NEED SOME MAJOR HELP WITH RESEARCH PAPER WRITING

[1Q84]

My advice is, just don't do it. I don't know if you need a job, I don't know if you need funding, but you don't need a PhD. 2 years of B grades in an MA program makes you uncompetitive for virtually any PhD program. Frankly, even, your grades aren't even the deciding factor; that you are unable to, for whatever reason, construct an A-grade essay after 18 years of education is the kiss of death. You should be able to do this consistently come undergrad.

Maybe you will be a great high school teacher or novelist or whatever you want to be. Maybe you will continue to enjoy writing essays. But professional scholarship is not for you.

 

I wish this kind of "I'm a bitter graduate student sent here from the future to save you" advice would just go away.

 

I can understand venting your bile when a poster here is questioning his or her drive to consider/begin/complete their Ph.D. programs (misery loves company, right?) but this was not the case for OP. Your post was useless and completely unwarranted.

 

Edit: Even though, as folks are saying below, OP has expressed doubts about graduate school in other posts, ED didn't actually address those concerns at all but instead chose to speak condescendingly to OP's abilities. Still pretty gross.

Edited July 6, 2015 by 1Q84

[knp]

At first I wondered whether ED's post was too harsh, although I didn't say anything because I loathe internet fights. Then, however, I did a forum search for Francophile1's posts. It turns out that Francophile1 has been posting topics about their confusion and difficulties with what they want to do regarding graduate school for about a year and a half (I didn't go back any further), and that ED has posted helpful, kind things on a good number of those topics. For those thinking there was too much being read into the original post, I'm guessing that's because of the longer forum history here. OP has often wondered here whether they should get a second masters, or which of three or four disciplines' PhDs they should apply for, and has been posting about consistently struggling in this master's for about a year. In that context—and I say this as someone who is currently still working out of school because I need to prod my jumbled grad school ideas into coalescing—the advice that they might need some more time to think about what academic path, if any, is right for them, seems right, if not very helpfully delivered. I thought unræd's take on it, that these struggles could mean that OP has not yet found the best match with what they want to study, seemed useful. It could be just a writing problem, which is what I responded to with my original post. On the other hand, it could be a bigger question of what the OP wants to study, like I am dealing with in my own life right this minute.

[unræd]

I'm out of up votes (again), but that is in fact exactly where I was coming from. I understand the desire to restrict ourselves to the warrant in the original post, which is why I framed my initial response in terms of finding research topics that the OP finds interesting, that, by virtue of their own inherent fascination, drive the OP to explore them and then write about them. I'd never say not to pursue graduate study, period, full stop--who the hell am I, and what the hell do I know? (My username means "bad advice," and I chose it for a reason.)

 

But I also think it'd be disingenuous not to acknowledge that the OP has made it clear in the past that while they're very passionate about French as a language, literary study (which is the purpose of most national language PhD programs unless they have a linguistics track) might not really be something they care about or enjoy, and that that might then have some bearing on why they're not producing the research/writing they might like.

Edited July 6, 2015 by unræd

[heliogabalus]

"Maybe you will be a great high school teacher or novelist or whatever you want to be."

 

Great high school teachers and novelists should be excellent writers too, in my opinion. I'm afraid high school teachers often aren't good writers, but students usually spend more time learning to write from them than college professors.

 

The best writing guide I've read--it did wonders for me as a writer--is Writing With Style by John Trimble. It's pricy, so you may want to get a used copy/older edition (they might be better, actually), but it is more than worth it. Whether you go on to get a PhD or just write emails, it's worth becoming a good writer.

[unræd]

Edit: Even though, as folks are saying below, OP has expressed doubts about graduate school in other posts, ED didn't actually address those concerns at all but instead chose to speak condescendingly to OP's abilities. Still pretty gross.

 

Agreed. And setting aside everything else, there's been some very good advice here on writing research papers, from many quarters. That's a conversation worth continuing, for the OP and for others!

 

And while I also get really tired of "I'm a bitter graduate student sent here from the future to save you," can't we all agree it'd make a hella good movie?

