Seminary students who don't write...

Please send this to all theological seminaries within the Reformed camp.

Taken from Work Made For Hire rule, Copyright Act of 1976:

"If a work is created by an independent contractor (that is, someone who is not an employee under the general common law of agency), then the work is a specially ordered or commissioned work, and part 2 of the statutory definition applies. Such a work can be a work made for hire only if both of the following conditions are met: (1) it comes within one of the nine categories of works listed in part 2 of the definition and (2) there is a written agreement between the parties specifying that the work is a work made for hire."

The list of 9 categories:

1. as a part of a motion picture

2. as a part of other audiovisual work,

3. as a translation,

4. as a supplementary work,

5. as a compilation,

6. as an instructional text,

7. as a test,

8. as answer material for a test, or

9. as an atlas

I would think the Work Made For Hire rule renders the subcontracted work ("cheating") as being assigned to the student receiving such services :)

I read this article with interest sparked partly by my involvement with my daughters' writing in high school and college.

From four to six years with each daughter, I'd take their essays, term papers, end-of-semester research papers, and under-graduate and graduate theses and edit them. Email made this easy to do: they'd email me their papers; I'd edit them, then return them -- one with the edits layered into the original text (where possible); one an editorial rewrite.

I would not compose their papers de novo, of course. In a many cses I had no idea about the factual truth of anything alleged in the papers, nor about the quality or accuracy of the research reported in them.

However, I DID know what bad writing looked like. And, so, I'd go through their papers, re-writing sentences that were clunky, confusing, or sophomoric. I'd rearrange sentences in paragraphs. I'd direct that various segments or sequences of sections in a lengthy paper be re-arranged.

The greatest compliment offered to me by one daughter was this: "I'd give Dad my paper, and he'd hand it back to me with half of it missing."

Their writing improved. Slowly at first, but eventually they caught on how to compose tight, dense, efficient, and powerful prose. It took an investment in coaching that I do not think can be provided by public education.

Along the way, of course, a lot of what they got an "A" on was ... what? My work? Not entirely, of course. But, the earlier efforts were definately partnerships!

For what it's worth, their teachers in high school trained them to write horrid prose. I had to unteach almost everything they heard in those classes.

I had a prof in college who would get so upset about the bad grammar in sermons that he would diagram the sentences in his mind during church. The sad truth is that writing is not a past time, it is a discipline that must be embarked on like a surgery, with planning and precision. Since we live in a society in which planning and discipline are dirty words, and ease and pleasure are the highest good, unless people educate their child to have respect for the written word, to practice writing on a regular basis, and to accept that criticism is going to happen in life,even in something as simple as an edited paper,and how to handle it, we will have no further generations of literature. Oh, wait, Oprah will still have her "Book Club". Whew!

We will however, have a generation of students who write things like this gem I read in my grading this week. Keep in mind this is a college class, and the assignment is a compare and contrast essay. This is my student's differentiation between public and private schools. "You should send your kids to the school that best fits their needs. For instance, if your child likes sports, they should go to public school. If they like to read, and want to learn, they should go to private school." What a well-developed thesis?!?

I read the article too, and was shocked. Then I realized that the author is a self-confessed liar and cheat, so maybe what he's saying in the article isn't 100% true. Don't put too much weight on it!
Cheating is a big problem, but custom written term papers such as he describes are expensive, and are small part of it. Lots more students buy the "ready to wear" essays or simply cut and paste for free from the Internet. That stuff is a lot easier to catch--- if the teacher takes the trouble, which we don't often enough.

Notice in the article how many education graduate students the ghostwriter has for clients. If you can't write well enough to get the degree by yourself then it stands to reason that you aren't in the best position to evaluate the writing of others either.

And, obviously, I did not pay anyone to botch that last sentence in my previous post.

Collin,

Good luck getting your department to agree the that! I was always getting more students, not fewer, thrown at me. You are right about grad school being more intimate, though. Assuming your advisor bothers to read you work, some don't.

There are websites to help, but like Eric said few even try. I was too swamped to try as a overworked visiting prof.

Noted that the article is written by an admitted liar, if even a portion of what he said is true what a sad witness to the Living Word.

Now John, I was hoping that you would point out some significant difference that would enable me to believe that a man who cannot organize his thoughts enough to write would somehow be able to organize his thoughts enough to speak.

As if. Of course, you're right, and I'm depressed, and I also understand why I've heard a lot of sermons that sounded like a chipmunk on speed put them together.

Michael, you are right about what MLJ said. There is a huge difference between spoken language and written language.

Yes, seminary students should be able to write, and yes, they should be honest.

But a larger issue is the fact that seminaries teach that a sermon is nothing but a "paper" or a "talk." That mindset is the bane of a large segment of reformed preaching. Martyn Lloyd-Jones would, in his words, "abominate that."

