English paper graded far too harshly?

Hi,

I got an English essay back today and was horrified to see I'd received a D for my paper. Up until this point I have been recieving A's and B's quite consistently in my coursework so needless to say I had expected a better mark.

The issue isn't really so much that I got a D or even that I don't think I desereved a D its more that they have provided very little feeeback. I have been told I have a weak introduction, had one instance of parenthesis added and had a few commas added. The rest of my essay is peppered with ticks and no other annotations.

I am so confused as to exactly how this grade has been reached. The marking guide says that a D shows little to no understanding but they've written that I show clear understanding of the subject matter. I emailed my tutor who replied saying that I was a brilliant student but admitted they graded harshly however on the feedback form I've been marked down for spelling when there are no spelling errors in my essay (i have had 4 friends and myself check it over).

I have requested a meeting with my tutor but i just wondered if unfair and humilating grades are a common theme of university life? I haven't felt this disappointed, humilated and just down right depressed since I was in primary school.

Hi,

I got an English essay back today and was horrified to see I'd received a D for my paper. Up until this point I have been recieving A's and B's quite consistently in my coursework so needless to say I had expected a better mark.

The issue isn't really so much that I got a D or even that I don't think I desereved a D its more that they have provided very little feeeback. I have been told I have a weak introduction, had one instance of parenthesis added and had a few commas added. The rest of my essay is peppered with ticks and no other annotations.

I am so confused as to exactly how this grade has been reached. The marking guide says that a D shows little to no understanding but they've written that I show clear understanding of the subject matter. I emailed my tutor who replied saying that I was a brilliant student but admitted they graded harshly however on the feedback form I've been marked down for spelling when there are no spelling errors in my essay (i have had 4 friends and myself check it over).

I have requested a meeting with my tutor but i just wondered if unfair and humilating grades are a common theme of university life? I haven't felt this disappointed, humilated and just down right depressed since I was in primary school.

Can relate to this so much right now! I got an essay back a couple days ago which was a C and I was pretty down about that because I had worked a lot harder for this one than my last one and yet have dropped a grade! Whilst I understand where my tutor is coming from with some of her comments I don't quite understand some of it - I had discussed things which had came up in the lectures and put ideas which the lecturers had said and my tutor said that these were wrong. Also have had a lot of lectures where they talk about the author's life and any detail I wrote about that within my essay my tutor said I should avoid these details.. rather confused as to why we get whole lectures about it if we shouldn't be mentioning it!!!

The boundaries between real life and fiction are usually difficult to identify. Details about authors' personal experiences are often helpful in understanding works, but really: how far should you be looking for an expression of their experiences within the fiction they write? I think most works that are successfully imagined tend not to need colouration from the author's experiences, but unless you know a bit about the author, how can you be sure?

As a general rule, most questions will not be about the author, so any mention of him/her in your essay should be limited to a small portion of the introduction, and perhaps a sprinkling here and there throughout. You should definitely aim to use no more than 10% of your word count referring to the author's life.