http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090911/pl_afp/useducationobama
Students buy term papers instead of–gasp–writing their papers themselves! And professors are on to them! This happens in foreign language classes as well as English lit or history, since even an elementary language class syllabus can include a writing assignment.
No, we foreign language teachers don’t enjoy torturing our students (usually)–we want to see if you can communicate in the target language. That means putting ideas together and expressing some original thoughts. I know that it’s frustrating because you can express yourself so much better in English. It becomes frustrating (ok, painful) for me when you try to write the essay first and then translate it into the second language.
Even worse is when you use a translation program or pay someone to do it for you. First of all, if you’ve only covered the present tense and your essay includes the past, future and some perfect tenses, it raises a red flag. Second, if you normally talk like “hey man, how’s it goin’?” in class and turn in an essay written in a very formal tone, I’m going to scrutinize it very carefully and compare it to your previous work. (Hey, I’m not trying to deny you your street cred, I just want make sure that you put your time, not your money, into your paper.)
If your issue is that you would rather be out partying than doing an assignment, you deserve to get an ‘F’. But if you want to show what you have learned, you need to do it yourself. I enjoy reading my students’ essays, even if the language is simple, as long as the content is genuine.
