Practical Tips on how to do well
It can happen to anyone. The COVID-19 pandemic impacted the education of many college-bound students, resulting in numerous “deficiencies.” We prefer to think of them as “opportunities lost without fault,” but the punishing word currently used is deficiency.
Add system inequities, and colleges are finding that students are showing up to college courses without a great sense of how to read and write. Their solution has been to put more inbound students in “remedial” reading and writing courses. The courses are now called “developmental” courses. The word developmental is much better since the word remedial implies a lot of fault on the part of the student.
If this is you, separate your feelings from what you need to do to succeed at school and in life from the fact that you are in a developmental writing course. Above all, don’t use ChatGPT on your assignments. If you don’t use the remedial writing class to improve your skills, school will only get harder and harder for you, and you will eventually hit a ceiling where you won’t pass advanced courses.
This blog is about what you might find in a developmental course for writing and how to pass it.
A developmental course exists to help you make up for what you lost in K-12
It’s no surprise that the pandemic derailed education. The shutdowns impacted an entire generation of students. Math, spelling, reading, writing. These are all subjects taught from first grade to the end of high school. Unfortunately, the impact of shutdowns compounded and keeps rolling over year-to-year. As noted above, systemic inequities in the US hit some school districts harder than others. Students of front-line workers or in underfunded school districts have more difficulty making up for lost time.
Now, colleges are dealing with the situation by moving more incoming students into developmental courses or “remedial” education. We advise two things to students. First, it’s not your fault. You didn’t ask for a pandemic. Second, don’t put labels on yourself. Don’t think of yourself as “remedial” or a poor student. It will only make your job harder. Instead, take the opportunity to catch up with your peers. They might have had stay-at-home parents or private tutors.
Why is an AI Detection company telling you not to use ChatGPT but to keep a handy low-cost subscription to our product? Because the same system inequities that kept you from an excellent education will roll over into pre-conceived notions of your skills once you get to college. If a professor thinks you are doing better than they expect, they might scrutinize your work more closely because of their own biases.
Understand the Goal of Your Developmental Course
A developmental course for reading and writing prepares you to read and understand the “main point” of a passage. Then, they draw you into writing a conclusion about that main point, how you felt about it, and what supporting points you could develop for your feelings. Check out our blog on the structure of a research paper.
Your developmental course for writing or reading may discuss the point of your writing, how you summarize the passage, whether they reflect your lived experience, and why you feel as you feel. You may have to write these points into a personal essay on your reading.
The developmental course will expose you to all different types of readings. Chapters from novels, poems, scientific passages, business articles, etc.. The curriculum exposes you to various kinds of writing. Focus on understanding what the writing says, what you think, and why. Your professor’s assignments will ask you to write a lot about your opinion on the main point. You must demonstrate your own perspective. This is where they want you to develop. You must understand the main point, summarize it, and write about whether you agree or disagree.
Continue to run all your original writing through our AI Detector
Educators are designing developmental courses thoughtfully, with engaging readings and varied assignments. Unlike in the past, you probably won’t spend all your time on grammar workbooks. We assume success and sincerity over cheating (we have an optimistic view), so we believe you will complee your courses with sincerity and improve your writing. Unfortunately, with the number of blogs we’ve written where educators assume the very worst and that colleges STILL don’t have a uniform policy, you WILL be at the professor’s mercy if they think you’ve improved too much.
Want to know how you can avoid that? Absolutely don’t use ChatGPT on your developmental courses. Develop as they intend you to do, succeed, and just run a quick scan so you can turn in your paper without stress. Our cheapest plan gives you a 100 reports and you can roll over whatever you don’t use as long as you keep your plan active.