Fuzzy-Headed

While I love my students and I adore my job, sometimes paper grading gets to be a little bit tedious. I just spent the past two hours reading the handwritten paragraphs my writing students turned in on Wednesday and realizing that I've been really spoiled to have taught developmental writing and not ESL for the past six years. By the time students hit the developmental level, they understand that assignments are supposed to be submitted in typed, MLA formatted, double spaced paragraphs. Given that ESL students are still struggling with prepositions and verb tenses, I'm not going to force them to also learn to type, but it does mean my eyes are having trouble focusing after reading nearly 60 handwritten pages (with varying degrees of neatness). Everything is a bit blurry around the edges right now.

I do have some praise for them too though: all of the paragraphs, no matter how illegible the handwriting, were very well composed. Most of them have mastered the concept of writing a topic sentence and staying on topic. About half of them are even using transitions correctly! It's a really neat feeling to watch my students as they start to understand some of the tougher concepts and move beyond writing simple sentences. I'm very proud of them.

Now, on to grading the tests I gave my speaking and listening students...