99 Problems but a Thesis ain't one.

I have been struggling with many things in my classes, but finding the thesis hasn't been a problem that I've noticed too much. I'm having more struggle to get them to stop using quotes and to start using the authors name for each idea that the author writes about.

It is slowly getting better, but I have a few students in each class that are not listening when I say that they need to write that the author states these ideas on pretty much every sentence in the summary or else it is their reaction and opinion of the article and not a summary. I've started getting harsher in my grading for these things that we've discussed numerous times already. I'm steeling myself for how much of that I'm going to deal with on the first literature review.

The other issue that is still happening more that I expect is direct quotation from the text. I've explained that a quote can be used to support your point, but since they are not making their own point, then quotes are unneeded and take up too much space in a short summary.

My experiment to show the class an example of a summary that had some problems so that we could correct it in class met with mixed results. I chose a summary that had too much wrong with it, so they didn't even know where to start. Some students, the better ones, got quite a lot out of that experiment, but the ones who needed the help didn't.

Tues. I'm having them each write a 50-75 word summary and we are going to review them as a class for pretty much the whole class period so that they get feedback from their peers rather than just me.