention anyhow. Actually, the real audience of these letters, all of them, doesn seem to be written to the "dear student," but to the dear colleagues, who can respond with pity, sympathy or disagreement. Otherwise, I click away from the article and read something else. The above is the long way into talking about the "Dear Plagiarist" article that ran a few days ago in the IHE. When I saw the title, "Dear Plagiarist," my first reaction was that the reader was going to be in for one of those bilesoaked outbursts in which not much is accomplished except the venting of an understandably frustrated college professor. Yes,[url=http://www.sport.fr/smartphones/moncler.asp]moncler homme[/url], the title caught my attention, but until Nels tweeted that the essay was worth reading, I was put off enough by the "j title to skip it altogether. The very title suggests that the student has transgressed beyond redemption, though oddly, to put that label on the student also suggests that both student and act have considerable power, which several commentors show can be the case. Couser "dear student" is someone who seemed to avoid reading the assignment instructions or paying attention in class, and who flunked the paper by using Spark Notes to think for herthough she did paraphrase the work. Based on his refutations, it doesn sound like he had simply given a terse assignment and expected the students to forage for themselves in the great forest of the humanities. Instead, it sounds like he gave assignments and readings that would have lead anyone paying attention to be able to at least try writing a response. The truth is, we don know what lead to the student behavior, and the overall tone seems to be one of exasperation with her. I been there, and I bet you have, too. And I sure I not the only professor to have been impressed with the energy, intelligence and creativity some students put into pleading their cases, from our offices all the up the chain. But the questions remainwhy didn the student just write the paper? And why was it easier not to? And are we surprised that TurnitIn didn catch it? And why did the student bother to paraphrase? And what goes on institutionally that allows students to cheat on papers and get by with it because their untenured or parttime instructors rightfully fear that the poor grade will make said instructors look bad? Raising these questions, listening to the conversations that bring in answers from all kinds of perspectives and readings (like Pluralizing Plagiarism,for example)seem to be the most useful response we can enact when reading any essay/letter of this genre, which seems,on the surface to be an individual cry for help, but which carries undercurrents of an ongoing professional need to critique a situation that occurs time and again. |
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