[bhr]

In an effort to address the original question, I have two recommendations. The first depends on your program, but you should try to join/form a writing group that can work with you to provide feedback on your writing.

 

The second suggestion I have for the OP, or anyone under-performing on papers, is to go to the writing center at your university. Go at least once, with feedback, prompts, and whatever draft you have, and work with an experienced tutor who can help you better address the feedback you are getting.

 

The big thing here is to understand where you are being let down by your process. Do you have peer reviewers? Do you draft and revise? Is the problem in your research and data, your argument, or your conclusions?

 

Personally, I would put grammar about 10th on the list of things that you need to make sure to address on any paper. I both teach and take classes in writing and rhetoric, and believe that a focus on grammar is reductive and foolish. I mean, obviously, you don't want to have spelling or major punctuation errors, but I find it hard to believe that those sort of errors really mean a letter grade difference at the graduate level anywhere.

[ExponentialDecay]

I am sorry to upset you, rising_star, and I am also surprised that my post didn't garner more downvotes. It was unhelpful and unforgivably rude, coming from a stranger.

That said, I have been following the shitshow behind the Francophone1 account since last year. That doesn't mean I know her situation in detail - but I do know that she is unfocused, apt to take passing fancies for her life's calling a-la Mme Bovary, habitually rude to commenters who answer her threads, and she had been receiving Bs for 2 years already. I don't like bullshit and sometimes I am too vocal about that. However, OP's professors have been gently hinting to OP that PhD scholarship is not her strong point for so long now that I can't not answer their cry for help. Academia is a high risk, low reward scenario for the best of us. If OP's father owns an oil field in Siberia, OP can do whatever she wants. If he does not, OP is about to sink a few more $k down the shitter. Why? I don't care. But why can't I say that this is not a rational passtime? I am not so presumptuous to believe myself able to save OP from ruining her life; at the same time, I do not believe I should be chastised this viciously for pointing out that she will indeed be ruining her life if she goes on with this pipe dream of getting a PhD.

Edited July 6, 2015 by ExponentialDecay

[ἠφανισμένος]

Personally, I would put grammar about 10th on the list of things that you need to make sure to address on any paper. I both teach and take classes in writing and rhetoric, and believe that a focus on grammar is reductive and foolish. I mean, obviously, you don't want to have spelling or major punctuation errors, but I find it hard to believe that those sort of errors really mean a letter grade difference at the graduate level anywhere.

 

Unfortunately, this attitude is not shared by many faculty members who've never seen the research on what effective writing instruction looks like and therefore don't know how to give good feedback.  I have gotten more than one paper back at the graduate level in which the faculty member copy-edited my paper and said nothing, positive or negative, about my actual argument.  Rhet/comp hasn't had as much influence on classics, history, and philosophy as it's had on English.

[dr. t]

I can't speak for your faculty members, but for mine, it isn't about your bad grammar. It's about what your bad grammar implies for the rest of your work. This is what I highlighted above in my dissection of the original post, although it seems certain people's reading comprehension was a bit weak in this regard.

 

Examples from my own field: If you don't have enough attention to detail to put commas where they need to go, what have you overlooked in your critical edition of this important text? If you don't care enough to look up whether it's "who" or "whom", did you really look up that long scribal abbreviation, or did you just shove something that worked in there? And how can I tell without re-doing all of your work?

Edited July 6, 2015 by telkanuru

[ἠφανισμένος]

I can't speak for your faculty members, but for mine, it isn't about your bad grammar. It's about what your bad grammar implies for the rest of your work. This is what I highlighted above in my dissection of the original post, although it seems certain people's reading comprehension was a bit weak in this regard.

 

Examples from my own field: If you don't have enough attention to detail to put commas where they need to go, what have you overlooked in your critical edition of this important text? If you don't care enough to look up whether it's "who" or "whom", did you really look up that long scribal abbreviation, or did you just shove something that worked in there? And how can I tell without re-doing all of your work?