For Collin and Mr. Papenmeier:

Here is my two-cents worth (which will get you a cup of coffee, when supplemented with an extra $1.83, plus 7% sales tax)

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Collin,

In my experiences reading undergraduate papers, it is very easy to spot those who put in the work required and who have received proper training in writing. The most common indicators I look for are lack of proof reading, improper grammar, and improperly or not citing outside sources.

Typically, those who have not been properly trained will rely on Microsoft to proof read their work. This will be most commonly evidenced by properly spelled words improperly placed. For example, "I here the bells ringing," instead of "I hear the bells ringing." You would think a mistake like this would be caught by the writer but, because proof reading is becoming a neglected art, it frequently is not.

Improper grammar is another indicator of lack of training and lack of care. The most frequent causes of my grading heartburn are inappropriate use of "that", inappropriate use of the apostrophe, and subject-object disagreement. The majority of undergraduate students - even at the senior level - choose to sacrifice proper grammar on the altar of political correctness. Because of this choice, probably heavily weighted as a result of improper training, sentence subject and object, when the same, will not agree in number. For example: "If a person smells freshly baked pie, their mouth will begin to water." In this example, the antecedent (a person) is singular and the pronoun referencing the antecedent (their) is plural. Correct grammar requires a singular pronoun, such as "he", when referencing a singular antecedent. A similar sacrifice of proper grammar is, rather than using "their", using "his or her", which is also grammatically wrong.

Source citations are the next major indicator. "The Google" is also a very helpful tool for uncovering not cited texts. A good rule of thumb is, if it doesn't sound like your student's idea, pick a sentence and type it into Google's search bar. More often than not, your suspicions will be confirmed.

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Doug,

I agree - reading and grading papers does require a large chunk of time as an instructor. I still have not found a good way to do it effectively in a shorter time. For a class of twenty-four students (granted, six did not turn in their assignments), it took me three days to read and assess the mid-term papers (3-5 pages). It took a full 10 days last semester, when the page requirement was 7-10 pages. I also have the sinking feeling that eighty percent of the students do not even read the comments. My suspicion has been confirmed with some of my students, who were enrolled in both semesters of the course.

Despite evidence that students do not read comments on their work, however, my sense of duty tells me I would be cheating them if I simply wrote a grade, without also providing ways to improve, and moved on to the next paper.

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That was my two-cents worth. Take it as you will.

Respectfully,
Jim Hogue

>But a larger issue is the fact that seminaries teach that a sermon is nothing but a "paper" or a talk....Martyn Lloyd-Jones would, in his words, "abominate that."

I wholeheartedly agree. To your point, Lloyd-Jones, as I recall, would always write out a manuscript but never preached from it.

Some thoughts before I disappear into the kitchen for Thanksgiving Day cooking...

(1) When our rector preaches, he speaks without notes or a written sermon. However, even though he doesn't like to write, his articles for our church newsletter are very well-written, in content, clarity, and grammar.

(2) This isn't unique to Ohio, but our community colleges and possibly some other state colleges must offer a slew of "developmental" courses in math, English, social science, etc., before incoming freshmen can handle college work. We pay state taxes for this remedial education after the local taxes and state aid we pay public schools for what they should have done in the first place. Hopefully, most seminarians can start college or university without remedial ed!

(3) Building on what Carol said, a few years ago the Columbus, OH Yellow Pages didn't catch an embarrassing typo in an ad for a semi-private golf club. The Yellow Pages left out a letter in the 6-letter word beginning with "p" that meant the club let non-members play golf there.

(4) My husband teaches in a selective liberal arts college. He's not aware of students buying papers, but he's seen suspicious examples of students copying large parts of each other's papers, probably copying sections of books, journals, or web articles and passing it off as their own work. For freshmen, at least, sometimes it's hard to prove whether they just don't know how to footnote quotes probably (or paraphrase from a source) or whether they are deliberately plagiarizing, because they really might not have been taught properly. But after that, they should know and it still happens.

Sue -- Re your point #3: I have seen this error in print many times, and as copy editor, I recommend the following preventive measure: If you know that you intend to have the word “public” in the document, do a “search and replace” -- i.e., search for the wrong word and replace it with the correct word. A similar error that I have seen many times (once, even, in a major headline in a medical journal) is “heath” for “health.” As with your example, the letter “l” is easy to leave out, and because it’s a narrow letter, its absence is easy to miss when proofreading. And, the spell check will not help, because the wrong word is a legitimate word.

Another application of this idea: with the Christmas season now here, in proofreading, say, the program for a Christmas pageant, do a search for the word “angle,” and replace it with “angel.”

I have also used the “search and replace” feature to change double spaces after periods to single spaces, and to remove inadvertent double spaces between words.

Carol, your last comment made me laugh. I use search and replace to change a single space between sentences to a double space between sentences on manuscripts that I edit!

Either is correct.

I understand that French spacing is now preferred, but I am not sure this makes English spacing incorrect. It is certainly easier to read prose in which the sentences are double spaced following a full stop. I am probably merely an archaic dinosaur, pardon the redundancy.