Questions and Answers...

My student, D, looked pretty glum when he walked into class this morning. As soon as class was over, he started talking about all of the corrections he'd made to his paper, and that he was really concerned. So we began talking, and he followed me up to the office. I told him my main concern was founded in the citations. I asked what he thought about the assignment and how he'd found the researching process, and he said that he'd done all his research through the online databases with the exception of a book his friend gave him. I asked which book, and he told me it was the one that he uses as a main source. "How was this book helpful to you?" and he explains how his friend's annotations had helped him through it because his friend was "big into the issue," and how his friend had actually pushed the topic on him knowing that he could help fill him in on the information (less research for my student to do).

AH. This explains much. My student did read the article that he works with (which explains why the article matches its info), but not the book, so he couldn't possibly know the limitations of its information. Laziness. As to mismatched citations: his friend told him where to put the citations... SUPER laziness and irresponsibility.

I asked about the final citations: what does April 28, 2010 mean?
To this, he responded that it was just a typo and that he had 2 works cited and he'd turned in the wrong one: but he'd given me two different works cited sheets - BOTH with the date following each citation, so I pointed that out and asked him what the typo was. He didn't have an answer.

I told him my main concern when I'd read the paper was whether or not these were HIS words, and he swore up and down that he'd written the paper, but he didn't know why he'd put that date after...fishy.


So we talked about the major effects of turning in something like this:
1. How it weakened his voice as a writer: it made him seem irresponsible, sloppy, and possibly dishonest (I now regret such harsh words, but they seemed to hit home...)
2. How it might effect him academically: turning something like that in (knowingly or not) is plagiarism, which is theft, and would definitely result in an F in the course, and possible expulsion from the school.

Then I gave him 2 options for this paper:
1. Research each of the claims he makes in his current paper and present the information in a draft which represents him best as a competent researcher.
2. Write a new paper representing himself as a competent researcher. 

I told him that, as it was, I would not accept the paper because the information was not fully his.

He considered the two, and told me that he didn't want the paper to be a conflict issue, so he should probably write a different one, but he'd e-mail me by the end of today with his final decision.