Some of my students this semester were unhappy that I made comments about the ways in which they expressed themselves in English. Here are some quotes from assignments I received this semester. I’d welcome input from anyone, but in particular other professors, about the standard of student English in our time, whether I’m too fussy in pointing out such instances, and so on.
Below are just a few sample quotes. What grades would you give to assignments typified by such writing?
“The New Revised Standard Version has The Bible in a little different set up. It has Genesis one separate from Genesis two and three. It says right before Genesis two that Genesis two is “Another Account of the Creation”. This means that this version of The Bible is to have believed that Genesis one creation story is different then the Genesis two and three creation story.”
“Though man was created in the first chapter of Genesis, or the first story of creation, here woman is presented to accompany man on earth. The second story also brings upon another element of the Bible, sin, where the fruit from the middle tree of the Garden of Eden after God had strictly spoken against it. Because of consumption, the punishment is conceiving and giving birth to children, while the man’s punishment is the hardships of work.”
“I think that the commandments should not be allowed into a government building because that would refute the freedom of religion for every citizen.”
“There is a theory that Jesus was on Earth before his birth in Bethlehem. Some believe that he had been on Earth before as a great person and was reincarnated in order to re-live his wisdom. The other part of this theory is that until his birth as a human, he had lived on Earth in spirit. These theories are based off of a field of study called Christology.”
“There are two distinctive sides with very strong opinions, and perhaps other groups of people who have opinions that are somewhere in between the beliefs of the other two groups. Valid statements can be found for any of the various sides, but some of the arguments are more prominent than others.”