E for Effort? (+ extensive pedagogical/sociological procrastination babble since I'm supposed to be working on a midterm)

You be the judge.

Re: Student whom we'll call Parker is what we used to refer to in TA days as an NFFA. Language learning guidelines having various labels for various amounts of prowess, one of the lowest is called "No Functional Ability." We of course added the extra F, which I'm sure you can decipher. Mind, we did not do this to laugh at them; as I've said before, some people really can't get foreign languages and I appreciate that difficulty, seriously. As linguists we just liked how it sounded with the extra F plus it was fun to juxtapose the vulgar with the clinical (give me a break - we were language nerds), plus it was an economical way to show that a student's problems extended far beyond the norm...

So, I have nothing against this student, especially not aptitude-wise, and in fact he has taken advantage of office hours a couple of times in the past where he actually wanted to go over something... Which is probably why the eyeroll factor here was increased on my part.

Yesterday in class Parker dutifully writes down verbatim the list of essential grammar areas that I told them would be on tomorrow's midterm... After class he urgently makes an appointment to come and review with me at 2pm. Because of previous visits I naturally assumed he wanted to look over a bunch of stuff for the test. I steeled myself because of his NFFAness, not because I don't like to deal with such students, but because it can be rather labor-intensive; my brainstorming cells get an extra workout at such times... Altho Parker perhaps is only NFFA, because in the past the light bulb has come on in less time and effort than I originally expected based on his class performance (my unofficial diagnosis is that with him it's more a problem with class distraction and needing to see it one on one for it to sink in rather than solely a language block).

Parker arrives at my office at the scheduled time and I ask, "OK, what did you want to work on together?" at which point Parker gets out his notebook, shows me the list of items he had written down in class, saying, "I just wanted to make sure I have all the important stuff down here."

Um, yup. "You're all set; did you want to review?"
"No, that's cool."

OK, well, glad I could help, thanks for stopping by. (Frankly I wasn't in the least disappointed as I had plenty of work to do, just rather dumbfounded.)

Whatever. This entry is a sigh and a shake of the head rather than a true gripe.

For the record (and there's a paper in here somewhere if I still did that sort of thing and gave that big a shit) I'm finding more and more NFFAs in the crop here (truly it is a marked difference in only a medium amount of comparison time I feel: 18 years) and suspect it's a reflection on how they're being taught to process stuff nowadays, plus perhaps attention span in general... maybe even telling as regards technology and how it has affected our absorption and thinking skills, yadda yadda yadda? Yeah well, I didn't say it was anything more than a zygote theory talking out my arse so YOU go do the research - you can interview me if you want.