Student Comments

[robinturner]

I've just been looking at some comments students have written in their evaluation of previous courses. Here's one I liked particularly:

"This course didn't teach me anything I didn't know. And the grades were very low."

Now this isn't strictly speaking a contradiction, but it looks like a contradiction waiting to happen.

I also liked this one:

"He does not respect students essays - he writes comments all over them."

Comments

[oblomova.livejournal.com]

Well, if the comments in question are things like "Buy laundry soap," then I guess the student has a point. But as long as you're not writing memos to yourself, I think that may be an, um, unfounded complaint.

On the other hand, if you grade them poorly, you may scar their fragile psyches for life.

classic

[asteriskhere.livejournal.com]

Wow, are you sure you didn't just make those up?

[wabi.livejournal.com]

In the student evaluations from a masters-level Intro to Linguistics class, I had a comment where one of my students said that they had a very hard time understanding my lectures because of my dialect. Now, I was teaching in Arizona, and I am from New Jersey, but I didn't think I had that strong of an accent!

Re: classic

[solri.livejournal.com]

No, they're absolutely genuine.

[springheel-jill.livejournal.com]

I received this comment once in a first year English class:

Q: Did the course encourage you to think critically about larger social issues?

A: Yes. I thought about them, but I still don't care about them.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Now that's what I call critical thinking!