Not Everything Has to be Graded
Evaluating Short Writings
Evaluating Writing
Peer Evaluation Guide
Evaluation Checklists
Sample Checklist

Not Everything Has to be Graded

One way to increase students' writing opportunities without unduly burdening yourself is to use short writings to stimulate class discussion and to prepare for long writings. Some types of short writing include:

• focused timed writing
• microthemes
• journals
• preparatory writings: students prepare for a larger project by writing to clarify the process.

Shorter assignments can be evaluated with different strategies from those used for more formal papers.

Evaluating Short Writings

Shorter assignments, such as those described in "Not Everything Has to be Graded," need not be evaluated as p olished products; they simply help students begin to see the value of writing for clarifying and developing their ideas. To check whether students are writing on the topic of the timed writings, teachers can walk around the room and read over shoulders, ask a few students at random to read theirs aloud, pick up a few to grade or review at random each time, or collect all but read them only to see if most students understand the material.

• Journals can be checked (a few each day or week) simply to see that work is completed.
• Out-of-class short writings can be read for content only: Did the student answer the question correctly, or get the main idea of the chapter?
• Preparatory writings can be read for content only: Do they show that the student is actually working on the assignment and making progress towards its completion?

Few or no comments need be written on any of these writings; teachers can respond with a simple check, plus, or minus, or with a point system. When students turn in extra credit work, engage in personal response writing, or write in journals, the instructor's response might be a +___(points), C/NC (credit, no credit), or a letter grade with comments, such as:

"This really moved our discussion forward. Good beginning. Clarify your ideas in the discussion. I'm not clear how this pertains to the topic."

"+3 Glad you found the film useful for understanding gradualism."

"NC Mark the journal pages you want graded. Feel free to hand it in again (with pages marked) next Friday."

"C+ You gave many hints about the conflict in values between you and your parent, but I remained unsure of its connection with St. Augustine."

When you do grade assignments, remember that you are the expert reader. Teachers' responses as expert readers in their own fields will be the most helpful to students. Every error need not be marked: based on the teacher's goals for a particular assignment, he or she can mark a paper selectively to reflect the student's attainment of those goals. If errors of grammar, punctuation, or mechanics interfere with clear communication, they can be noted simply by circling a few or even by writing an end comment such as, "Your many spelling errors are distracting."

Evaluating Writing

Incorporating ideas from Richard L. Larson's list in Writing in the Academic and Professional Disciplines: A Manual for Faculty. Herbert H. Lehman College (CUNY), 1983.

Establishing Criteria

Criteria for evaluation should emanate from the assignment itself; establish criteria as you design the assignment.

Responding

Instructors comment on student papers for several reasons:

• to show that the instructor has read the paper;
• to indicate strengths of the paper;
• to suggest improvements;
• to explain reasons for the grade.

The form and length of the comments need to be driven by the purpose of the comments and the use that will be made of them. Comments may be written on a checklist, on a separate sheet of paper, or on the student's paper itself.

Tips:

• Evaluate the text holistically, as an entire document that communicates ideas pertaining to your discipline. The success of the paper is then measured by the extent to which the student writer succeeds in convincing you of the validity of his/her knowledge and point of view.
• Some discipline-specific instructors hesitate to respond to students' writing, thinking of responding as grammar-correction. If you have hesitancies, remind yourself what you want to teach the student about your field of study, and respond accordingly.

Types Of Comments

Typical comment forms include marginal and summary comments.

Marginal Comments

Marginal comments are written at the side of the text as annotations. They help point out strengths and weaknesses in argument, ask for clarification, and indicate other views.

Tips:

• Take care to be a teacher rather than a proofreader, editor, or judge.
• Let students know when thinking, style, or organization is especially effective.
• Avoid pinpointing issues of diction and sentence structure that are matters of taste. Do let students know when grammar, spelling, punctuation and word-choice problems interfere with your ability to read the writing.

Summary Comments

Summary comments appear at the end of the paper or on a separate sheet. They help record your overall impression of the paper, establish how successfully the student addressed the assignment, and point out future goals for the student.

Tips:

• Respect the student's paper, remembering that the paper is being commented on, rather than the student him or herself. The student wrote the paper, and, after it is marked, it should still be the student's paper.
• Comment on strengths as well as weaknesses and on how well the student met the challenge of the assignment.