 

I have no quarrel with that.  In fact, I used the same arguments when I taught ESL writing to graduate students, some of whom didn't very much care for the finer points of citation.  At the same time, however, writing feedback should not focus exclusively or even primarily on sentence-level issues.

Edited July 6, 2015 by Petros

[heliogabalus]

"If you don't have enough attention to detail to put commas where they need to go, what have you overlooked in your critical edition of this important text?"

 

Is that really true, though? I've heard this argument before, but I'm a bit skeptical. I can't imagine thinking, "This person doesn't know when to use a semi-colon; I bet they don't know when they're plagiarizing." I'm a huge fan of using proper grammar and punctuation--you don't want to give anyone any reason to discount your writing--but I think the reason for some professors being highly critical of grammar and punctuation is because of something entirely different: classism. As a college professor (especially a lit prof), you are supposed to be the most educated person around in terms of English and writing. By making grammar mistakes you are showing that you did not attend the type of elite schools/programs that concentrate on teaching you when to use who or whom and when to use the subjunctive. It makes sense, but it's also more than a little snobby.

Edited July 6, 2015 by heliogabalus

[dr. t]

I have no quarrel with that.  In fact, I used the same arguments when I taught ESL writing to graduate students, some of whom didn't very much care for the finer points of citation.  At the same time, however, writing feedback should not focus exclusively or even primarily on sentence-level issues.

 

 

I don't disagree.

[dr. t]

"If you don't have enough attention to detail to put commas where they need to go, what have you overlooked in your critical edition of this important text?"

 

Is that really true, though? I've heard this argument before, but I'm a bit skeptical. I can't imagine thinking, "This person doesn't know when to use a semi-colon; I bet they don't know when they're plagiarizing." I'm a huge fan of using proper grammar and punctuation--you don't want to give anyone any reason to discount your writing--but I think the reason for some professors being highly critical of grammar and punctuation is because of something entirely different: classism. As a college professor (especially a lit prof), you are supposed to be the most educated person around in terms of English and writing. By making grammar mistakes you are showing that you did not attend the type of elite schools/programs that concentrate on teaching you when to use who or whom and when to use the subjunctive. It makes sense, but it's also more than a little snobby.

 

Ok, but I've noticed a (non-scientific) correlation between a writer's care over these trivialities and full-on mistakes in their work. I'm also not the only one who has noticed this. And, whether or not it's objectively true, lots of people think it is and will judge your work on it, so get it right.

Edited July 6, 2015 by telkanuru

[ExponentialDecay]

By making grammar mistakes you are showing that you did not attend the type of elite schools/programs that concentrate on teaching you when to use who or whom and when to use the subjunctive.

I haven't been inside a public educational institution since kindergarten, and I testify that this is not the case. Elite schools give you more opportunities to pursue what you want and make those opportunities more readily available, but nobody is chasing after you with a potty chair to make sure that you know vaguely archaic grammatical conventions. The only time I was asked to know the subjunctive was in foreign language classes, as I am sure is the case with all the rest of you. Ah, I lie - I was asked to know the subjunctive and a bunch of other archaic constructions when I attended public night school in order to pass the school state exam in my native country. That was the local school system, though.

Anyway, in my experience, people learn this nitty gritty from extended reading in their free time. That is a function of willpower. Knowing the conventions of the field - of which excellent grammar is one - is essential for a scholar, and that is all I believe telkanaru is saying. Yes, the bar is high. That is because the field is competitive.

[lyonessrampant]

I think there is a lot of good advice in this thread, and instead of echoing the parts I think are most useful, I'm just going to point out one little grammar thing since Telkanuru brought it up (I'm in an English Ph.D. so please forgive the pedantry). The plural of letters and numbers can/should be indicated with an apostrophe, so B's is correct.  I could point you to several textbook-type sources, but for ease, here's a user-friendly Oxford Dictionaries link (go to the bottom of the page): http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/apostrophe. 

