<p>I am of this mindset:
You definitely ned to know the objective and subjective criteria that is being used to evaluate you. </p>
<p>I also believe that many of these type of questions can be avoided if in addition to the syllabus professors and teachers gave out rubics so that students would know off the bat what kind od works constitute a grade of A, B, C, D, F. </p>
<p>I have had professors and daughter has had teachers that have given 3 grades on a paper; one grade for what you wrote, and a second grade for how you wrote it and a final grade for the paper. There are many people who are great subject matter experts and great researchers, but that does not automatically translate into having a great ability to put those thoughts on paper. This is probably the main reason these types of grades may be necessay. If you professor is asking for a paper in APA or MLA format, no matter how well you know your subject, if you can not correctly site a source, do footnote, endnotes or write a bibliography you are going to get dinged for the format. If a professor is stressing the mechanics of writing as well as your knowledge of the subject that is part of their job and they should not have to back down because the your knowledge of the subject is an A but your grasps on the mechanics are a C which netted you a B paper.</p>
<p>It is not enough to simply know how to be a great expository writer, or do an analysis that demonstrates your critical thinking skills. You must also know the mechanics of writing. </p>
<p>Just because your parents are good writers,and PhD’s doesn’t necessarily make you a good writer by association. </p>
<p>(Do you realize that when you get to the point that when you are writing your master’s thesis or PhD dissertation that depepnding on your reader or advisor , you are turning the project in sections, getting feedback and constantly doing rewrites? So yes, you are literally walked through the process and have a great piece of work to hand in at the end.) </p>
<p>Many people have different writing styles based on the genre of writing they are doing there are some excellent technical writers that write a creative writing peice to save their lives.</p>
<p>It’ s not a fate worse than death to be told that you could benefit from going to a writing lab. I make the suggestion to my daughter all of the time just based on the plain and simple fact that when you put a lot of time in to writing a paper you do not always see your mistakes and need another set of eyes to critique your work. In addition most people write the same way that they speak so even reading the paper out loud to see if it makes sense to you will not always be beneficial in helping you see your mistakes.</p>
<p>It is also not the end of life as we know it if we get a B and in some courses, you are going to have to take your B like a man or a woman put some ketchup on it and eat it.</p>