Friday, February 09, 2007

Diffident Vamping of the Bad Parts

The first batch of essays is always an experience. Would one of you please tell me what kind of experience I'm having? This is one of the papers, and the others are similar in structure. It's supposed to be a comparison/contrast paper.

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Two Diffident Jobs

____ and _______ both deal with people but in very diffident way. ____ deal with intertainment and _____ with health care taking of the elderly. _____ make television, VCR, stereo and many more things with plugs. Dealing mostly television, they range from 19 inches up to 80 inches, the bigger not sticking out as much. There the Television were put together then sent through a testesing process. When something found wrong than set to repair person to fix the set by vamping the bad part. When check out okay then sent to a touch person to touch for bad places on set. If bad places touch fine then sent to be packed tightly in a big box and shipped to diffident store to be sold.

_____ deal with the care a mostly the elderly people called residents. These residents need a lot of care. Families cannot take care of residents at home for diffident reasons. Resident at this time in their lives need a lot of help that they are able to do for their self. Bathing, dressing, some need to be fed and watered, played with. They are nurses to give medicinals or what every need to be done.

_____ and ______ wages are both very good, but health, dentist, vision and also paid for our vacation up to five week. Retirement played for also. They match are four-one K by two percent. ______ we have to pay for all of our insurance but our life. They also match four-one K by one percentage. Vacation we are given so many hours a week.

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I honestly do not know what to do with this essay. I don't even know where to start. I'm not sure there is enough red ink in the world.

More importantly, I don't think red ink is what this sweet lady needs on her paper. It's the first piece of writing she's done since her high school days some forty years ago, and she was SO PROUD when she turned it in. . . quadruple-spaced, and with a font you could read from across the room. She needs, and deserves, encouragement and helpful suggestions, and could someone please tell me how to do it?

It's a college course, people. Remedial College Prep, but still, it's a college course. I have to uphold standards, and when the students go to the next level, they'll be expected to know how to put a paper together. (unlike the public schools, where the students are passed from level to level whether they can prove themselves worthy or not. . . .)

I simply will not wipe that smile off her face with red ink and horrified remarks, but sacre MERDE, what can I do with this thing?

I guess the first thing would be to address the spacing and the font. That would be safe and somewhat neutral.

But what would the next step be? If this lady, and her classmates, were fresh out of high school I would know better how to deal with this kind of writing, but how can I deal with this lady, and all these other students, who are in their forties, fifties, and sixties, who haven't written anything since their sophomore year, right before they dropped out and went to work? Making references to basic grammar and spelling wouldn't work here, because it's been so long since they're studied grammar, writing things such as "adverbial misuse" or "comma splice" just wouldn't make any sense to her.

Rewriting her paper for her wouldn't help her, either.

Advice needed.

Please?