 

Back on topic, best of luck to Francophile1 on whatever you decide.  Perhaps take a look also at Gregory Semenza's chapter on writing a seminar paper in Graduate Study for the 21st century, and there are also entries on writing at Vitae and in the Chronicle.  I'd recommend doing a search for writing advice at those websites.

[dr. t]

I think there is a lot of good advice in this thread, and instead of echoing the parts I think are most useful, I'm just going to point out one little grammar thing since Telkanuru brought it up (I'm in an English Ph.D. so please forgive the pedantry). The plural of letters and numbers can/should be indicated with an apostrophe, so B's is correct.  I could point you to several textbook-type sources, but for ease, here's a user-friendly Oxford Dictionaries link (go to the bottom of the page): http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/apostrophe. 

 

I will die on this hill 

[unræd]

Hah! I was wondering if someone was going to bring that up!

 

I didn't at the time, because Chicago (which is what I use) says the apostrophe is used only when giving the plural of lower-case letters (there are many As, and many a's), so to my mind telkanuru's correction of B's would still be appropriate. But: this is an especially fine hair. I only even have any experience with it because I've run into the issue when writing about paleography, but admittedly it's a long time since I've looked. And note that I originally learned the rule (which is not trivial, since it's very necessary when writing about letterforms--is "as" the word, or more than one minuscule "a"?) because an advisor took the time to meticulously correct my copyediting errors in a paper, including that one--complete with a numbered reference to the appropriate paragraph of the CMS.

 

I like seeing red on my papers, including the correction of stray grammatical errors that, yes, are head-slappers once I see them and that I should have caught. It means I'm being trained; it means I'm being made better at what it is I want to do.

Edited July 6, 2015 by unræd

[ProfLorax]

Since we are going way off topic (my favorite pass time!), I wanna respond to bhr's comment about grammar being 10th on the list of priorities. Spoken like a true compositionist! And I agree. But I sometimes think that our field, in its attempt to prioritize ideas over punctuation, forgets that style is an important canon and a rhetorical function. Writing instruction that teaches grammar in isolation? Ineffective. Writing institution that teaches grammar as a stylistic and argumentative strategy? Effective. I have taken some composition pedagogy classes, and they have all been so strongly "we don't teach grammar!" that when I started actually teaching, I had no idea how to approach teaching style. I read telkanura's post less about grammar (this is right and this is wrong) and more about style (academia prefers concise, direct syntax*). (*I don't know if that is universally valid.)

[bhr]

Since we are going way off topic (my favorite pass time!), I wanna respond to bhr's comment about grammar being 10th on the list of priorities. Spoken like a true compositionist! And I agree. But I sometimes think that our field, in it's attempt to priotitize ideas over punctuation, forgets that style is an important canon and a rhetorical function. Writing instruction that teaches grammar in isolation? Ineffective. Writing institution that teaches grammar as a stylistic and argumentative strategy? Effective. I have taken some composition pedagogy classes, and they have all been so strongly "we don't teach grammar!" that when I started actually teaching, I had no idea how to approach teaching style. I read telkanura's post less about grammar (this is right and this is wrong) and more about style (academia prefers concise, direct syntax*). (*I don't know if that is universally valid.)

I think, as a digression, about the comment about how poor grammar, to that poster, indicates that you haven't had the sort of "elite education" that professors expect PhD students to have had prior to enrolling. (Oh my, that sentence was just a mess.) There is a reason, I guess, that composition and rhetoric has found its footing primarily at land grand institutions, rather than the traditional elite private  schools.

Edited July 6, 2015 by bhr

[__________________________]

I think, as a digression, about the comment about how poor grammar, to that poster, indicates that you haven't had the sort of "elite education" that professors expect PhD students to have had prior to enrolling. (Oh my, that sentence was just a mess.) There is a reason, I guess, that composition and rhetoric has found its footing primarily at land grand institutions, rather than the traditional elite private  schools.

