Tbh I think the sentences that say nothing are more unforgivable than people not being very proficient at spelling, especially about such an interesting and important topic. Like we all make grammatical and spelling mistakes. And as someone else pointed out, at least you know that the students didn't just have a LLM write it for them.

There's a type of person you run into in college where you realize that they think writing is fundamentally a different thing from communicating. Perfectly normal people who could have a normal conversation but think that writing is some sort of alchemy where you combine words and get a grade at the end based on how closely you performed the rituals.

Tbh I think the sentences that say nothing are more unforgivable than people not being very proficient at spelling, especially about such an interesting and important topic. Like we all make grammatical and spelling mistakes. And as someone else pointed out, at least you know that the students didn't just have a LLM write it for them.

My experience has been that missing a minimum word count is treated worse than adding some filler. I guess it makes sense to require a word count from people learning to write but at some point this needs to be unlearned again when people write more than they have to say.

I am more upset by the awful grammar, sentence structure, and spelling primarily because it is so egregious as to indicate a complete lack of proofreading. They cannot have missed all of these if they read through their essay even a single time. I am more forgiving of the inability to communicate because I see that as more of a systemic failure.

I'm honestly doing my best here, I would just have to write an entire new essay just to critique their essay for it to be comprehensive at that would definitely be excessive. I am not trying to injure their ego too much. I have been trying to focus on correcting their use of the passive voice as much as possible and encouraging them to be more specific in certain instances. They have a tendency to be very vague, they sort of gesture towards a concept rather than explaining the purpose of that concept within their essay and I have been doing my best to offer alternative phrases that would better identify that purpose. They similarly struggle with moralizations rather than material analysis which isn't at all uncommon but I really try to offer alternatives where I can. A notable instance involved a reference to Henry Morton Stanley being criticized as a "villain" but the criticism is far more specific than that. It's true than many people have moralized him as a villian but the position of his critics is far better represented as "vehicle of imperial exploitation". To engage in that moralism is lazy and simplifies both the complex individual that was Stanley but also those who critique him. The essay is full of shit like this and if I was to try and correct all of it I would look like a dick who was tearing their paper apart. I also offer sentence restructuring here and there but again, there is just so much.

I want to be more critical but the unfortunate part is that I know these students and the review is not anonymous.

Tbh I think the sentences that say nothing are more unforgivable than people not being very proficient at spelling, especially about such an interesting and important topic. Like we all make grammatical and spelling mistakes. And as someone else pointed out, at least you know that the students didn't just have a LLM write it for them.

Yeah, agree. I can overlook formal deficiencies if the person making them at least cares enough to make a coherent point, and is able to present it clearly. A polished paper with bad argumentation is much harder to read for me than the other way around.