Content Of Responses

The nature of your responses is likely to vary depending upon what you want the students to do with the comments. If you want students to revise their writing, respond with questions and suggestions that will prompt revision. But questions frustrate students if they are attached to a final paper with no option of revision. Instead, consider responding with remarks that will allow students to see strengths and weaknesses for future application. Jokes, sarcasm, and cynicism are best held in check when commenting on papers.

The amount of commenting varies by individual taste, but, generally, less is more. Students are more likely to benefit from a few carefully chosen comments than from a paper reddened with responses. And, of course, if the responses are illegible, the commenting time is wasted.

Even if they provide excellent guidance through their responding to substantive issues in student papers, teachers are often concerned about their responsibility toward papers that have stylistic flaws. Richard Larson suggests that for discipline-specific writing, the key is to make clear to students that the way they write is integral to what they write and that their work will be evaluated accordingly. Students should be made responsible for the care and accuracy with which they prepare papers in academic courses, and should be led to understand that they will not receive credit in these courses unless their writing is careful and precise.

Tips:

Test question: Is the style reasonably clear, free of distracting errors in punctuation and of syntactic features that complicate reading?

• If not, offer this possible comment: "The numerous [whatever problem] distracted me from your argument."
• Keep in mind that your correcting stylistic faults seldom changes students' writing.
• If you need to point out student style flaws, consider marking one paragraph and having the student edit the rest of the paper marking problem areas with checks in the margin, letting the student edit. Mark problematic paper with "read to here," and return it for revision.

Grading

Holistic Grading

Holistic grading involves looking at the paper as an entire document instead of distinguishing content from form. Criteria state what qualities constitute an A, B, C, etc. Like the evaluation criteria, the best time to establish this criteria is prior to grading. Even if you are working from a departmental standard, it is helpful to articulate for yourself what constitutes each letter grade. Writing out your understanding of the criteria insures consistency and provides a useful point of discussion in student conferences.

Some people make a list of the qualities that comprise crucial grading criteria. Here, for example, is what one teacher defined as qualities necessary for an "A" paper: assignment--exceeds expectations; style--clear, concise, direct; control--confident.

This list is useful, but some people are tempted to separate these qualities instead of treating them as collectively necessary for a successful paper. They prefer to write out a description of the paper in a brief paragraph. For example, these qualities in paragraph form might look like this:

• A. This paper is insightful. It addresses the assignment in a way that indicates your comprehension of and control over the assignment itself as well as an understanding of the underlying issues. The message is communicated clearly, concisely, and directly. There is a confidence in this writing.

• Working with this ideal, the remaining paragraph descriptions easily fall into place. Just adjust descriptive words as the emphasized words and phrases in the following examples illustrate. The tone can also be adjusted to be more accessible to students:
• B. The paper meets and, at times, exceeds the basic requirements of the assignment. The paper indicates that you are beginning, at times, to think through and deal with major ideas in the assignment. The message is communicated with generally effective clarity, directness, and conciseness. Some unevenness in writing may be apparent.
• C. While the paper offers little insight into the greater issues of the assignment, it meets the basic requirements. The message, for the most part, is reasonably clear, concise, and direct, although there may be unevenness in the writing.
• D. The basic requirements of the assignment are partially met; however, additional revision is necessary if you are to communicate the message clearly. There is considerable unevenness in the writing.
• F. The assignment's basic requirements are met only marginally or are not met at all. The writing is not clear, concise, or direct.

Working from such criteria will help you assign letter grades in a consistent fashion, especially if you combine this strategy with stacking papers into A, B, C, etc. piles prior to assigning letter grades. As you flip through the piles, ask: Are these papers similar enough in quality that they should all be in the same pile? This procedure takes a few more minutes, but it improves internal consistency on grades tremendously.

Grading With Checklists

Evaluation sheets or checklists permit:

• students to use a checklist handed out with the assignment as a guide to edit their papers;
• teachers to use checklists for debriefing with a student on an assignment.

However, note that some graders find segmenting the paper into specific items counter to their holistic understanding of writing. Others dislike using points that may add up to less or more than the grade the paper seems to merit.

Grading Short Writings

When writing is used to generate discussion, as in the case of in-class writings or microthemes, a simple informal method of evaluation is very effective. "Evaluating Short Writings" discusses grading shorter writing assignments.