I didn't get an elite education by any means, but we still were exercised and tested on grammar throughout my primary and secondary English education. I think that's changing though.  When I taught high school English this past semester, most of them hadn't been specifically given instruction on grammar since late elementary or middle school (these were mostly seniors).  I can't even describe how frustrating it was to read my students' writing.  It actually made me more careful about watching my own grammar and syntax.

 

I have no idea how it is in "elite" schools, but I assume those kids are much better prepared for mature writing in college/grad school.  The schools I went to are even eliminating foreign languages altogether along with grammar requirements in English classes.  If it isn't already classist, it is, unfortunately, not unlikely that it is becoming so.  Having at least some sense proper grammar is, in my mind, very important -- not because I enjoy fancying myself some sort of Samuel Johnson or something, but simply because it maximizes clarity (which is crucial for intricate arguments) and also simply makes people take you more seriously.  Like proflorax said, it's important stylistically to understand how one's own language functions.  

 

Honestly, though, my grammar was shit until I took Latin in college.  I think studying a foreign language and taking a class with a good deal of theory/philosophy are good for exercising those muscles for good, clear writing, as both pursuits really force you to do very careful reading.

 

But I'm just another medievalist throwing in my two cents, and, judging from the other contributions to this thread, we tend to be rather anal retentive about that sort of thing.

 

But bhr, why wouldn't grammar be important in teaching/studying rhetoric and composition?  I don't know much about the field, and sympathize with the idea that "grammarianism" can be elitist and out of place in understanding certain kinds of effective rhetoric, but I don't see what makes proper grammar in itself unimportant.  Or maybe I misunderstood your post because it is written so unclearly  If elite private universities embrace Rhet/Comp less, perhaps it's because they get more undergrad students coming from elite schools that actually taught them how to write properly, which public schools seem to be doing less and less frequently.

 

I know Lit Studies as a field could certainly use some writing tips.  I, for one, find it embarrassing when I see published essays about Derrida or Beckett stumbling over grammar and syntax and making up words that already exist (i.e., misspelling).  I'm sometimes not sure if this is due to an ungainly worship of French theory in translation (i.e., an association of "hard to read" with "intelligent") or compositional laziness, but those essays' ideas tend to be as sloppy as their writing.

Edited July 6, 2015 by mollifiedmolloy

[unræd]

I think, as a digression, about the comment about how poor grammar, to that poster, indicates that you haven't had the sort of "elite education" that professors expect PhD students to have had prior to enrolling. (Oh my, that sentence was just a mess.) There is a reason, I guess, that composition and rhetoric has found its footing primarily at land grand institutions, rather than the traditional elite private  schools.

 

I'm trying to find what poster you mean in your first sentence, and I can't--do you mean heliogabalus?

 

By making grammar mistakes you are showing that you did not attend the type of elite schools/programs that concentrate on teaching you when to use who or whom and when to use the subjunctive. It makes sense, but it's also more than a little snobby.

 

If so, unless I'm very much misreading the context of their post--or misunderstanding the rhetorical thrust of your mention of it--they meant to criticize that idea, right?

 

An aside to the aside: I'm as much of a public school booster as the next guy--I turned down elite private schools to attend a third state school for my PhD in large part because I feel much more comfortable in that setting, and certainly did experience (or felt I experienced, if that distinction holds) the odd moment of pretension on my visits. But I'm also not a huge fan of some of the casual thrashing of "elite, private schools" that is, in its own way, just as snobbish as the image of an Ivy League professor in tweeds curling his nose under his monocle because he doesn't like where you've put your paraphs.

 

Absolutely all of my prior education has been at large, state, land grant institutions with strong (and very strong) rhet comp presences: the University of Minnesota, and Ohio State. And all that instruction has also emphasized that style and message are not discontinuous, and that graduate level research papers are expected to be grammatically correct and largely free of mechanical errors. Surely it does students a disservice to require that, but simultaneously deemphasize its instruction? I think Proflorax's point about the need for grammar not to be fetishized or taught in isolation, but also not overlooked, is well-taken.

 

Edited to add: I see I cross posted with mollifiedmolloy; the schoolmarmish medievalists are out in our full crotchety (and crocheted?) force.

