Week 10

The highlight for me this week was collecting the final drafts of essay 1 and then grading them. I say highlight, not because it was such a pleasant experience but rather because it was "momentous". In other words this is the first big grade that I will give students although this is now week 10. It might be better for students if, because we are 2/3rds of the way through the course, they had already been allocated 2/3rds of their grades. However, with such a lot of input required early on, all the grades are announced only in the last 1/3rd of the course. However, within the next couple of weeks students should receive almost half their grades and hopefully that will help to motivate them for the final push to the end. We have another week long holiday coming up but I'm afraid, unless we are extremely well organized, most of us will need to do some work during it. Just before the break students will do the in-class writing assignment, which I will then have the pleasure of grading and students will have the deadline for the first draft of their second essay shortly after the break and so unless they succeed in finishing it way in advance, they will also need to consider doing at least a little work over the Bayram.

I haven't fully finished grading the essays yet but again there were no major surprises. Most students appear to have made a genuine effort and were very careful in editing. I wonder if this was because of all my threats or are they normally this careful?

As students handed in their final drafts of essay 1, I felt it was my opportunity to slip in a couple of lessons not directly related to either essay 1 or essay 2. Therefore the lessons this week were focused on the issues of plagiarism and the fact that vocabulary learning is a life-long process. I know students won't be pleased when early next week I start talking about essay 2 and assign work for that. Many in their last blogs commented on feeling the need for a bit of breathing space between assignments but I'm afraid with deadlines looming, we must keep going. Yes, I could move deadlines but the semester still must finish on January 9th. With Bayrams, Christmas, New Year etc. everything has been carefully worked out and so students will just have to trust that as much time as is feasible has been allowed for each assignment.