Peer Evaluation Guide

Benefits of Peer Evaluations

• Students get feedback on the assignment before they turn it into the instructor.
• Reading another's paper and responding to it helps students recognize the strengths and weaknesses of their own writing.
• Students develop a greater sense of and sensitivity to audience.
• Exchanging drafts with peers helps students develop a greater critical sense of what works and what doesn't--in this particular assignment and in writing in general.
• Students learn new information from their peers' papers.

The role of the peer evaluator is to be an objective reader, to tell the writer how the paper can be improved.

Facilitating Effective Peer Response

When designing a peer evaluation workshop, keep the following suggestions in mind:

1. Etiquette is an important issue when evaluating one's peers. Students should be encouraged to be honest but polite. The only way for an evaluation to be successful is if it is an honest evaluation. Students should be reminded that while their feedback should never be rude, their peers will only learn from honest feedback.
2. Evaluators cannot always describe precisely what works and what doesn't work in a paper. Sometimes, students are reluctant to comment because they don't feel qualified to explain why some element of a paper seems especially effective or especially ineffective. Reassure students that it is appropriate (and desirable) for them to tell their peers when some part of a paper is or isn't working, even if they can't explain why. That will at least alert the writer to a potential problem or writing strength.
3. Students should be reminded to point out both strengths and weaknesses in the papers they evaluate. Workshop materials should be designed based upon the specific assignment, as well as the grading checklist for the assignment (if one is being used). The question that should guide students through the evaluation is: How clearly and effectively does the paper fulfill the guidelines established by the assignment (and the checklist)?
4. Encourage students to make suggestions for improvements to the paper. Pointing out weaknesses is good, but their evaluations will be more effective if they can suggest some strategies for improvement. Again, the assignment should be used as a guide for suggestions.

Students' Use of Peer Evaluations

It is important to remind students that they have to decide whether and how they will incorporate their peers' suggestions into their papers. They can accept or reject the advice that they are given, and ultimately, each individual writer is responsible for his or her final document. Students should not blindly accept all of the advice given them by their peers; rather, they should weigh all suggestions against the requirements of the assignment and their own sense of their work. Most students will find that they use some of their peers' remarks and disregard others.

Evaluation Checklists

Some instructors find evaluation checklists a useful tool in evaluating student essays. For many instructors, a checklist that segments the paper into its component parts allows consistency and efficiency in grading; the overall evaluation of the paper is the sum of the evaluation of each of its parts. Furthermore, checklists can ensure that students are informed about the evaluation process, so that they may more effectively write and revise their papers. Checklists may also be useful for student-instructor debriefing on an assignment because they help establish mutual understanding between student and teacher.

Checklists may take a number of forms, from a list assigning values to the components of a paper, to one that just lists components, allowing space for instructor comments. Whatever checklist is used should emanate from the assignment given, and it should be distributed to students when the assignment is distributed, so that they may use it as a tool to help guide their writing processes.

Many instructors do not like checklists, preferring instead to grade holistically, evaluating the success of the paper as a whole. Some evaluators find that the values they assign to each part do not add up to what they believe the overall evaluation of the paper should be.

Consider these pros and cons along with your natural grading prefernces as you decide what grading approach to use. Whatever approach you adopt will work well if you believe in it, if the grading criteria are driven by the course, if they are arrived at when the assignment is designed, and if they are communicated to the students at the time they receive the assignment.

Sample Checklist

This checklist is useful both for students and for instructors. Students may use it as they write their papers; instructors may use it to evaluate papers.

Content

The paper

• Addresses the topic or question.
• Is factually accurate.
• Accurately presents assigned author's or authors' viewpoint(s).
• Provides sufficient textual evidence to support your argument.

Structure

The introduction

• Is present in the paper.
• Includes a clearly stated thesis.
• Indicates how the paper is organized.

The body

• Contains a complete discussion and support.

Each paragraph

• Includes a topic sentence.
• Develops one main idea.
• Has a transition sentence linking it to the next paragraph.

The conclusion

• Recaps the thesis statement and the essay's main points.
• Presents a closing statement of the writer's position.

Organization and Development

The entire composition

• Is logically organized.
• Has a solid argument with supporting evidence.

Main points

• Are relevant to the thesis statement.
• Are discussed without repetition.
• Are easy to locate.

Style

The writing

• Is concise and precise.
• Is free of misspellings.
• Is free of grammatical mistakes.
• Lacks incomplete sentences.
• Employs appropriate punctuation.
• Includes subject/verb agreement.
• Uses pronouns correctly.
• Is free of sexist language.
• Is free of jargon and cliches.
• Cites references correctly.