Time for a big deep breath, and maybe a conversation with a genuine kid.
Yes, there are some incredibly lazy kids, some bad apples, and some who are mind-numbingly stupid. There are also a fair number of decent kids who really want to do it right, but don't know how.
I think one barrier I need to overcome is the sense that the students are my opponents. Maybe that comes from my community college days, when the whole point (from the students' point of view) was to extract a passing grade from a reluctant faculty member. Maybe my ego feels challenged when someone tries to pull a fast one on me.
The list of stuff they just don't know is staggering:
- What quotation marks are for.
- How to spell a Latin cliché such as per se ("per say"?)
- Why the English language has other pronouns besides "they" and "you."
- How to actually work a computer.
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Looking at your list of things English students don't know, I can't help but ask, "And how do you teach them that stuff?" When they turn in essays full of mixed constructions and subject/verb disagreements, I find myself in a dilemma. Do I 1) Spend TOO MUCH time responding to their paper, cramming miniscule writing into every inch of white space to try to explain to them what the problem was (in which case, they don't bother to read it anyway), 2) simply correct it myself and not bother explaining (in which case, they learn nothing, except to expect teachers to do it for them), or 3) write the problem (e.g. "mixed") with no explanation and hope they work it out for themselves (in which case they either ignore it completely or, if they're diligent students, try to figure it out but likely fail)? I don't like any of those methods particularly, but I don't see another one. I guess, theoretically, we would teach them ahead of time in class, so they wouldn't make the mistakes in the first place, but there's only time for so much, and when you rush it, most of them don't get it . . . or worse, think they do and then make the same mistakes on the papers anyway.
That's the eternal question of English teaching. It's linked to the question of what, exactly, we're trying to do to them.
Ashland's English 100 students really are disabled in many ways. Some have never actually heard or read standard English. Most have never actually been asked to do anything in high school.
Then there are the few who have good backgrounds, but somehow ran afoul of that incredible writing prompt given to all the prospective freshmen.
My strategy this semester has been to push content. If they don't want to actually say anything, all the grammar in the world won't help them. And if students simply don't care (and some of them really believe that there's no point to college except that we reward them with a good job if they simply sit here long enough), there's honestly nothing I can do.
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