Edited July 6, 2015 by unræd

[Between Fields]

Since we are going way off topic (my favorite pass time!), I wanna respond to bhr's comment about grammar being 10th on the list of priorities. Spoken like a true compositionist! And I agree. But I sometimes think that our field, in it's attempt to priotitize ideas over punctuation, forgets that style is an important canon and a rhetorical function. Writing instruction that teaches grammar in isolation? Ineffective. Writing institution that teaches grammar as a stylistic and argumentative strategy? Effective. I have taken some composition pedagogy classes, and they have all been so strongly "we don't teach grammar!" that when I started actually teaching, I had no idea how to approach teaching style. I read telkanura's post less about grammar (this is right and this is wrong) and more about style (academia prefers concise, direct syntax*). (*I don't know if that is universally valid.)

 

I agree with this. But I would also say that you should get to that 10th priority by the time you're turning in a final draft, and that's based on my experience with rhet/comp faculty who have been very process-centered and interested in student success. Process > product, but... you also have to make a product at some point. Focus on getting your ideas out there and really refine your essential argument--I doubt that OP's problems with grades are related to her grammar, unless this is actually coming through in her papers. A B to me (see later in the post) signifies substantial problems with the paper, at the graduate level.

 

In regard to the OP's initial quandary, though, I do have to agree with some posters who have suggested that B's are a very worrying sign for a prospective PhD student.

 

And I disagree with rising_star's point a few pages back that B's aren't a kiss of death, from a discipline-specific perspective. I've had numerous graduate professors in English tell me that the only grade a graduate student who is going to continue on (in the program or in academia) should be an A. A B+ represents a major issue, on a paper. A regular B represents profound disapproval with a student's work, especially if it turns into a -course- grade, which OP indicates as having received. On a paper, it's a signal to do some major revision and have an in-depth conversation about that professor's expectations. By the time it's on your transcript, though, it's a signal that your professor is advising against further graduate-level work. This may vary from program to program, but the professors who've told this to me have been from a wide range of different institutions.

 

Honestly, OP is being pretty flippant when people are making points that might not be nice to hear, but don't seem to be mean-spirited. ("Of course I don't edit my writing here" is kind of a weird thing to say in a thread that you're asking for writing advice...) That attitude can't be helpful in the conversations she would need to be having with professors to make positive change necessary to improve as a writer. After all, we can give you general writing tips all day, but it's not going to translate to grades. Graduate students need to be very independent when it comes to genre research and thinking about the kinds of writing they need to do to succeed, but the main way you do that in a graduate-level course is to ask the professor what they're looking for and find examples of that genre to work from. It's all very context-specific--context that we can generalize about from our own experiences, but can't provide for you without knowing your actual professor's whims and fancies.

[Between Fields]

I didn't get an elite education by any means, but we still were exercised and tested on grammar throughout my primary and secondary English education. I think that's changing though.  When I taught high school English this past semester, most of them hadn't been specifically given instruction on grammar since late elementary or middle school (these were mostly seniors).  I can't even describe how frustrating it was to read my students' writing.  It actually made me more careful about watching my own grammar and syntax.

 

I have no idea how it is in "elite" schools, but I assume those kids are much better prepared for mature writing in college/grad school.  The schools I went to are even eliminating foreign languages altogether along with grammar requirements in English classes.  If it isn't already classist, it is, unfortunately, not unlikely that it is becoming so.  Having at least some sense proper grammar is, in my mind, very important -- not because I enjoy fancying myself some sort of Samuel Johnson or something, but simply because it maximizes clarity (which is crucial for intricate arguments) and also simply makes people take you more seriously.  Like proflorax said, it's important stylistically to understand how one's own language functions.  

 

Honestly, though, my grammar was shit until I took Latin in college.  I think studying a foreign language and taking a class with a good deal of theory/philosophy are good for exercising those muscles for good, clear writing, as both pursuits really force you to do very careful reading.

 

But I'm just another medievalist throwing in my two cents, and, judging from the other contributions to this thread, we tend to be rather anal retentive about that sort of thing.

 

But bhr, why wouldn't grammar be important in teaching/studying rhetoric and composition?  I don't know much about the field, and sympathize with the idea that "grammarianism" can be elitist and out of place in understanding certain kinds of effective rhetoric, but I don't see what makes proper grammar in itself unimportant.  Or maybe I misunderstood your post because it is written so unclearly  If elite private universities embrace Rhet/Comp less, perhaps it's because they get more undergrad students coming from elite schools that actually taught them how to write properly, which public schools seem to be doing less and less frequently.

 

I know Lit Studies as a field could certainly use some writing tips.  I, for one, find it embarrassing when I see published essays about Derrida or Beckett stumbling over grammar and syntax and making up words that already exist (i.e., misspelling).  I'm sometimes not sure if this is due to an ungainly worship of French theory in translation (i.e., an association of "hard to read" with "intelligent") or compositional laziness, but those essays' ideas tend to be as sloppy as their writing.

 

Sorry to double-post, but this came through after I was done with my other post.

 

There's a lot here, but I'll try to talk about a few things that I thought was important (and take your comment in good faith...). What bhr is mentioning is a long-standing conversation in rhet/comp wherein scholars attempt to find the efficacy of direct grammar instruction. Essentially, 100 years of research has shown that spending time with students and beating grammar into them does not actually produce better writing in the long-term. There are other, better ways of spending class time that make transfer easier and have real impacts on students. The reason that rhetoric and composition doesn't make inroads into the Ivy League is because those schools are generally still heavily-dominated (in their English departments) by literature scholars who don't see the value in this approach, and many other approaches that rhet/comp thinks are valuable.

[Eigen]

To digress further, since this field-specific difference interest me: at my small, regional, land-grant institution, in STEM fields, for junior+ level courses any mistake (including grammar & spelling) was half a grade-level off of a report. Been that way in my field (and many engineering fields) for several generations. This is down a bit from earlier generations- when my mother was in school studying engineering, any spelling or grammar mistake was a grade level off, 3 such mistakes was an automatic failure.

 

The idea being that any mistake, even minor ones, distracts the reader severely from the content of the sentence. 

 

It's still the case as well that you're very likely to get rejections/heavy criticism from any journal you submit to with any grammar & spelling issues- we go through papers with a fine-toothed comb to make sure they're all out before submission. It's amazing how many reviewers will completely miss the intent of a paragraph because they're focusing on a typo in one of the lines, or something that doesn't quite read correctly. 

 

So from that standpoint I'm used to it just being assumed that your grammar and spelling are correct- so rather than 10th on the list, I'm used to it being first. It's not the most important points of the paper, but if it is not correct, the rest suffers immensely. For most of our non-native english speakers in grad school, they're strongly encouraged (or required) to have a native speaker/graduate student in the group check over their writing for structural problems before a lot of the faculty will even look at it.

 

And this is definitely not an "ivy elite" connotation in my field, it's assumed in even quite low-ranked programs.

[__________________________]

Sorry to double-post, but this came through after I was done with my other post.

 

There's a lot here, but I'll try to talk about a few things that I thought was important (and take your comment in good faith...). What bhr is mentioning is a long-standing conversation in rhet/comp wherein scholars attempt to find the efficacy of direct grammar instruction. Essentially, 100 years of research has shown that spending time with students and beating grammar into them does not actually produce better writing in the long-term. There are other, better ways of spending class time that make transfer easier and have real impacts on students. The reason that rhetoric and composition doesn't make inroads into the Ivy League is because those schools are generally still heavily-dominated (in their English departments) by literature scholars who don't see the value in this approach, and many other approaches that rhet/comp thinks are valuable.

Thanks for explaining!  I would be curious to read a little about that research, as what I saw was what appeared to be the elimination of grammar in the high school I taught at (as in, students who were getting good grades in English in years past who literally couldn't put together a coherent sentence).  But I'm not sure whether my experience/observations are typical or representative.